Configuring Nagios

[Jason Payne - iland Internet Solutions]

Unfortunately, most of us don't have access to a decent web based configuration editor without having to sacrifice functionality.  If you happen to find someone who has put one together that doesn't hinder nagios' functionality that won't cost me an arm and a leg, please point me in the right direction.  Until then, vim it is.

-Jason

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas Ericsson [mailto:ae at op5.se]
Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 12:49 PM
To: Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Configuring Nagios


Gerd Müller wrote:
> Am Fr, den 17.09.2004 schrieb Mohr James um 15:38:
> 
>>Hi All!
>>
>>Is there a GUI to configure Nagios? Is there any auto discovery?  Thanks in advance.
> 
> 
> My preferred way to configure nagios is to use something like vi. I don't like the
> guis. It takes much longer to configure nagios via web interface than via a simple
> editor.

That depends on the app doing the configuration, wouldn't you say? I 
myself, having deployed Nagios in about 20 corporate networks of varying 
size find it to be the exact opposite.
Also, the learning curve can be reduced to near nothingness with 
competent coding. This raises the user availability and greatly reduces 
the effort/beneficiary-ratio for the program author (Ethan). After all, 
the greatest program in the world is worthless if noone uses it.

> I also don't like any auto discovery. Such programs normaly create massiv
> config files without any logical structure inside and without any knowledge of
> wise critical/warning values.

I'm not sure what programs you've used, but we've tweaked the default 
values over a period of two years. All of our customers find them to be 
quite perfect for near enough 100% of their hosts.

> This will cause you massiv work afterwards if you
> want to change details of your config and prevent useless alert-mailstorms.

But having one or two people familiar with the rather complex syntax and 
relationship scheme of Nagios makes the workload very heavy for those. 
And what happens when the precious few who knows how to configure the 
company network monitoring tool quits their jobs?

> So  I would suggest first plan and oriented your configuration similar to 
your logical
> setup and then use excessive templates and groups.

A wise suggestion no matter what tool is used for configuration.

> That will save you much more  time than using guis and autodetection.
> 

For a small network, maybe. For a medium or large (100+ hosts), not a 
chance. When the editor fellows are done entering hostnames, aliases and 
addresses the webconfig crew will have an adequate and working 
configuration up and running.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson at op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
Lead Developer


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This SF.Net email is sponsored by: YOU BE THE JUDGE. Be one of 170
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::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null