check_by_ssh, snmp, and nrpe; Oh my!

[Marc Belanger]

Greetings folks,

I've spent my week installing, configuring, toying with, and reading a ton
about Nagios.2b. I have everything so far the way I want it for localhost,
and ~25 hosts, 8 hostgroups, yada yada yada... I am using apache 1.3.3x
ssl/tsl, nagios20b3 on Solaris10, gd 2.0.33, and check_by_ssh
(OpenSSH.4.0p1)(passwordless) running just fine on my unix boxes. (actually,
I can't seem to get statuswrl.cgi to work right, but I'm ok without a vrml
view :))

I am looking to move onto remote monitoring for tru64(SGI's), VMS, cisco
switches, symantec firewall appliance, and windows 2k/2k3 next. I have about
250 devices total. My questions are simple, I know the answers are not.

I cannot use SSH on all of those, so I realize I'm going to have to use
nrpe, or snmp. I'm leaning toward snmp on everything (removing the
check_by_ssh stuff), but wanted to hear from the group first.

Are there other options?
What is the cleaner method? [nrpe|snmp|other]
What option has less of a network footprint?
Which is more secure? Securable?
Which is more scalable if my hosts double from ~250->500?
Which is a waste of time for ~250-500 hosts?
Which is cooler in that whole "ooooo, nagios with xxxx <drool, drool,
drool>" category?

Thank you folks. Your time, as well as your responses are greatly
appreciated.

-Marc




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