Nagios Support Forum

lmiltchev wrote:I understand that you need to make an important decision, and you don't have much time, however the only person who knows if this could be done in timely manner is Nick. He should be in today (around noon), so you should hear from him by the end of the day.

Windows monitoring options:
Agentless with ssh
• Pros
o Can run any windows app/script as a check and/or event handler
• Cons
o ssh would need installed on all servers
o No method to automatically update agent configuration, would need scripted
o No method to automatically distribute updated plugins, would need scripted
Agentless with WMI
• Pros
o Reads information directly from the OS(performance counters)
• Cons
o No method to automatically update agent configuration, would need scripted
o WMI can easily stop working or timeout in responding to requests making Nagios percentages be off
o Large overhead and requires extra Nagios Workers
Active Agent - NSClient
• Pros
o Can run any windows app/script as a check and/or event handler
o The most used and stable Windows agent
• Cons
o No method to automatically distribute updated plugins, would need scripted. This is for adding new command definitions. There is a work around for this developed by me
o Enterprise apps team seems to believe this cause major overhead on the servers. I was never approached with the stats that show this and have a hard time believing it
Passive Agent – NRDS
• Pros
o Can run any windows app/script as a check and/or event handler
o Remote host only needs to be able to hit port 443 or 80 on the Nagios server
o Can automatically configure the agent and deploy updated check scripts centrally from Nagios
• Cons
o Uses scheduled tasks to kick off the agent every X minutes. Control-M can be used but with a massive rollout that means Control-M on every server
Passive or Active Agent – NCPA
• Pros
o Built in API to handle most common checks
o Can run any windows app/script as a check and/or event handler
o Creates a web page on server to view live data(can be disabled)
o Runs NRDS, no need to scheduled task and has all pros of NRDS
• Cons
o Currently the passive checks outside of the API are not functioning
o Currently no method to automatically distribute updated plugins, would need scripted
o Currently no method to automatically update agent configuration, would need scripted
o Not very mature, still active bugs being fixed regularly