Nagios vs. .NET's MOM

[Mark Leddy]

My thoughts on Microsoft's MOM
What this product is a shrink wrapped tool which uses WMI (Windows 
Management Interface) to manage services, check service states, check file 
sizes, dates, processor speed, Windows NT Performance Monitor Counters 
(maybe only Win2k machines on this one?) , anything that you would or could 
configure or get a value from...Event Log..etc.  MS SMS tool also uses WMI 
on the SMS Clients for auditing / reporting.

Mom can then track your Windows machines history of any of these items, 
achieve them (Never really used MOM so don't know how well it does on this) 
Check www.mcpmag.com for review.

Also MOM comes with some and lets you build scripts to perfom actions based 
on any type of schedule or as a result of a changed value, example would be 
performance monitor counter, etc.

I am not sure if MOM can monitor routers for performance or if it is smart 
enough to let you check pingability of a host like a router that does not 
use a MS OS. (Anyone able to answer that??)

Where as Nagios let you monitor a heck of lot of stuff out of the box - 
router, remote smtp service , dns service checks (to see if dns really 
responds to a defined query www.yahoo.com - where MOM and I am only guessing 
here but is most likely out of the box could only check the state of the dns 
service), I have yet to fully test or use Nagios (disclaimer)

I have installed the NSClient on just one machine but believe this gives you 
the ability to check vital stats, NT service state, and NT Performance 
Monitor counters, also the NSClient download page said something like ...... 
anyone have more details on one nay of these three items ......

1) pulling data from the NT Event logs
2) I think you could launch a process remotely on the Windows box - which 
mean you could run a Windows script. ( this would allow you to have a Nagios 
process check the NT processor util for a specific process and if over 50% 
kill that process)
3) I do not know if Nagios can save and achieve the actual results from the 
NT performance monitor checks ( I think I read before.. it would be possible 
for someone to write.. Don't know if it exists)

Summary
Mom likely can with some configuration monitor for specific NT event log 
items take corrective action, etc. save and make reports on stats for a grad 
a processor or so....

Nagios have greater monitor for non Windows machines + routers, etc.
Plus if you really want things like pie charts this can be done via 
scheduling saving NT performance monitor logs, export to excel, etc. You can 
also have a Windows machine run scripts on itself to do things like service 
checks, monitor WMI info and run scripts - just MOM jive you some of this is 
a save some of you time and pay us.

I work at a place that uses a NetIQ product who is the company I think 
Microsoft purchased some technology from to build Mom and the tool even 
though it come with a GUI (yahoo) still takes a while to build the service 
checks, monitoring , logging and reporting and costs a small bundle. Plus 
for NetIQ you need to purchase support and if you want updates year after 
year support costs more. I think NetIQ even sells some 3rd party scripts to 
use with MOM again these likely save some time rather then writing them on 
your own but cost money. Nagios you could always uses these free newsgroups 
and if needed contract with one of the companies listed. What happens when 
MS ask you to purchase an upgrade.

MOM may also recommend corrective actions for some Event Ids, for free check 
http://www.eventid.net

Let us know what happens and good luck… Mark


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