the_Grinch 1 Nagios 0

the_Grinch

I've been placed in charge of getting monitoring up for various sites that we regulate. We are using Netflow and Nagios for this purpose. I had Netflow experience, so that wasn't a big issue (albeit I do have to deal with a ton of vendors to get everything setup). But Nagios I've never touched and aside from knowing what it does I had nothing to go with. We have a consultant, but he rarely replies to anything I've sent him. Our Director is coming down hard to have this monitoring up and running thus my bosses are coming down on me. Add to it that I have to fight with the IT department to give me the access I need to set things up and you have a recipe for disaster.

Anyhow, I have my own linux box that I use for testing (having no experience I don't want to blow things up) and today decided that since our consultant isn't getting back to me I'd take a stab at it. Installed Nagios without any issues, but had to figure out how to at least monitor the sites to make sure they were up. I knew the consultant didn't have access to any of the sites equipment so there had to be a way to do it. Google-fu to the rescue, I start looking and found how to do the check. I initially set it for one site and once that started to report in I added the other ones. But that was when the issue struck: 11 out of 15 are showing as down. I checked each one and I was able to get to all of them.

I look and realize I forgot to add the aliases in one spot, but knew that wasn't the issue because one of the ones I missed was reporting in fine. I added those and started to Google again. I noticed the check was using ping so I pinged the addresses and found out they are blocking ping. Google again and find I can do a passive check along with removing the host-alive ping test. Thus now the 11 downed sites, are checking port 80 and reporting as up based off of that. Just felt a sense of accomplishment considering I haven't done it before and in three hours I've gotten everything setup!

phoeneous

You should give Zabbix a try, I know a few people that have made the switch from Nagios.

About7Narwhal

We use Nagios where I work currently and I would love to play around with it on a test box. Sadly, they keep me on a very short leash so that would never happen.

J_86

phoeneous wrote: »

You should give Zabbix a try, I know a few people that have made the switch from Nagios.

+1 for Zabbix. We have been really happy with it where I currently work.
We used Nagios to monitor all key network devices at my previous place. Also very good and you can't beat free open source!

jibbajabba

About7Narwhal wrote: »

Sadly, they keep me on a very short leash so that would never happen.

Install two virtual machines on your local desktop. One to be monitored and one running Nagios ... No need to rely on your company to provide you with the resources if you want to learn

the_Grinch

Our consultant told them to go with Nagios (this was prior to my arrival) and changing is kind of a no go (at least for now). I definitely do enjoy playing with it and working at the command line just makes me feel like are real IT person again haha. I actually use Digital Ocean for my server hosting, 10 bucks a month and I get a server I can do whatever I like with (they have one for 5 bucks a month as well). The IT manager wasn't too pleased that I setup my own, but in a political struggle he's been dragging his feet and since my butt's the one on the spit I had to go around him until he provided me with the access I needed.