Nagios XI DR instance

[Achillefs]

Hello all,

First of all I know this has been the point of discussion in past threads, however, please bear with me.
We have 2 clusters in 2 different locations and in one of them we have Nagios XI instance installed.
A couple of days ago we had an issue with the cluster and as such, we lost all of our alerts since Nagios was down as well.
That made us think of what's the best way to achieve DR for Nagios, without needing external software.
I know that there can be no automated solution for an Active/Standby model.

Now, afaik with the Nagios XI license, you can use the key to set up a backup server(https://support.nagios.com/kb/article.php?id=145)
and also I took a look at this thread(https://support.nagios.com/forum/viewto ... 16&t=32676)
If my understanding is correct, we can set up a Nagios XI instance on our second cluster, import the backup, disable all active checks(? not sure if we need to disable them or just stop Nagios service entirely) and if there is an issue with the main installation we can go inside and re-enable them.
When the main installation is backup, we would need to disable notifications/checks once again on the backup Nagios instance and that's it.

Is my understanding of the above correct? If we always have one Nagios with disabled checks/notifications at all times, there won't be any issue with the license we have?

If I misunderstood anything please let me know.

Thank you very much!

[gsmith]

Hi

Yes - you understand the licensing model correctly.

What you can do with the DR server is leave it running, but go to the Admin page, click
on Monitoring Engine Status under System Information. It will look like:

Image007.jpg

Click on the X's next to:

• Active Service Checks
  Passive Service Checks
  Active Host Checks
  Passive Host Checks
  Notifications
  Event Handlers

like so:

Image008.jpg

That way you can take the DR server down, restore a backup from Prod, bring the DR server up,
and verify it's functionality/config without violating the licensing terms and without confusing anyone in the
notification groups. You can also change the email settings under Admin to make sure no emails
get sent out from the DR server, but make sure to note that in your checklist/run book.

Thanks