timezone adjustments for nagios 3

[Ethan Galstad]

Andreas Ericsson wrote:
> Grant Byers wrote:
>> Hi Andreas, List,
>>
>> Sorry about the delayed response, we were testing the multiple nagios server
>> implementation you recommended. See comments below.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Grant
>>
>>> On 10/23/07, Andreas Ericsson <ae at op5.se> wrote:
>>>> Grant Byers wrote:
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> Does anyone have opinions on timezone adjustments per host or service?
>>>>
>>> I do. Don't do it. It will lead to no end of confusion if states appear to
>>> happen at different times when they are, in fact, nearly simultanous. If
>>> the timezone directive is for the benefit of the branch offices, you
>> should
>>> simply set up a nagios server at each of those locations and have them
>>> forward their check-results to the 'master' server.
>> Our business doesn't fit with the "branch office" model. We have a support
>> relationship with many clients, but those clients do not have the same
>> relationship with each other. Each client may have as many as 8 unique Unix
>> systems which require monitoring and it is just not feasible to setup a
>> nagios server on each of those systems.
> 
> 
> Not one nagios at each system. Just one server in each timezone.
> 
> 
>> Whilst each client may have some
>> checks that are unique to them, there is a large sub-set of checks that are
>> common across all clients, all servers. Each time we identify an issue with
>> one of our checks, this would need to be fixed then pushed out to all
>> clients. Each time the timeperiod for a common check changes, this needs to
>> be manually configured on all clients, all servers. etc. etc.
>>
>> It does make make sense however to run multiple nagios instances on our own
>> systems, each initiating checks on our clients servers. We do this this via
>> ssh. For this to work though, we don't want to have a seperate server
>> (physical or virtual) for each nagios instance. What we'd like to see is the
>> ability to run multiple nagios servers on the same Unix server, each running
>> in a different timezone, each having their own timeperiods, services etc.,
> 
> 
> This can be done, with the exception of the timezone option. I'm sure you could
> hack up something to re-write the timeperiods to match the target tz though,
> which would be a lot easier.
> 
> 
>> but sharing as much "common" configuration with the master server as
>> possible. This would include host/service templates, commands etc. We tried
>> to do this by setting our server to run in UTC, then setting the "TZ"
>> environment variable to the desired timezone we wanted that nagios instance
>> to run in. This did not work, since nagios doesn't appear to have any
>> concept of timezone offsets.
>>
>>
>>>> We are wanting to replace our current in-house monitoring with nagios,
>> but
>>>> our single monitoring system pushes thousands of checks out to sites in
>> half
>>>> a dozen different timezones every hour. Some of these checks are
>> timezone
>>>> sensitive, whilst others aren't.
>>>>
>>> Can you explain what you mean by "timezone sensitive"?
>> Yep. Some of our checks need to run in the timezone of the remote server,
>> yet other checks scheduled for the same remote server need to run in our
>> local timezone.
>>
> 
> You mean the timeperiods must take timezone offsets into calculation so that
> the same timeperiod means different things in different timezones?
> 
> If I were you, I'd implement that either as a timeperiod rewriter that
> launches before Nagios is started, or in the timeperiod parsing code in the
> core. Touch as few places as possible, iow.
> 

I would suggest that you run separate Nagios installations in different 
physical/virtual servers.  That allows you to set a different time/zone 
on each server.

Modifying the Nagios core to support timezone offsets is the hard way of 
doing things - especially when you consider that everything (reports, 
etc) will need to take this into account.  Having the correct system 
time/zone will make your job much easier.


Ethan Galstad
Nagios Developer
___
Email: nagios at nagios.org
Web:   www.nagios.org

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