Nagios Vs BB. How to decide between two monitors.

[Stanley Hopcroft]

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am writing to thank you for your letter and say,

On Tue, Feb 17, 2004 at 02:03:10PM -0800, nagios-users-request at lists.sourceforge.net wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 23:56:24 -0500 (EST)
> From: Tom Diehl <tdiehl at rogueind.com>
> To: "Broun, Bevan" <brounb at adi-limited.com>
> Cc: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Nagios-users] Re: nagios versus big brother - opinions please.
> 
> On Tue, 17 Feb 2004, Broun, Bevan wrote:
> 

> > I'm no expert in either product but favor nagios as purely on a licensing
> > basis. BB is free for internal, costs if you start to monitor external.
> > Nagios, as you all know, is GP.
                                  ^
                                  L

> > 
> > BB seems to have a slicker interface, but this is of only little
> > importance.
> > 
> > Please send any strong technical arguments in favor of one system or the
> > other.
> 
> This is like asking which is better vi or emacs. It is basically a religious
> argument.

However, people have been known to prefer one religion over another, and
to change because of the differences.

Perhaps it would help by outlining a basis for comparison between Nagios 
and 'Product X' ?

The important factors in choosing one monitor over another include :-

1 Reporting

  PHBs really only flourish (code for go away) on pretty pictures,
  pretentious  spreadsheets and proprietary format documents.

  Crystal reports is good for ecstatic sighs (or PHB equiv)

2 Scalability

  => how many hosts/services can it monitor 

     when will it fold

  => is the GUI usable with a vast number (eg see the recent letter
     from Marcus Hidelbrand [?]) of monitored hosts

  => can it monitor the OSs and applications you have deployed

  => can you get 'application checking plugins' easily (ie
     is the plugin spec open and can be written to by 'ordinary
     men'. Nag is superlative here. 

3 Rule processing

  => calendars (people on holidays)

  => eliminating confounding events

  Nag provides built in rules such as 'Sched Maintenance' but I think 
these need to be definable by users

  => support for SLAs

  => awareness of when things _do not_ happen (rates or events)

  => context sensitive escalation

4 Performance monitoring 

  In addition to saying if application X is available, the monitor 
  should measure X's responsiveness

5 Ability (probably in conjunction with 3) to provide a 'single
  system image' monitoring ability

  ==> can the monitor determine if the 'system' composed of
      an inumerable multitude of elements (boxes and applications)
      is working ?

      Another way of saying this is can the monitor  present  
      different role based
      views of the monitored universe. In this case, we want the
      CIO view or the business view (this may also be part of the
      reporting elements).

Note that ease of setup is _not_ a factor. Why ? Because it's done only 
once (ie part of the capital expenditure) and the willingness of PHBs to 
pay billions of smackeroos to consultants to set-up products strongly 
suggest that other factors are more important. 

In fact, setup cost (easy or otherwise) is not a factor. People must 
monitor and they must report; anything that does these for the 
environment at hand will be considered.

Likewise, notification is a given.

One last factor is probably result pesistence: the results have to be 
stored for a long time and this historical store reported on also.

Yours sincerely.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stanley Hopcroft
------------------------------------------------------------------------

'...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes
me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee...'

from Meditation 17, J Donne.


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