[OT]Re: Some noise about Nagios ..

stefmit stefmit at comcast.net
Sat Jun 14 06:05:05 CEST 2003


Mr. Hopcroft et al.,

I am not quite sure where you are getting with this, but I may as well throw 
my $0.02 in: I have been asked recently by my executive level to proceed with 
my group in the evaluation of network, application and fault 
management/monitoring tools, and their capabilities of being consolidated at 
various levels (views, if you will), such as:
- views for the help desk
- views for the technical support with expertise in XYZ apps or systems
- dashboard for management
- possibility of importing data in KPMs (Key Performance Measures)
- business functions visibility, as mapping of business processes taking place 
"on top" of various applications and systems
- application/network/systems/hardware capabilities
- real-time, as well as historical recording and data analysis
- centralization of syslogs
- sniffing capabilities, for "drill-down" functionality, in case of problems 
detected initially at higher layers, but with root cause at lower ones (here 
I am referring mostly to "integration" of sniffing capabilities, not only in 
their availability)
- event correlation
- the icing on the cake was the requirements for a tool capable of as much 
visibility as possible in the workings of a client-server in a multi-tier 
deployment of the whole Oracle e-business suite, for which we are 
continuously installing modules, in all aspects of our business, thus being 
interested in completely controlling its behavior.

It is just a coincidence that - in my spare time (i.e. at home, 'cause that's 
what I have left, even if the outcome is for work) I decided to look again at 
Netsaint --> now Nagios. Meanwhile, at work, I interviewed and analyzed many 
vendors, of which some caught my attention for various reasons.

The reason of replying to the original email was to see if it is worth 
continuing on an off-topic thread, with a debate in regards to EMS and NMS 
(by the way - the "S" should probably stand for systems, not software, as 
some solutions may be built directly on hardware appliances), and their 
relationship to what Nagios is and/or could be. Anybody interested? I would 
be willing to start with a description of what I have seen so far, and what I 
liked from each, perhaps with the perspective of what Nagios could 
potentially become/do, with the hope that others may share their opinions.

How does this sound?

Regards,
Stef

On Friday 13 June 2003 08:51 pm, Stanley Hopcroft wrote:
> Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
>
> I am writing with some comments about Nagios and it's intended function.
>
> Most of this is only marginally related to using Nagios.
>
> My employer has asked my input on a paper evaluation of the famous brand
> 'Enterprise Management Softwares' (EMS). Since this is a family program
> I won't bother naming them.
>
> This evaluation was the result of managements perception of
> shortcomings in the management of systems and that best of breed
> soltions (such as monitoring Web logic internals or the guts of
> Oracle) were incomplete. My participation was at least partly the result
> of needing to enlist a Nagios partisan, since Nagios has been in use
> here for some (very happy, alas) years.
>
> Those responsible suggested the following shortcomings in 'best of
> breed' products (element managers, availability monitors are other
> names)
>
>
> 1. the usual management hard asks of asset/inventory/code
>    distribution (ie desktops)/service desk integration/change
>    management integration,
>
> but more interestingly
>
> 2. business view
>
>   - multiple views, including relationships (producer-consumer and so
>     on) of 'business processes', including the IT objects that actually
>     do the work
>
>   - reporting against systems (business processes) rather (or as well
>     as) against elements
>
>   - alarms from business processes for events of business significance
>
>     . notification that some process had exceeded its outage limit for
>       example
>
>     . at least one of the products had Prolog based rule systems for
>       determining how to react (who, how etc). Very nice.
>
>   - cause analysis ('root cause analysis') in helping pinpoint
>     the IT cause of a business system failure - this is
>     hard to do with undocumented or otherwise opaque  supply chains.
>
>     . this may simply be a consequence of having a multi-level
>       diagram of the entities involved in business processes (whether
>       you lay this out or the system does [for bonus marks] seems
>       irrelevant) that is responsive to the health of the IT elements.
>
>     . on the other hand, it may be the result of inference from rules
>       (the knee bones connected to the toe bone ..)
>
> 3. user view of transactions - including measurement of user
>    transactions
>
>    . most of the EMS would only do synthetic transactions, even though
>      they provided record and replay tools to do so (Syn Trxs are
>      useless for update transactions).
>
> 4. being able to provide multiple perspectives of costly IT resources
>    such as storage, being able to analyse in real time, how much and
>    where, at the various views
>
> Obviously, such things may not be useful to all classes of Nagios
> users. Those whose main game is box management, and who are skillful
> enough to master it, will wonder why bother. On the other hand,
> facilities such as those above make Nag attractive to a wider audience.
>
> The business view is the one that really intrigues me. The prospect of a
> Nag drag and drop GUI that can associate managed IT elements with
> systems sounds wonderful.
>
> However, inference based reactions also sounds very chic.
>
> Nagios by comparison with the EMSs demonstrates a great deal of
> flexibility.
>
> Adding or thinking about such things would be very helpful.
>
> Yours sincerely.



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