Nagios Core Network monitoring

[jimmyj]

Hi guys,

Been using Nagios Core for a while now, and I've got a pretty good setup to push on with for my organization. Currently monitoring Windows servers (disk usage, cpu etc) vmware hosts with (check_mk) and some internal url. I've got pnp4nagios install for graphing.

My next aim is to setup network monitoring, which I haven't had much success with in the past. Our network in Cisco throughout, what's the best way to enable network monitoring in my environment?

[jdalrymple]

No shortage of Cisco plugins on the Exchange. Nagios was originally developed for monitoring network devices primarily through SNMP - all the extras such as server monitoring were just bolt-ons added later. You should find great success monitoring Cisco devices with the plugins on the exchange as well as the plugins in the plugins package.

Is there some specific thing you seek to monitor to help you with? Otherwise your question is pretty ambiguous, and hopefully my ambiguous answer got you pointed in the right direction.

[jimmyj]

@jdalrymple thanks for your reply.

Sorry I should have explained in more detail. I would like to be able to produce reports when management ask;
-Is our network running slow?
-What is the current throughput on the links between our sites?
-User "x" is experiencing slow network performace, is there an issue with their network port on the switch.

Hoping to be able to get report on this information hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly.

that's what I would like, but if there is a better reporting tool then I'm all for that. The network side of things is the final missing part, before I start to think about contact group and how we get notified.

I'll have a look at the link which you have posted, I think I may have sent it before, but it wont hurt for me to look over it again.

[jdalrymple]

That added definition is very helpful. NagiosXI can do a lot of the monitoring that you're seeking. We have builtin wizards to help streamline the process of setting up switches and routers that make use of the standard IF-MIB. For a deep dive into what your network is doing you might also find interest in Nagios Network Analyzer. It goes a layer deeper, takes advantage of devices that can send netflow data streams to external servers. This gives much more granular detail than just interface level statistics, it can add what type of traffic, how much traffic, traffic from/to whom and traffic lifetime type data to your environment. It also ties in nicely to NagiosXI allowing you to do some alerting and monitoring from within the flagship product itself.

There is a free trial of both - I suggest taking a look and seeing how they can benefit you - and in the meantime we're absolutely here to help get you going with the products!

[jimmyj]

@jdalrymple Thanks again for the reply.

I've seen Nagios Network Analyzer before but haven't seen it in action. Would be great to kick start a free trial, something i will do. I was trying to come from the angle to see if there were any nagios core plugins which will enable this. I just need to be mindful of management as they will be expecting us to be able to provide this information using Nagios Core and the open source plugins.

I've had a rethink, I only want to monitor;
1/. Uplinks ports
2/. Switch Processors
3/. Memory Usage of Switch

[jdalrymple]

1/. Uplinks ports

this plugin

2/. Switch Processors

this plugin

3/. Memory Usage of Switch

this plugin

There are plenty of other plugins out on the exchange, those are standouts with good reviews. None will give you that "which user is surfing youtube the most" data - but it will do exactly as advertised. Nagios Core is not our tool for seeing who surfs the most youtube, NNA is. Nagios Core is very flexible though - you may find a way to shoehorn what you need in with enough effort.

NagiosXI has a different method of handling #1 - it uses mrtg to create graphs then just monitors the graphs. We also have a new mrtg free version of our switch/interface monitoring coming up in a future release that is going to be very cool - it will no doubt be a feature limited to NagiosXI users.

Hope this helps.

[jimmyj]

Hi jdalrymple,

Thanks again for your reply. and Thank you very much for the links again. I had a look on the exchange but couldn't see any plugins which stood out to me, (need to open my eyes more).

However, I'm going to give these plugins a good go. Reading the description I should be able to get what I need out of them. I'm not interested in knowing which sites which users are surfing to constantly. We have Websense for that. But thank you for pointing out the additional information regarding the new features, XI does seem like it gives some additional benefits over Core, but I like core and think its amazing.

[lmiltchev]

Sounds good, jimmyj! I will be locking this topic now. If you have any more questions/issues, please start a new thread.