[Nagios-users] Nagios client merge NSCA/NRPE

[Andreas Ericsson]

Frost, Mark {PBG} wrote:
> This idea is fascinating to me -- using a messaging system to return
> passive check results.  This would
> 
> - allow larger messages
> - allow for multiplexing of checks into a single message if the Nagios
> server side agent (the program that pulls messages off the queue and
> turns them into check results) knows how to do that

You're confused as to what "multiplexing" means when talking computer
theory. There's no way to multiplex message queues.

> - provide a nice way of handling check results if your Nagios server
> goes offline (they'll queue up in the messaging system)
> - you could potentially even do Pub/Sub with check results to allow
> multiple Nagios server to "subscribe" to particular check results

That's certainly a neat idea. I know Spike Morelli of Linden Lab is
interested in something like that.

> - I would think you could just write some kind of simple program that
> could be called on each platform (kind of a send_nsca equivalent) that
> sends results to the messaging system.  It's more overhead, but most
> prominent messaging systems can use JMS which could make the message
> layer mostly vendor agnostic
> 

"More overhead" is not always acceptable. However, why should the queue
require more overhead? There's no reason it can't be a binary protocol.
XML would be insanely stupid, as the signal-to-noise ratio is about 1:9,
which would make scaling a problem very early on.

> I too have struggled with NSCA but in my case, it's about sending output
> from my distributed servers to the central server(s).  I ended up having
> to write my own send_nsca batching-daemon to transfer more efficiently
> (and reliably).

Use pnsca instead. It takes care of that sort of thing (except for the
'reliably' part anyways).

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225                  Fax: +46 8-230231

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