Nagios Vs. Big Brother
Jamie Bohr
Jamie_Bohr at Agilent.com
Thu Mar 10 00:03:24 CET 2005
Has any one done this for Big Sister?
- Jamie
On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 15:30, Williams, P. Lane wrote:
> Straight from my recommendation plan to my management....hope it
> helps...............
>
> Nagios vs. Big Brother
>
>
>
> Listed below are operational, administrative and service functionality
> features, in comparison, that set Nagios above Big Brother. A list,
> of these comparisons, is outlined in attachment 2 (Added features of
> Nagios over Big Brother).
>
>
>
>
>
> Operational Functionality
>
>
>
> Some of the operational functions that Nagios has built-in that Big
> Brother does not (all are accomplished through the user interface):
>
>
>
> 1. Ability to disable and enable host and service checks.
> 2. Ability to schedule impromptu downtime for services and host.
> 3. Ability to disable and enable host and service notifications.
> 4. Ability to schedule immediate service and host checks for
> active checks.
> 5. Ability to leave comments about a service or host.
> 6. Ability to easily acknowledge alerts.
> 7. Ability to restart the Nagios process.
> 8. Various other Nagios services can be controlled from the user
> interface.
> 9. Provides an overall view of the network hierarchy, which shows
> “parent-child” relation.
> 10. View configuration from the user interface.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Administrative Functionality
>
>
>
> Some of the administrative functionality Nagios has built-in that Big
> Brother does not:
>
>
>
> 1. Ability to set host and service dependencies. Service and
> host dependencies are an advanced feature that allows you to
> control the behavior of hosts and services based on the status
> of one or more other hosts or services.
>
>
>
>
> a. A service can be dependent on one or more other
> services.
> b. A service can be dependent on services that are not
> associated with the same host.
> c. Service dependencies are not inherited.
> d. Service dependencies can be used to cause service
> execution and service notifications to be suppressed
> under different circumstances.
>
>
>
>
>
> 1. Template-based configuration files. The benefits of using the
> template-based config file format is that you can create
> object definitions that have some of their properties
> inherited from other object definitions. Template-based
> object definitions allow you to create large numbers of
> objects using just a small number of definitions in your
> config file(s). Nagios template-based configuration files are
> far superior to Big Brother configuration files in areas of
> configuring notifications, time frames, contacts, contact
> groups, host, host groups, service and host dependencies,
> command definitions, host and service escalations…etc.
>
>
>
>
> 1. The ability to set security and authorization of designated
> CGI’s and command functions.
>
>
>
>
> 1. A PHP (widely-used general-purpose scripting language) web
> interface has been developed to make changes to the
> configuration files.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Service Functionality
>
>
>
> Some of the service functionality Nagios has built-in that Big Brother
> lacks or does not support:
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports event handlers. Event handlers are optional
> commands that are executed whenever a host or service state
> change occurs. An event handler could proactively fix
> problems, troubleshoot failures, or any myriad of customized
> events.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports active service checks. Active service checks
> are initiated from the Nagios server, providing server-side
> network monitoring.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports flap detection. Flapping occurs when a
> service or host changes state too frequently, resulting in a
> storm of problem and recovery notifications. Flapping can be
> indicative of configuration problems (i.e. thresholds set too
> low) or real network problems. When flap detection is enabled
> Nagios will suppress notifications, until flapping has
> stopped.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios provides more flexible UNIX support. The UNIX (Sun,
> HP, Linux, Mac OSX, AIX…etc) clients provide both active and
> passive checks. Active checks are handled by the “nrpe”
> daemon and passive checks are handled by the “nsca” daemon.
> Client checks are handled by plugins. Plugins are scripted or
> compiled applications that gather information from the
> client. Client programs can be written to gather disk, cpu,
> memory, network, LDAP, database, web-server, or just about any
> metric you may wish to monitor. Nagios comes with pre-defined
> plugins that can be customized to meet any UNIX environment.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios provides more flexible Microsoft support. The
> Microsoft client of choice is NSClient. NSClient provides
> support for disk, CPU, file age, services, processes, uptime,
> memory, and practically any available performance counter.
> NSClient does not currently support Event Log messages (in
> development). Not to worry, the power of PERL prevails.
> Using the PERL Net::Nsca module, a client side application
> can be written to capture Microsoft Event Log messages and
> send to the Nagios server as a passive check. Three other
> options are using SNMP or with some modification the “Event
> Catch” application Tim Dunlevy wrote or a UNIX syslog facility
> could be used as a viable Event Log reporting service for
> Nagios. Because of this versatility, monitored Event Log
> messages can be better defined.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports notification escalations. Notification
> escalations are used to add additional contacts to service and
> host notifications if a problem persists.
>
>
>
>
> Example: After a problem with a service occurs a
> notification message will be sent to the individuals responsible for
> the administration of the specific server. If that problem persists,
> without acknowledgement, then after a predetermined number of
> notifications the server administrator(s) and a group of second-level
> individuals would be notified. This escalation process can continue
> for as many levels of notification that are needed to obtain a
> response to the alert.
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports logging of performance data. Performance data
> can be used to graph and report on system performance
> metrics. This service is useful for troubleshooting and
> trending possible problems.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports the integration with other software such as
> Port sentry, RRDTool, MRTG…etc.
>
>
>
>
> 1. Nagios supports service check parallelization and service
> check interleaving. Parallelization means Nagios can spawn
> numerous checks at once on the monitoring server.
> Interleaving allows for a more even distribution of service
> checks, reduced load on remote hosts, and faster overall
> detection of host problems.
>
>
>
>
> Lane Williams
> Linux Systems Administrator
> ITSD/IDS
> Johns Hopkins University APL
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net
> [mailto:nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of
> Brent Ryan
> Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 2:46 PM
> To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Nagios-users] Nagios Vs. Big Brother
>
>
> I know there is some obvious answers to this, but is there any
> documentation of pros/cons for these monitoring applications?
>
> Why is nagios better then Big Brother?
>
>
> Brent
>
> Don't miss the 2005 Blackboard Users Conference April 12-14 in
> Baltimore, MD!
> Visit http://www.blackboard.com/about/events/BbUC05/index.htm
> for more information.
>
> This e-mail is intended only for the personal and confidential
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> information, and is not for redistribution.
--
Jamie Bohr <Jamie_Bohr at Agilent.com>
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