Nagios Support Forum

Hi,

Can anyone help me on the requirements that our client is looking for Nagios capabilities.
One of our client send us Terms of Reference and there are a lot of questions that will test the capability of Nagios:

Is Nagios:
1. Ability to process real-time data to determine resource performance levels and to identify problem cause?
2. Ability to integrate real-time and historical data to analyze resource performance levels across a specified time frame and to find the point at which a problem first occur?
3. Collect and store the following minimum information for the following environments/platform:
Intel/Intanium/Sparc
- CPU Utilization
- Disk Info
- File Access Info
- Buffer Activity
- System Call Statistics
- Memory Freeing Activity
- Message and Semaphore Activity
- Paging Activity
- Queue Length
- Memory Usage
- Swapping Activity
- Terminal Activity
- Total Logged in Users
- Process Information
- System Errors (CPU, disk, process
loops, etc.)
4. The management system should be able to generate performance statistical reports that can be used as reference for future planning or troubleshooting
- Create network reports using out-of-the box and community-generated templates
- Customize built-in network reports with a few mouse clicks
5. Displays and logs system messages and message information.
6. Capable of message prioritization and filtering based on event source, type, etc.
7. Provides historical event analyses.
8. Filters significant and insignificant events across the network.
9. Can keep track the byte counts and response times of each application, from host to host or client to host, and end point to end point.
10. Provides real-time and historical views (tabular or graphical) of application traffic flows.
11. Automatically generate traffic load views for every application through each network device on the network.
12. Provides means of defining new or in- house applications into the built-in list of known applications.
13. Provide trend analysis and variety of extensive reporting capabilities.
14. Requires no agent configuration or modification to servers, clients, routers, switches or applications.
15. Thresholds can be configured to trigger real-time alarms (through SNMP traps) when application response time can be unacceptable.
16. Alarms can be integrated with third-party trouble ticketing system or event correlation engines.

Thank you sooooo much,
Please help us.

Questions 1-7: All YES : )

Question 8: "Significant and Insignificant" is a little ambiguous, but there are a variety of feature for running filtered reports on events.

9-11: YES.

12: A little unclear on what this is asking, but Nagios easily allows the use of custom plugins, and there are thousands of custom plugins on exchange.nagios.org.

13. Yes
14. Agents are required for remote monitoring, so initial setup is required. But once they're installed most of the configuration is handled from the Nagios server.
15 YES.
16. Nagios allows the use of custom event handlers that can pass information to third party applications.

Thank you so much! This is a big help..

follow up questions:

1. Monitor & manage following network devices:
- Cisco Switches 29XX/35XX/45XX
- Cisco Routers
- Wireless equipment
2. Monitor SNMP MIB1/MIB2 compliant devices and equipment.
3. Allow the integration of third party device management applications. (Specify)
4. Network Discovery:
Auto Discovery of 500 nodes in at most 10 minutes.
- Schedule periodic automatic updates
- - Discover all resources in the entire network, or limit discovery to a specific subnet/host
5. Indicate change in state of any monitored component, segment or process within 10 seconds.
6. Resource grouping by common characteristics (such as type, location of subnet, IP address range) and apply policies to the grouping.
7. Support distributed resource managers for localized network monitoring/management.
8. Provide automated events response thru pagers and electronic mails.
9. Support up to 500 nodes.
10. Handle over 6,000 traps per second.
11. Monitor and analyze Network Traffic
- Real-time
- Long Term
12. SNMP Trap & Syslog Viewer
- Receive, process, forward and send Syslog and SNMP trap messages
- Set up alerts based on Syslog and SNMP trap messages
13. - Filter messages on severity/facility rules
- Forward Syslog messages to retain the original source IP address
14. Provide real-time monitoring & logging of all managed nodes

Thank you again!

Hi

I would just like to know what are the brands of switches and routers that Nagios is capable of monitoring
and what are the information that can give and extract by Nagios on switches and routers.

Thank you for the help....

1. Monitor, yes. Nagios does not manage.
2. Yes.
3. What do you mean?
4. Discover, yes, automatic updates no.
5. Possible, not recommended.
6. Hostgroup and Servicegroup functions built in.
7. What do you mean?
8. Yes.
9. With appropriate licensure.
10. With sufficient hardware and some special configuration.
11. Yes.
12. Yes.
13. Yes.
14. Yes.

Switches and routers: Anything that supports SNMP, and details depend on what they make available.

Hi,
We have a client that ask some queries about the capability of Nagios XI.
Here are the questions:

1. What if Nagios Server crash? The whole configuration that you did on Nagios server will be lost?
How long is the recovery time?
----- this only means, Does Nagios XI has a backup?

2. What protocol does Nagios use in order to send a notification or an alert via SMS?

3. For example, we are monitoring the site of www.facebook.com, does Nagios can monitor on how many users are logging in www.facebook.com?
and How can we monitor sites like www.facebook.com?

5. Can Nagios monitor our PABX?
Our client is a alcatel user....

6. In configuration wizard, why Linux server is not default? What is the main reason?

Thank you in advance for the one who will give me answer on my questions..

1. What if Nagios Server crash? The whole configuration that you did on Nagios server will be lost?
How long is the recovery time?
----- this only means, Does Nagios XI has a backup?

A single Nagios XI license covers a production instance, a backup instance, and a test instance. We generally recommend some sort of backup procedure, and we have documentation that covers different methods for that process.

2. What protocol does Nagios use in order to send a notification or an alert via SMS?

Nagios XI sends an email alert either through a provider's SMS gateway, or a custom gateway can be defined.

3. For example, we are monitoring the site of www.facebook.com, does Nagios can monitor on how many users are logging in www.facebook.com?
and How can we monitor sites like www.facebook.com?
5. Can Nagios monitor our PABX?
Our client is a alcatel user....

I suggest looking on exchange.nagios.org for the most complete list of what can be monitored. If a plugin doesn't exist, they are not difficult to write. All a check plugin needs to do is return an exit code to nagios (0-3), and a single line of text. If a device can send that to Nagios, you can monitor it.

6. In configuration wizard, why Linux server is not default? What is the main reason?

No particular reason, people Nagios to monitor just about anything. If you need to monitor a linux server, installing the wizard takes about 60 seconds.