Nagios Support Forum

Hi All,
After successfully installing Nagios XI and creating a couple of users (through the WEB GUI )i cant wait to install the Nagios agent on a target server, to start monitoring .However what is not clear is that ,there is no standard,structured step by step guide as to how to configure monitoring once you have installed the Nagios XI and its Agent successfully.

Most documentation on google mention so many different things but not to the point, nothing specific, nothing straightforward ,standard and useful
Even Nagiois enterprise themselves dont seem to have doesnt seem to have any form of recommended or standard configuration guide for generic use for most users
We will be using Nagios to monitor the most basic standard things like , disk , usage, disk space, cpu load , events , applications , oracle listener alert logs etc

Also some scanty documentation by Nagios mentions that you can configure Nagios manually by hand or (and ) also by the WEB UI, however most of the configuration files warn that "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND --- # Nagios QL will overwite all manual settings during the next.... this is quite confusing

Can anyone point me to a standard pure step by step guide to configuring Nagios XI .

Any help would be greatly appreciated.Thanks

The common "standard" things are generally implemented in a wizard that walks you through setting it up, such as the Windows Server wizard for instance. Some of the less straightforward wizards are getting documentation made to go along with them as well, but most are quite simple. You will find the wizards under "Configure > Run a monitoring wizard" in XI.

dominiqs,
I understand what you are saying, I think the product itself is quite new and does not yet have a solid documentation base.

What I have become to understand is that Nagios XI is a front end for Nagios. Nagios itself is a free product but a lot of it's configuration is done all from within config files, there is no GUI to make all this happen. This is why you see warnings like "DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND", there is a backend database that pushes it's settings to config files and hence overwrites them each time.

However all the documentation out there is very relevant in relation to how the GUI maps to the configuration files.

And then there are add on product for Nagios that do graphing of data, map creation etc. Nagios XI is a suite of all these different products delivered to you in a ready to go virtual machine. This is the thing I like most about Nagios XI, it's a disposable environment as the developers say.

In terms of monitoring Windows boxes, there are an unlimited amount of checks that you can perform.

• Using the NSClient++ monitoring client you have access to basic checks
  Windows Performance Counters ... see this thread http://support.nagios.com/forum/viewtop ... =sql#p1750 and this one http://support.nagios.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=143 for examples of performance counters
  Just run the Windows Monitoring Wizard and type in your own performance counters
  Write your own batch/vb/powershell script

I'm not a Linux guy but there is the Linux agent / Config Wizard which is a similar concept to Windows boxes.

SNMP allows for checking of lots of different equipment connected to the network, these don't require agents.

It all comes down to doing your research into what devices you want to monitor and what you want to get out of them. The manufacturer will supply SNMP information that makes this easier.

You will find plugins other people have created that may talk to your specific device or perform checks a certain way.

I hope you find this information helpful.

I don't relay have anything to say related to this topic, however I'd like to thank Box293 for helping coin our phrase!!

...Sorry for the lack of initial "Getting to know Nagios XI" documentation.

Thanks Box293 for the reply , i worked these out myself , i found a linux config wizard and did a lot of stuff myself i guess its part of the learning process , i figured a lot of stuff for Nagios XI myself.