Monitoring windows clients, when to use NSCLIENT++ or NCPA?

[dsanville]

I have been using nagios for years monitoring Linux&Unix hosts [active and passive checks, wrote home grown jobs and check_by_ssh jobs] and now I have to start monitoring Windows hosts. At first I am looking to monitor just some standard things like CPU, memory, space. In the future I would like to monitor SQL, WSUS, AD, DNS, DHCP, WSUS, etc.
I have done a lot of reading and I am not sure if I should use NSCLIENT++ or NCPA or even under what circumstances I should use either. Some of the reading I have done makes me think NCPA is a replacement for NSCLIENT++ but other articles show they are two different products. Can someone clarify this for me? Just pointing me to some reading material would be fine as well.

thanks
Dan

[mcapra]

they are two different products.

This is accurate. I'll let a tech speak to the finer points of this discussion, but in a nutshell NCPA is an official Nagios product and NSClient++ is an open-source community product.

NSClient++ has more native Windows-specific modules/plugins than NCPA. Whether or not that actually matters depends on the specific use case. Also, if you're into configuration management via Chef/Ansible/Puppet/etc, you may find NSClient++ has a bit more of a presence there by virtue of being around for such a long time.

Other than that, the two agents are pretty comparable. I've found NCPA to be easier to work with but have an inherent bias.

[dsanville]

Thank-you for the information, it helps fill in a few holes. Is it safe to say NCPA is a replacement for NSCLIENT++ or better yet the new model going forward? I am definitely using nagios to monitor my windows boxes and I want to make sure what I choose is the way of the future.

regards
Dan

[lmiltchev]

Is it safe to say NCPA is a replacement for NSCLIENT++ or better yet the new model going forward?

Nagios is a really flexible products. It can be used with many different plugins, agents, etc. I wouldn't say NCPA is a "replacement" for NSClient++. It is just another agent to choose from, which offers the following benefits:

1. It is easy to use, and it is a multi-platform agent (it can be used on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X).
2. It is an official product of Nagios, so it is going to be better supported.
3. It is actively developed.

Note: Users who are already motioning a large number of Windows hosts via NSClient++ are sometimes reluctant to switch to NCPA, because of all of the hustle with removing the old agent, installing and configuring the new one, etc. However, if you are just starting to monitor Windows servers, NCPA would be the way to go.

Hope this helps.

[dsanville]

It sure does, thank-you.

Dan

[lmiltchev]

Dan, I will be closing this topic now. If you have any more questions/issues, please start a new thread. Thank you!