Nagios Support Forum

Hey guys,

I was able to get my first nagios server online and upgraded successfully to core 4.0.2 and so far, very impressed. However, to prove that this software has the same, if not better, capabilities as say kaseya monitoring I wanted to get an esxi plugin setup. I have plenty of hosts and guests to inventory and monitor, not all vm's are being monitored at the moment, so I wanted to see what I can do with Nagios and esxi monitoring.

I see quite a few esxi plugins online the exchange website, but nothing on how to get that zip imported and working in nagios. I'm sure that module needs to be in some directory so it can be used, but which one? I hope there's some sample config or setup I can see and get an idea from. I'm usually good to go once I get an idea and see how it should work, but need some help getting started is all.

I'll take any help at this point

Thanks,
Andrew

Some of the esx checks on the exchange require the vmware sdk and perl, while others are simpler plugins. You usually download the plugin, decompress the archive if necessary, and then move the plugin/script/bin into the plugins directory (default location: /usr/local/nagios/libexec). And finally you would configure the check and command in the nagios config files.

Do you need help configuring a specific plugin or with just the basics of nagios configuration in general?

Hey thanks man. After reading your post you got me thinking a little more into what I'm actually trying to accomplish. Pulling in all types of devices like: switches, routers, printers, desktops through non-intrusive means of course. I just setup and was able to get the NSC++ setup, however I don't think that's what I want to do, even with a deployment script on 100+ servers.

I looked at all the available esxi tools and what their designed for, but I don't think it's what I need. I pretty sure now its going to come down to an auto discovery tool. After I can see what's out there and cross reference that with what the other monitoring tools. After that I can drill down to specific servers and get that NSC++ tool setup to see more into the machine's health.

I guess it comes down to what I really need then build from there, auto discovery seems like the way to go. If you know of one out there that's not on the exchange, please let me know the ones I've read so far seem a little intense or intrusive.

Andrew

Well, you will find that in many cases autodiscovery, including the one included in Nagios XI, essentially runs an NMAP scan against your network to find active addresses that reply back, and several common ports. This can be a great mapping tool, and you can even de-activate hosts you add from it and come back to them later to configure. You could manually clone a host/service setup for one of your windows systems and script out a solution to change the address, alias, etc to the next system you want to configure.