Nagios as a replacement for HP OpenView

[Greg King]

> Hi All!
>=20
> I have been given the task of looking into OpenSource
> software as either
[snip]
>=20
> Any info is greatly appreaciated.
>=20
> Regards,
>=20
> Jim Mohr

I have worked with HP OV for a few years and with
Nagios for a few months, but I'll give you my
impressions of how Nagios compares with HP OV. 

First HP OV is not one product but 50+, but from
your questions I think you are referring to HP OV
Operations (a bundle of NNM, Operations, and
performance tools). Likewise Nagios has many add ons
which can extend the base functionality to include
most of those functionality, although I'd say at a
less complete level at this point. Please forgive me
if I underestimate what Nagios and its add ons can
do but I'm just learning them at this point and I
have not implemented all of them yet, although I
intend to at some point. Here goes:

1. Network management via SNMP (NNM). HP OV wins big
time with its ability to auto discover networks,
map, monitor, track network performance, do basic
reporting, receive SNMP traps, and generaly manage
large complex dynamically changing networks. Nagios
is not nearly as automated and requires other SNMP
tools to manage traps.

2. Server management. Here Nagios gets a lot closer
to what you get with basic OVO without the smart
plug ins (SPIs). Nagios is more flexible at hows
checks are performed to get at info source (snmp,
local agent, ssh) and since you have source code you
can probably monitor any brand of system as opposed
to the 12 or so supported by HPOV.  Nagios' server
checks are more basic than HPOVs but basic process
and log file scrubbing plugins are available. Three
addons (NRPE, NSClient, NCSA) are required to come
up to HP OVOs level of server-agent message
communication with automatic actions, and you will
probably have to do some scripting for the automatic
action parts. If you need the deep application
monitoring of an OVO SPI, Nagios is not there yet.

3. Performance monitoring/tracking/alerting: Nagios
is spotty here compared to OVO If you add rrdtool
and apan, you can get closer, but each performance
metric must be setup manually in Nagios/apan, and
the Unix support doesn't seem to be as flexible as
the Windows support with apan.

Overall, I'd say Nagios is great for smaller or
fairly static IT environments, unless you put some
effort into automating the Nagios configuration whch
I think the larger Nagios users have done based on
some comments on this list. 

In the bigger picture, not all servers are equal,
but HP OVO agents cost is  based on server size not
purpose. I'd recommend a coexistance strategy until
such time as you are comfortable that Nagios can do
it all. For the simple file/print/infrastructure
servers, redeploy the OVO agent from them to a more
worthy (complex) environment, and monitor it with
Nagios. Then put an OVO agent on the Nagios
management server, and scrube the syslog messages
with OVOs logfile encapsulator and pass the alert up
to the central console. 

I hope this helps. 

Regards, 
Greg King



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