Comparison of Big Brother and Nagios

[markwag+nagios at u.washington.edu]

On 19 January 2004 at 18:30, "Tom Welsh" <twelsh at square-box.com> wrote:

> Has anyone got a comparison report between Nagios and Big brother? It
> would save me a lot of time if I could get it from some one and update /
> plagiarise your efforts so far. 
> 
> I have a client who wants such a comparison and I know I have seen it
> around somewhere before but cant find it now. I will post the doc when I
> have finished with it to Ethan for possible dissemination on the
> propaganda page.

You need to verify these facts. BB may have improved since last I looked.
Here is what I came up with when evaluating both:

- BB: No scheduled downtime.

- BB: Simplistic reporting.

	- Only get trends, alert history, and availability.

	- Cannot be broken down into groups.

- BB: Configuration.

	- No template-based configuration.

- BB: Agent-based monitoring.

	- Need to install software on every host.

	- Uses own protocol rather than SNMP.

	- Nagios is agentless and agent-based.

- BB: Acks, but no comments.

- BB: Limited web interface compared to Nagios.

- BB: "Better Than Free" license. Must pay for non-commercial use.
- Nagios: GPL.

- BB: Why so many forks? Little sister, etc.

- Nagios: Easily extensible. Look at the the add-ons.

- BB: Support through one company.
- Nagios: support from many companies.

- Nagios: Alas, a low signal-to-noise ratio on mailing list.

- BB: can't spell "advertise" properly on home page. :)

-- 
Mark Wagner markwag at u.washington.edu 206-598-0302
Unix System Administrator, Radiation Oncology and Radiology


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