Icinga

Icinga

Initial release	May 2009 (2009-05)
Stable release	1.10.2 Core & Classic UI / 1.10.0 Web / December 5, 2013 (2013-12-05)
Development status	Active
Written in	mixed
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Network monitoring
License	GPL version 2
Website	www.icinga.org

Operating principle of Nagios

Icinga is an open source network and computer system monitoring application. It was originally created as a fork of the Nagios system monitoring application in 2009.^[1]

Icinga is attempting to get past perceived short-comings in Nagios' development process,^[2] as well as adding new features^[3][4] such as a modern Web 2.0 style user interface, additional database connectors (for MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL), and a REST API that lets administrators integrate numerous extensions without complicated modification of the Icinga core.

The Icinga developers also seek to reflect community needs more closely and to integrate patches more quickly. The first stable version, 1.0, was released in December 2009, and the version counter had risen every couple of months as of January 2010.^[5]

Icinga was included by Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester Research in a list of "waxing" (as opposed to "waning") open source projects based on its rate of commits.^[6]

The name Icinga is a Zulu word meaning "it looks for", "it browses" or "it examines"^[7] and is pronounced with a click consonant.^[8]

History

In May 2009, a group of developers from the Nagios community announced the fork Icinga, citing their dissatisfaction with the stagnant development of the Nagios software at the time and their desire to open its development to a broader base.^[2]

In their first year, Icinga developers released separate versions of Core, API and Web, and celebrated their 10,000th download.^[9]

In their second year, the Icinga project released unified and stable Core and Web; added dual-stack IPv6 / IPv4 support, optimized database connectivity and revamped the Icinga Web user interface, integrating various community add-ons (PNP4Nagios, LConf, Heatmap and Business Process Addon). The project achieved more than 70,000 downloads and grew to 23 team members.^[9]

In their third year, Icinga celebrated their 100,000th download, integrated the Icinga API component into Icinga Web; improved SLA reporting; opened an official Freenode IRC group and extended the Icinga virtual appliances to Debian, OpenSUSE and CentOS.^[10]

In October 2012, the Icinga project released a technology preview of a core framework replacement and parallel development branch, Icinga 2. The developers expressed their intentions to rewrite the core to correct shortcomings such as complicated configuration and scalability limitations in large deployments.^[11] The project signposted plans to write the Icinga 2 core mainly in C++, design a new component loader architecture and remodel the process of executing monitoring checks.^[12]

Timeline of releases

Features

Due to its nature as a fork, Icinga offers Nagios’ features with some additions such as optional reporting module with improved SLA accuracy, additional database connectors for PostgreSQL and Oracle, and distributed systems for redundant monitoring.

Icinga also maintains configuration and plug-in compatibility^[9] with Nagios, facilitating migration between the two monitoring software.

Monitoring

• Monitoring of network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, PING, etc.)
• Monitoring of host resources (CPU load, disk usage, etc.)
• Monitoring of server components (switches, routers, temperature and humidity sensors, etc.)
• Simple plug-in design that allows users to easily develop their own service checks
• Parallelized service checks
• Ability to define network host hierarchy using “parent” hosts, allowing detection of and distinction between hosts that are down and those that are unreachable
• Ability to define event handlers to be run during service or host events for proactive problem resolution

Notification

• Notification of contact persons when service or host problems occur and get resolved (via email, pager, or user-defined method)
• Escalation of alerts to other users or communication channels

Visualisation & Reporting

• Two optional user interfaces (Icinga Classic UI and Icinga Web) for visualization of host and service status, network maps, reports, logs etc.
• Icinga Reporting module based on open source Jasper Reports for both Icinga Classic and Icinga Web user interfaces
• Template based reports (e.g. Top 10 problematic hosts or services, synopsis of complete monitoring environment, availability reports, etc.)
• Report repository with varying access levels and automated report generation and distribution
• Optional extension for SLA reporting that distinguishes between critical events from planned and unplanned downtimes and acknowledgement periods^[14]
• Capacity utilization reporting
• Performance graphing via add-ons such as PNP4Nagios, NagiosGrapher and InGraph

Architecture

Icinga modular architecture with Core, Icinga Data Out Database, Web as of v1.5

Icinga Core is written in C^[15] and has a modular architecture with standalone core, user interface and database on which users can integrate various add-ons and plug-ins.

The latter communicate via Icinga’s Doctrine abstraction layer, REST and plug-in APIs – that mediate between the external data and internal structures. This bundling of components allows users to distribute Icinga’s system for redundant monitoring. It also offers users freedom to customise Icinga to suit their needs.^[16]

Icinga Core

The Icinga Core manages monitoring tasks, receiving check results from various plug-ins. It then communicates these results to the IDODB (Icinga Data Out Database) through the IDOMOD (Icinga Data Out Module) interface and IDO2DB (Icinga Data Out to Database) service daemon over SSL encrypted TCP sockets. Though both come packaged (also known as IDOUtils) with the Core; they are single standing components, which can be separated to distribute the data and processes across multiple servers for distributed systems monitoring.

The Icinga Classic user interface also comes packaged with Icinga Core and can be used as a substitute to the PHP-based, Icinga Web interface.

Icinga's User Interfaces

Screenshot of Icinga Classic UI 1.8 service status view with bulk commands via tick box selection

Icinga offers two web interfaces for users to view monitoring results and send commands to the Icinga Core.

Icinga Classic UI (also referred to as Classic Web) is based on the Nagios CGIs and retains its format. The Icinga project continues to add new features to this interface such as pagination, JSON output, and CSV export. This user interface comes packaged with the Icinga Core. Icinga’s Classic UI is similar to the Nagios web interface (Nagios CGIs), in that it sits in the same instance with the core, retrieving data through the cache and sending commands through pipe to the command files.

Screenshot of Icinga Web 1.8 status map with mouse-over dialogue boxes

Icinga Web (also referred to as New Web) is the project’s Agavi and PHP based, Web 2.0 inspired frontend that uses Cronks (widgets) to offer drag-n-drop customized dashboards. In contrast to the Icinga Classic UI, Icinga Web is a standalone piece of software. It communicates to the core, database and 3rd party add-ons through component layers: Doctrine abstraction layer (Input/Database), REST API (external scripts) and Command Control Interface (writing to pipe, executing commands).

Both user interfaces present information on host and service status, history, notifications and status maps to show the health of a network in real-time. Both also support IPv4 as well as IPv6 addresses.

Icinga Data Out Database

The Icinga Data Out Database (IDODB) is a storage point for historical monitoring data for add-ons or the Icinga Web interface to access. In contrast to its predecessor Nagios, Icinga supports PostgreSQL and Oracle databases in addition to MySQL.

Icinga Reporting

The Icinga project offers an optional Icinga Reporting module based on the open source Jasper Reports. It can be integrated into both Icinga Classic and Icinga Web user interfaces. The module provides template-based reports (e.g. Top 10 problematic hosts or services, synopsis of complete monitoring environment, availability reports etc.) that can be saved to a repository with varying access levels and automated report generation and distribution. Reports can also be viewed in both of Icinga’s optional user interfaces.

Icinga Mobile

Icinga Mobile is a user interface for smartphones and tablet browsers that run on WebKit. These usually are available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and webOS. Based on Javascript and Sencha Touch, Icinga Mobile is downloaded onto a server for access by authorized users via their mobile devices. Administration and updates can thus be made centrally, to automatically apply to all users of a computer network.^[17]

Extended Functionality

Screenshot of Icinga Web 1.8 with integrated Business Process View add-on

Icinga is compatible with all plug-ins and the majority of add-ons written for Nagios, especially for users opting for the Icinga Classic UI. Popular add-ons to extend Icinga’s functionality include:

• Performance graphing (e.g. PNP4Nagios, NagiosGrapher, InGraph)
• Configuration interfaces and tools (e.g. Nconf (tool for configuring Nagios), NagiosQL, LConf)
• Business process monitoring (e.g. Business Process Addons)
• Network visualization (e.g. NagVis, Nagmap)
• Windows monitoring (e.g. NSClient++, Cygwin)
• SNMP trap monitoring (e.g. SNMPTT, NagTrap)

Large, enterprise environments

Icinga has been successfully deployed in large and complex environments with thousands of hosts and services, in distributed and failover setups.^[18] The software’s modular architecture with standalone Core, Web and IDODB (Icinga Data Out Database) facilitate distributed monitoring and distributed systems monitoring.

Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) is an Icinga compatible agent that allows remote systems monitoring using scripts that are hosted on the remote systems. It allows for monitoring resources such as disk usage, system load or number of users currently logged in. Icinga periodically polls the agent on the remote system using the check_nrpe plug-in.

In setups using the optional Icinga Web user interface, monitoring data from multiple Icinga Core instances can be displayed as long as each instance writes to the same IDODB. In this way, distributed monitoring is also simpler to administer.

At a structural level, Icinga can have its various components split and scattered in a distributed set up. This distributed systems monitoring provides greater security and redundancy; if one component were to fail, another could take its place without disrupting the entire monitoring system.

The software also offers a fine-grained authentication system whereby user access, notifications and views can be customized to the detail of server groups, servers and services per individual.

See also

• Comparison of network monitoring systems
• Nagios - The original software that Icinga is based on.
• N2rrd—a Nagios add-on to record data in a Round Robin Database
• Shinken (software)—an Icinga compatible replacement

References

External links

• icinga.org, official website
• dev.icinga.org, official development tracker and roadmap
• docs.icinga.org, official documentation
• wiki.icinga.org, official wiki
• feedback.icinga.org, official community ideas channel
• monitoringexchange.org, plug-in and add-on repository to extend Icinga functionality
• monitoring-portal.org, community forum for user support and discussion