Nagios and DB support.

[Brian Schrock]

Sounds like a good opportunity for a Nagios based Linux Distro like mythtv
and knoppix.

Brian,

-----Original Message-----
From: nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Scott Sanders
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 3:05 PM
To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios and DB support.

Ben wrote:

>Well, you must do what you feel is right, of course, but....
>
>Any solution you come up with would probably include alerting, and I've
>found that Nagios is excellent at alerting. It's not so hot at running
>historical reports or making trend reports, but I've got two things to say
>about that. First, nagios can gather its metrics from your historical
>trending tools, so you get both. Second, nagios 2 has NEB modules, which
>you can use to send data to your historical trending tools, so you can get 
>both going the other way too. It's flexible.
>  
>
Sure, and this is probably what I will end up having to do for the time
being. Don't get me wrong, I think nagios is great, it just seems that
version 2 will hanicap it more than anything else. The flexibility
should extend beyond just allowing you define custom checks and custom
notify-by's. I would like to be flexible in how I store this data too.
Heres an idea; leave the storage and logging functions seperate. Treat
this backside of nagios like a module also, so we aren't forced to save
everything in files and can write our own storage methods.

>Personally, I don't think it makes sense to have one tool that does
>everything. The concept of small tools that do their job well and can
>interact with other tools is what gives unix so much of its power, and I
>don't see any reason to stop applying that concept when it comes to
>monitoring, alerting, or trend analysis.
>  
>
I couldn't agree more. Small tools also have the big advantage of being
able to be upgraded independently. But as it currently is, all nagios
does is collect data from a number of tools through its check functions
and report them with other tools (read qpage, etc.). The config files,
escalations,  and the ability to group hosts/services/contacts, etc. are
what makes nagios so powerful. I don't want to get away from using
smaller tools, I just want a better way to manage everything. If someone
made a php frontend that incorperated nagios, cacti, ntop, and snort it
would be a huge benefit to the IT community. However, I think nagios can
do all of this itself with only minor changes, so why not continue to
expand nagios until it meats everyones needs?

Scott

>On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, Scott Sanders wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Then it sounds like Nagios isn't what I need. I would like an interface 
>>for real-time monitoring of my network and its hardware, as well as the 
>>ability to look back over the history. This doesn't seem like a task 
>>best suited to two independent tools, but I have been wrong before.
>>
>>Looks like its time to start moving away from Nagios and begin 
>>developing a monitoring system that is better suited towards true 
>>network monitoring, instead of continuing to try and get Nagios to play 
>>well with all the other toys I use to get an accurate picture of the 
>>state of my network.
>>
>>Thanks for your input,
>>Scott
>>
>>Andreas Ericsson wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>Scott Sanders wrote:
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>They also sound like my problems. I would like to see Nagios evlove 
>>>>into a full network monitoring/management tool, but I can't see how 
>>>>this is possible without database support.  I personally need to 
>>>>regularly poll a
>>>>large number of devices' traffic stats, transmission errors, 
>>>>connected clients, link quality, etc. These all need to be stored in 
>>>>a DB so I can quickly graph them with rrdtool.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>If you want it graphable with rrdtool you should look into using mrtg 
>>>or cacti. Nagios is not a graphing tool. It's more directed towards 
>>>current status to let you know what's wrong now, not what was wrong 
>>>last month even though it tells you that as well, but without the graphs.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Storing data for at least a year is  also important,
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Then you'd want to stick to files. A network with 3000 services or 
>>>more will make a database sluggish in far less than a year if Murphy 
>>>works his usual magic.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>because it shows seasonal trends, which can be very important in RF.
>>>>
>>>>I currently use nagios for alerts and graph all my devices with a 
>>>>seperate program. This is annoying because it forces me to keep two 
>>>>config files instead of just a single one.
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>Write a script to import from the one to the other. It saves you the 
>>>work. Most network admins/supervisors/whatever don't want graphs of 
>>>everything they want monitored, though, so you might want to add some 
>>>logic for that in the script.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>Either way, I would like to  see nagios make more use of rrdtool,
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>You need perfparse then, and you also need to keep in mind that the 
>>>output of the nagios plugins aren't always graphable ("Service foo has 
>>>stopped" and other digital checks spring to mind).
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>>>as being able to visually track changes can be even more vauable than 
>>>>a pager going off with a "host critical" warning.
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>The notifications are for keeping the graphs flying high. The graphs 
>>>are for checking how valuable those pager notifications have been. 
>>>Again, you might not want graphs of everything you want monitored.
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>
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>>    
>>
>
>
>
>
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>
>  
>




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