Simplified Nagios user interface for end users/help desk

[Adam Forsyth]

I did try experimenting with Nagios Looking Glass some a few months
ago.  It does present a nice user interface, but unless I'm missing
something, it still seems to have the same problem of not being able
to distinguish between errors that are for my information and those
that are actually service affecting.  For example,  I created a filter
called "Web Servers" and placed our web servers into it.  That worked
just fine, but the Looking glass page reported that "The network is
experiencing severe outages which is having a negative effect on
services."  The reason for this was that I have nagios configured to
check how much free disk space is available on the server.  That check
was in "critical" state because the volume is 90% full.

I want nagios to alert me when that happens so I can look for disk
space to free up before the disk is 100% full (and it has alerted me).
 Nagios Looking Glass, on the other hand is for end users.  The end
users don't need to be concerned that we're within 10% of filling the
disk, so I don't want the Looking Glass to be concerned about disk
space.  I couldn't find a way to make it not be concerned about the
disk space.  Did I mis ssomething here?  If I did and this is a
solvable problem, then I think Nagios Looking Glass is exactly what
I'm looking for.


On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Mathew S. McCarrell<mccarrms at gmail.com> wrote:
> Adam,
>
> You can look at something like Nagios Looking Glass.  You many also want to
> consider using service groups.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Matt
>
> --
> Mathew S. McCarrell
> Clarkson University '10
>
> mccarrms at gmail.com
> mccarrms at clarkson.edu
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 9:24 AM, Adam Forsyth <forsytad at luther.edu> wrote:
>>
>> I'm monitoring lots of different services on various hosts with
>> Nagios.  Many of these things are very useful for me to monitor as the
>> sys admin, but when alerts occur occur with them, they do not
>> represent downtime for our users, they represent problems I should fix
>> proactively before they result in user noticeable downtime.  For
>> example, if Nagios notices a fan failure on one of my Procurve
>> switches, I as the admin want to know about the problem, and probably
>> want to replace the failing fan during the next scheduled maintenance
>> time.  The switch is still running just fine, however and there is no
>> effect on service to users.  Currently when I get such a notification,
>> I'd acknowledge the problem, and it would stay in critical state until
>> I've fixed the problem.
>>
>> What I'd like to create is a more end user targeted display of Nagios
>> data.  It would display OK or Alert status based only on whether the
>> particular service is up or down from the user perspective, and
>> wouldn't show any of the proactive nice for the sys admin to know
>> about details.  So in the case of the procurve switch, as long as the
>> fan failure hasn't made the entire switch crash (we can still ping it)
>> it would remain in an OK state.
>>
>> The only way I can think of to accomplish this would be to make a
>> second installation of nagios.  It would be a lot of duplicate
>> configuration, but many of the services would be left out.  I think
>> that would create this second end user display as I'm imagining it,
>> but it would come at the expense of having to maintain 2 sets of
>> configuration files, and the server would have to do duplicate
>> checking of lots of the services and hosts.
>>
>> Can anyone think of a better way to accomplish this that wouldn't need
>> to involve duplication of checks?
>>
>>
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