set up Nagios to monitor Windows servers

[caterpillartce]

Hello,

We recently purchased Nagios XI and will be monitoring about 100 Windows servers. Questions:

1. We had Nagios Core monitoring these servers before so they have "NSClientpp (Nagios) 0.3.8.76 2010-05-27 x64" installed already. What is the best way for those servers to be monitored by the new Nagios XI server? I edited NSC.INI file to add the new XI server to the allowed_hosts list, but only "ping" works and it can not get the other information from the agent, such as disk, CPU .. usage. Do I need to uninstall the old agent and reinstall?

2. What is the best approach to discover and monitor the 100 servers? We do not use SCCM on servers, but can manually install the agent on those servers. Can we install one and copy the installed folder to the other servers and use command line to create service? Also how to efficiently discover those servers if they are on many different subnets?

3. Is there a deployment guide or best practice for Windows server monitoring? I need to know what we should set up initially - contacts, contact groups, host groups, templates ...?

4. Is there a way for Nagios XI to send notification as tickets to BMC Remedy?

Thanks!!


Jessica Zhang
Product Engineering Solutions
Caterpillar Inc.

[tgriep]

1. You shouldn't have to re-install the NSClient on your Windows hosts. If you are using the check_nt command, and forgot to use the password that is setup in the nsc.ini file when you ran the wizard, that could be the issue. Without seeing the error and how the checks are setup, that would be a good guess.

2. In XI, you can use the Auto-Discovery tool. Click on the Configure menu in the XI GUI and on the left will be the Auto-Discovery tool. Create a new job and fill in the subnet you want to check.
When it is done, run the wizard to configure those hosts to be monitored by XI. Since the Auto-Discovery only does a scan of your network, it will not have everything setup to be monitored, it will only show the basics that it detects on that server.

3. There really isn't a guide for best practices as everyone has different needs but take a look at these link for any info that may help you out.
https://www.nagios.com/social/2016/06/m ... practices/
http://www.slideshare.net/nagiosinc/nag ... -practices
https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nag ... indows.php

4. Have you looked at our Exchange site and see if there is something setup to send tickets to BMC Remedy?
https://exchange.nagios.org/