Nagios

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Nagios
Screenshot of Nagios
Screenshot of the Nagios web interface
Design by Ethan Galstad
Initial release May 10, 2002
Latest release 3.0.2 / May 19, 2008[1]
OS Unix-like
Genre Network monitoring
License GNU General Public License
Website www.nagios.org

Nagios (IPA: /ˈnɑːdʒioʊs/) is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring application software. It watches hosts and services that you specify, alerting you when things go bad and again when they get better.

Nagios, originally created under the name NetSaint, was written and is currently maintained by Ethan Galstad, along with a group of developers actively maintaining both official and unofficial plugins.

Nagios was originally designed to run under Linux, but also runs well on other Unix variants.

Nagios is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Contents

[edit] Overview

  • Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, ICMP, SNMP, FTP, SSH)
  • Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, system logs) on a majority of network operating systems, even Microsoft Windows with the NRPE_NT plugins.
  • Monitoring of anything else like probes (temperature, alarms...) which have the ability to send collected data via a network to specifically written plugins
  • Remote monitoring supported through SSH or SSL encrypted tunnels.
  • Simple plugin design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks depending on needs, by using the tools of choice (Bash, C++, Perl, Ruby, Python, PHP, C#, etc.)
  • Parallelized service checks available
  • Ability to define network host hierarchy using "parent" hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
  • Contact notifications when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via e-mail, pager, SMS, or any user-defined method through plugin system)
  • Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution
  • Automatic log file rotation
  • Support for implementing redundant monitoring hosts
  • Optional web-interface for viewing current network status, notifications, problem history, log files, etc.

[edit] Nagios meaning

According to Ethan Galstad's official FAQ on the Nagios site N.A.G.I.O.S. is a recursive acronym: "Nagios Ain't Gonna Insist On Sainthood". This is a reference to the original incarnation of the software under the name Netsaint (previously known as Saint and before that Satan). The word Nagios is a portmanteau of two words, network and hagios (also spelled agios, which means saint in ancient and modern Greek).

[edit] Addons and tools

Nagios can be extended with addons and tools. Examples of this include:

  • Centreon: PHP/MySQL frontend for Nagios, add some functionnalities and simplify configuration
  • NagVis: Addon for the visualization of the monitoring results
  • NagCon: Console monitor for UNIX
  • check_nagios_summary: check_nagios_summary enables you to do perform distributed monitoring using Nagios
  • NagIRCBot: announces Nagios status changes on IRC
  • NagiosQL: Administration extension for Nagios 2.x
  • monarch: Web-based engine for the configuration and management of Nagios 1.x and 2.x
  • nag2web: Web-based Configuration Tool for Nagios starting from 2.x with the help of a forum
  • PerfParse: Database binding for the processing of the "performance data" collected by Nagios
  • PNP: a tool for turning "performance data" into diagrams
  • Nagat (Nagios administration Tool): a Web-based tool in PHP for the configuration of Nagios (development discontinued).
  • phpNagios: Webbased Configurationtool for Nagios 1.x-3.x without using a Database.
  • NaWui: means Nagios administration Web user interface. It's a Web-front-end to configure Nagios and the administration of data base entries.
  • NagMin: Webmin module, which a central, integrated, Web-based administration of configuration files of Nagios 1.x.
  • mkncf: means MaKe Nagios configuration files
  • Speedview: a Nagios monitor
  • N2RRD: Tool for storing and graphing Nagios Performance Data
  • NagiosGrapher: Tool for the integration of PerformanceCharts within Nagios
  • Fruity: PHP based web-frontend to your Nagios configuration. Supports 2.x and imports 1.x configs.
  • Opsview: Web based configuration, SNMP trap support & distributed monitoring.
  • Nagios Checker — Firefox/Thunderbird extension for easy monitoring the events from the target Nagios systems
  • Sentinet3: Nagios Powered Enterprise IT monitoring appliance.
  • Distributed Nagios Executor (DNX): The Nagios scalability solution.
  • Nagios Business Process AddOns: Instead of single components now monitoring of whole applications ("Business Processes") is possible.

[edit] External links

Free software Portal

[edit] Books