Agentless Windows monitors

[Andreas Ericsson]

Michael Medin wrote:
> Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> 
>> Glenn Meisenheimer wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Andreas              
>>>
>>>>
>>>> And hopefully, if you have Windows systems in your infrasturcture
>>>>  you shouldn't find it too confusing to set up a user.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now your earlier point of scalability bears investigation.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Common sense says it will work poorly. If the proxy could have a 
>>> script server that would greatly reduce the load, as code doesn't 
>>> need to be initialized every time. That would call for a complete 
>>> re-design of nrpe-nt though, so it's probably better to start from 
>>> scratch.
>>
>>
> 
> Actually this can be done with a module for NSClient++ quite easily.

That was the sort of re-design I had in mind. :)

> My 
> initial plan (before I started playing with NRPE) was to write a MS 
> scripting host module to allow script to be 1, preloaded and more 
> importantly 2, running in the "background" ie. collect data and such). 

This is sort of "dangerous". Users will most likely think "why the hell 
isn't my data fresh when I've told nagios to check it once ever 
umpteenth second". Hooking up a module to add a new check though (saving 
the load time) would indeed be extremely useful.

> But as NRPE will probably take a while to whip up that will probably not 
> be for a few months or so...
> 
>>>
>>>>  I have
>>>>  not rolled out thousands of these monitors yet, so I obviously
>>>>  need to do some benchmarking to see just how scalable this approach
>>>>  is.  To do it correctly, I need to use an enterprise level server
>>>>  as the proxy host.  (if one intends to do large numbers of these
>>>>  things this would make sense).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> One could, of course, use more than one proxy server.  That would
>>>>  be scalable.  Nothing says that you can't have more than one of
>>>>  these things out there.  Perhaps you could select one machine in
>>>>  each domain and install nrpe-nt and these scripts on it.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes, but is it really interesting to waste computer power on proxies? 
>>> One must also consider the fact that the proxy will become a single 
>>> point of failure (SOP running windows ... *shudder*). If the proxy 
>>> goes down you'll loose monitoring on all the windows nodes and 
>>> considering you have decided to invest in a proxy to monitor them, 
>>> you probably have quite a few.
>>>
>>> One could ofcourse set up a redundant mesh of proxies and nagios 
>>> servers but then we're eating up the time saved pretty fast.
>>
>>
> Is there any support for that in Nagios ?

The proxy redundancy would be better off handled through some other 
means (linux HA, but on windows, sort of) with support for IP takeover.

> Thoretically you could set it up I soppose using parents and such but a 
> "redundant" check would solve this pretty simple.
> ie. "check_using_one_of -H1 -H2 -H3 -c check_nrpe .... " Having it check 
> untill it finds a host that responds.

Yes, but this would present a difficulty in configuration as well as 
increase the load and check-times fairly dramatically on the nagios 
server. Down hosts don't respond at all so there would usually be a 
series of socket timeouts until one actually does respond. This also 
scales poorly.

> And a check_using_all_of might similarily be of use, but what do I know :)
> 
> 
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now, where to find an enterprise server that I can appropriate for
>>>>  this testing... hehe  Might be time for a midnight foray through
>>>>  the lab!
>>>>
>>>
>>> Don't forget the 3am lunar toast. ;)
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Glenn A. Meisenheimer
>>>>
>>>> Customer Support Manager
>>>>
>>>> Groundwork Open Source Solutions
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----------------------
>>>>
>>>> This thread is located in the archive at this URL:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.nagiosexchange.org/nagios-users.34.0.html?&tx_maillisttofaq_pi 
>>>>
>>>> 1[showUid]=4519
>>>>
>>>>                   
>>>>
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>>>
> 
> 

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Lead Developer


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