[OT]Re: Some noise about Nagios ..

[Stanley Hopcroft]

Dear Sir,

I am writing to thank you for your letter and say,

On Fri, Jun 13, 2003 at 11:05:05PM -0500, stefmit wrote:
> Mr. Hopcroft et al.,
> 
> 
> The reason of replying to the original email was to see if it is worth 
> continuing on an off-topic thread, with a debate in regards to EMS and NMS 
> (by the way - the "S" should probably stand for systems, not software, as 
> some solutions may be built directly on hardware appliances), and their 
> relationship to what Nagios is and/or could be. Anybody interested? I would 
> be willing to start with a description of what I have seen so far, and what I 
> liked from each, perhaps with the perspective of what Nagios could 
> potentially become/do, with the hope that others may share their opinions.
> 
> How does this sound?
>

It sounds very good to me; should there be complaints, it can continue
privately.

Part of the reason for the letter was to provide a proper perspective on
Nagios with regard to what it does well and less well, and also what
opportunities there are for addons or improvements.

I am of the view that many EMS claims are highly platform dependent (and
in fact the reference implementation is the OHP), but I am very keen to
hear what they do well in case that provides some inspiration for Nagios
development.

Not so much of, "Wouldn't it be nice if Nagios was like Snivoli ?" but,
how the hell can Nagios pinch the good bits ?  Half of knowing what to
pinch is seeing them first, or hearing about them.

There will be some cheap wins. For example, getting stuff into Excel is
a winner with those that attach no credibility to anything other than
spreadsheets (that's right: if I say in an email, from Nag reporting,
that outsourced service X was down for 30 hours last 5 day week, it
almost certainly will be ignored. PNG graph likewise. Spreadsheet - data
plus graph - well now, it _must_ be accurate.)

It is easy to 

. lift the existing Nag availability downs and ups

. change the time stamps to Excel format (strftime("%D %R", .. and
reformat as CSV)

. mail it to a Win MUA that will launch Excel

(Mind you this is not very useful, but there are those who must
put their hands in the wounds ..)

In any case, from what little I know about this, I am fairly confident
that

1 Nagios and EMS can have complimentary roles, since the Nagios forte of
testing services (rather than plonking agents on servers) is not
threatened by EMS

2 Should folk want EMS reporting and Nagios sensing, the letter from Don
Barak about Subhendu Ghosh about having Nag send notifications to the
EMS as snmp traps sounds a simple and viable means of doing so.

3 There is also a case that EMS and Nag are mutually exclusive. Those
that are on top of their game enough to only want to know what's down
when aren't interested in EMS. 

Yours sincerely.
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Hopcroft
------------------------------------------------------------------------

'...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes
me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee...'

from Meditation 17, J Donne.


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