Distributed Monitoring with passive Host checks

[Thomas Fischer]

Olaf,

cheers for your answer. Service checks are not the problem and run already. I need a passive host check ability. At the moment the central server does active host checks, but due to the fact that the remote site is not reachable from external sources the host checks fail. So i get a display where the hosts are marked as critical while the services are marked as OK. I need a method to transmit (maybe via NSCA) the host checks passively to the central server. Otherwise i have to write a new plugin that allows above. However if that works with Nagios is a diff story. I could for example write an event handler that takes the NSCA results, writes them into a status file (or Database) and the host check on the central server then extracts the info and flags the result accordingly.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Olaf Hoyer [mailto:ohoyer at gaff.hhhr.ision.net]
Sent: 01 August 2003 15:44
To: Thomas Fischer
Cc: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Distributed Monitoring with passive Host
checks


On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Thomas Fischer wrote:

> Guys and Gals,
>
> following situation. We have multiple remote sites (currently over 400 but expanding to over 2000 in the next 3 years) which use internally exactly the same adressing scheme. Don't ask why the same Addresses, but be assured that i pointed already a 45 Magnum at the idiot who designed this. Anyway back to the prob.
>
> I want to remotely monitor all hosts in every site (well not all because that would already now mean about 100k hosts), but i don't have direct access at the moment into each site. Also i would need to include a second Firewall to open a VPN tunnel to our HQ where the central server sits. An additional Firewall would cost. I hear you all crying out already why 2 Firewalls, but unfortunately the sites use PIX Firewalls which is a piece of shi* and can't do split tunnels and NAT at the same time, thankfully i will sooner or later be able to use a Nokia with CP FW-1 for each site.
>
> How can i do passive host checks from the central server without spending loads of development time, loads of money and have loads of headaches? Anybody did that already? Ohhh and no i can't wait a minimum of 12 months until Nagios 2.0 comes out.
>
> Any ideas, pointers etc. highly welcome. If anybody has an idea just contact me and i can pass more details on about the Network setup.
>
I also had the scenario in another setup.
We had some management LANs in the company, where we needed to monitor
some services, too.

I set up distributed monitoring via NSCA.


works as follows:

In the remote LAN you set a dedicated box, which actively checks all
services that are needed.
The check-results are transmitted via a small script (available on
nagios.org) via the nsca-demon to a central master nagios-server.

The nagios-Master identifies the checks that come in according to their
name, not due to ip.

So this will be:

Master----Firewall------Slave----Lots of targets
|
+---FW2----Slave2----Lots of other targets



So Slave1 uses designations as hostnames in hostgroups.cfg:

site1_smtp01.foo.bar

and Slave2 uses site2_smtpxxx.foo.bar, this will be transmitted to the
master, and there is an unique parts as identifier.

Also has the advantage, that you do not need to buy extra firewall,
because all data is coming from the internal side of the network.

The extra box also is needed badly to offload some work from the master.

HTH
Olaf

-- 
Olaf Hoyer        ohoyer at gaff.hhhr.ision.net
Fuerchterliche Erlebniss geben zu raten,
ob der, welcher sie erlebt, nicht etwas Fuerchterliches ist.
(Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Boese)


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