Which kind of installation for my environment?

[brian.gamble]

I plan on implementing NagiosXI to monitor approximately 1000 hosts and 3000 services throught our global organization with literally no Linux/Unix experience. I've rolled this out at a test site and as long as the instructions are clear, it's been relatively simple to deploy.

Questions about the organizational rollout:

- What installation method should I use to keep performance optimal? (VMware image through player or converted to ESX, CentOS server, Fedora or other)
- What should the system specs be for such a deployment?
- Should there be multiple systems (Probes) in place to limit WAN bandwidth utilization?
- Are there any other best practices or guides out there to assist with such a deployment?

Thanks,

Brian

[mguthrie]

I'll let other techs jump in as well, but I'll make a couple of suggestions.

VMware is very nice because of the ability to create snapshots on a regular basis, it makes for easy backups. If you're using vCenter server you can also create templates or clones of your XI server if needed. The downside of VMware is that is has to share CPU and disk I/O, so I would look at implementing both our RAM disk options and offloading MySQL to a second server, that should keep the XI server itself nice and responsive. Nagios XI isn't enormously memory intensive, the biggest thing is disk I/O and CPU. Take a look at the following docs and it should help you decide what's best for your environment.

Read this one first:
http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... rmance.pdf

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... giosXI.pdf
http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... Server.pdf

[brian.gamble]

Thanks for the reply. I will read each document thoroughly and respond with any additional questions I'm sure to have :^)

[brian.gamble]

Ok, so in essense what you are trying to say is if I have limited experience with this stuff, buy a high end server with plenty of CPU and I/O capabilities.

If I were to attempt the utilization of a RAM disk or offloading the DB onto a seperate server, each time I updated Nagios XI, I assume there would be no issue with the existing RAM disk or DB settings?

Thanks

[mguthrie]

I think the RAM disk options and offloading MySQL are pretty stable options for an environment, I've gone through the upgrade multiple times with minimal issues. We have quite a few users who use either or both methods.

Your XI license covers 3 installs: a production install, a test environment, and a backup install. I might suggest experimenting with RAM disk and MySQL before spending big $ on a new piece of hardware. Our local benchmark box is literally one of our old dual-core desktops and it has 10k checks running every 5 minutes with an average CPU load around 3.0-6.0. It has all of our documented performance tuning options in place.