Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
Personally, I would like to see the NagiosCommunity wiki become more populated. I would assume it would be moderated by at least Ethan which would assist keeping high integrety. and he has been keeping the Blog updated with some interesting articals and events. I am hoping to find some time in the next few weeks to put together some overview documentation on NC_net and Windows monitoring to contribute. I think it would be nice if any SNMP experts could contribute something to help SNMP beginers get there feet wet. tony (author of NC_Net) On 8/15/07, Russell Adams [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, there's a wiki on NagiosExchange, and NagiosCommunity. Does someone have a preference? Which is more popular? I'd be happy to start a topic. On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 05:07:36PM -0500, Russell Adams wrote: We should start a list of these on the Wiki (we do have a wiki now, right?). I'd be curious to see what feedback is received and what other ideas are proposed. On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:08:01PM +1000, Matthew Joyce wrote: Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
We should start a list of these on the Wiki (we do have a wiki now, right?). I'd be curious to see what feedback is received and what other ideas are proposed. On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:08:01PM +1000, Matthew Joyce wrote: Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null -- Russell Adams[EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 - This SF.net
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
I agree and would be happy to contribute. Also, v3 is going to bring some changes regarding config options and strategies, having some best practices available will be useful for the transition. I'm not saying BPs will necessarily change, but ways to achieve them might. I for one hope service dependencies will become less long winded and more flexible. (grumble) Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Thursday, 16 August 2007 8:08 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? We should start a list of these on the Wiki (we do have a wiki now, right?). I'd be curious to see what feedback is received and what other ideas are proposed. On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:08:01PM +1000, Matthew Joyce wrote: Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
So, there's a wiki on NagiosExchange, and NagiosCommunity. Does someone have a preference? Which is more popular? I'd be happy to start a topic. On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 05:07:36PM -0500, Russell Adams wrote: We should start a list of these on the Wiki (we do have a wiki now, right?). I'd be curious to see what feedback is received and what other ideas are proposed. On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:08:01PM +1000, Matthew Joyce wrote: Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
[Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? Essentially, I'd like to do as little per-host configuration as possible; I'd like to be able to define service templates for each of the services I'll need to monitor, then arrange hosts into groups such that all the machines in each group have a certain service template assigned to them (e.g. all the web servers get a web_server template, which tells Nagios to monitor HTTP and HTTPS service; when we bring a new web server into production, I create a host entry for the new web server which says that it's part of the web_server group, and Nagios starts monitoring HTTP and HTTPS service on it). I specifically want to avoid the situation where every time we bring a new machine online, I have to define all the services on it individually, then go through all the various host group and service group definitions and add entries to them one by one. Is this a reasonable scheme, or should I be approaching this problem a different way? thanks, -Steve P.S. I have tried a couple of web-based Nagios configurators (Fruity, NagiosQL); in each case I end up with invalid Nagios configurations, which again leads me to suspect that I'm trying to set up Nagios in a configuration for which it was not designed. -- Steve Huff - Systems Administrator, Harvard-MIT Data Center - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
I think you do have the right idea except I wouldn't define templates for each service, instead only for distinct service types. Define Hosts Assign Host to Hostgroups Define Services based on Service Templates + tweaks. Assign Services to Hostgroups Assign Services to Servicegroups There may always be specific scenarios where certain services are only for specific hosts. You have to decide whether to define a host group for a single host, I don't. I'm no keen on the web based config interfaces, I was scared off by the problems I read in the forums, and the bugs in the bug trackers. I'm happy carving stuff from ascii. Though, if there was a rock solid offering I might try it. I have written a couple of scripts to help fabricate service dependencies, useful for NRPE and SNMP dependant checks. Also, consider using Bazaar (http://bazaar-vcs.org/) for config file version control. It's a breeze to setup, requires python. After any significant changes I just run `bzr commit -m 'tweaked foo'` and a new revision is created. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Steve Huff Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 5:51 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? Essentially, I'd like to do as little per-host configuration as possible; I'd like to be able to define service templates for each of the services I'll need to monitor, then arrange hosts into groups such that all the machines in each group have a certain service template assigned to them (e.g. all the web servers get a web_server template, which tells Nagios to monitor HTTP and HTTPS service; when we bring a new web server into production, I create a host entry for the new web server which says that it's part of the web_server group, and Nagios starts monitoring HTTP and HTTPS service on it). I specifically want to avoid the situation where every time we bring a new machine online, I have to define all the services on it individually, then go through all the various host group and service group definitions and add entries to them one by one. Is this a reasonable scheme, or should I be approaching this problem a different way? thanks, -Steve P.S. I have tried a couple of web-based Nagios configurators (Fruity, NagiosQL); in each case I end up with invalid Nagios configurations, which again leads me to suspect that I'm trying to set up Nagios in a configuration for which it was not designed. -- Steve Huff - Systems Administrator, Harvard-MIT Data Center - [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null -- Russell Adams[EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 signature.asc Description: Digital signature - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null -- Russell Adams[EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3 http://www.adamsinfoserv.com/ Fingerprint:1723 D8CA 4280 1EC9 557F 66E8 1154 E018 1160 DCB3 - This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https
Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
Has anyone tried using the Oreon installation for Nagios? I have installed it and I have found it to be very difficult to add devices for monitoring... It also does not help that most of the support pages/documents are in French!!! I have reverted back to the tried and true method of .cfg files. Mike Hawley -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Joyce Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2007 4:08 PM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? Good advice. I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes. For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident forensics. I'd also add : Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies. Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going on and a notification blizzard. I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but it's easy to start monitoring because you can. Matthew Joyce 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for Medical Research -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Russell Adams Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices? My $0.02: Use a text editor and version control. Minimize and automate as much as practical. Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let automation do the work for you. Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good, backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage). Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out, notifications continue. Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng Logmuncher) tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed. Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software. (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins, http://nagios.manubulon.com/ . Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical state. Good luck! On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote: On 13/08/07, Steve Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hello folks! I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon installation; however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the wrong way. Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto? The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to look for is Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions. I would give you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page just at the moment. An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by NoStarch Press. You can buy it online in .pdf form, printed form or both. It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out. Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to achieve what you want pretty easily. My recommendation would be to start with a simple config and expand from there rather than trying to do everything at once. hth, Jim -- --- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now http://get.splunk.com/ ___ Nagios-users mailing list Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null -- Russell Adams[EMAIL PROTECTED] PGP Key ID: 0x1160DCB3
