Using nagios for multiple data centers

[Marc Powell]

On Mar 31, 2009, at 4:11 PM, Matthew Litwin wrote:

> I would like to pose a more advanced question to everyone here on  
> how I might use our current implementation of nagios to monitor  
> multiple data centers without having to set up multiple nagios  
> servers for each. The reason for doing is to have the ability to  
> view all nagios alerts from a single incidents page, generate  
> integrated graphs and reports, and reduce the number of servers in  
> general. However, while doing this, I want to also be able to be  
> able to view the just the alerts that are relevant to a single data  
> center at a time, thus limiting the view to just those alerts.
>
> The function of our data centers will be that one is a mirror of the  
> other and will act as failover. While we need to make sure both are  
> up and healthy, one will be in an active state and one will be in an  
> standby state, and our NOC will need to be able to focus on just one  
> or the other. Thus, aside from assigning each datacenter with active  
> and standby state, one concern is to be able to view just the alerts  
> for the hosts and services relevant to a single data center. This  
> means having a main screen like nagios has for alerts, but one for  
> data center A and the other for data center B. I was thinking that I  
> could delineate which hardware was part of which data center by  
> using hostgroups, dependencies, or a mix of both. The point of this  
> would be to be able to view and report data from hosts and services  
> from a single data center as well as all of them.
>
> Are there any documented methods for doing this that you know of?

While hostgroups are useful to group related devices together, the  
view restriction you want is a natural extension of configuring  
authorization for the CGI's (documented). We use it to limit views by  
State where we have hundreds of devices and dedicated Helpdesks. You  
can create specific user contacts or role contacts that can be  
associated with the hosts they should see. I would suggest the role  
account path, one per data center with a master contact that sees  
everything. Associate contact 'DataCenterA' with all hosts at Data  
Center A. Associcate contact 'DataCenterB' with all hosts at Data  
Center B. Associate the contact 'Master' with all hosts (or use  
authorized_for_* options in cgi.cfg). When someone logs in with one of  
those contacts usernames, they'll only be able to see hosts/services  
for which they are a contact. You can continue to use more personal  
contact addresses for notifications if you like. If you don't want  
them logging in with that personal contact name, don't create an  
htaccess account for it.

--
Marc


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