Nagios Vs. Big Brother

Williams, P. Lane Lane.Williams at jhuapl.edu
Wed Mar 9 23:30:24 CET 2005


Straight from my recommendation plan to my management....hope it
helps...............


Nagios vs. Big Brother


 

Listed below are operational, administrative and service functionality
features, in comparison, that set Nagios above Big Brother.  A list, of
these comparisons, is outlined in attachment 2 (Added features of Nagios
over Big Brother).


 


Operational Functionality


 

Some of the operational functions that Nagios has built-in that Big
Brother does not (all are accomplished through the user interface):

 

1.	Ability to disable and enable host and service checks.
2.	Ability to schedule impromptu downtime for services and host.
3.	Ability to disable and enable host and service notifications.
4.	Ability to schedule immediate service and host checks for active
checks.
5.	Ability to leave comments about a service or host.
6.	Ability to easily acknowledge alerts.
7.	Ability to restart the Nagios process.
8.	Various other Nagios services can be controlled from the user
interface.
9.	Provides an overall view of the network hierarchy, which shows
"parent-child" relation.
10.	View configuration from the user interface.

 


Administrative Functionality


 

Some of the administrative functionality Nagios has built-in that Big
Brother does not:

 

1.	Ability to set host and service dependencies.  Service and host
dependencies are an advanced feature that allows you to control the
behavior of hosts and services based on the status of one or more other
hosts or services.  

 

	a.	A service can be dependent on one or more other
services.
	b.	A service can be dependent on services that are not
associated with the same host.
	c.	Service dependencies are not inherited.
	d.	Service dependencies can be used to cause service
execution and service notifications to be suppressed under different
circumstances.

 

2.	Template-based configuration files.  The benefits of using the
template-based config file format is that you can create object
definitions that have some of their properties inherited from other
object definitions.  Template-based object definitions allow you to
create large numbers of objects using just a small number of definitions
in your config file(s).  Nagios template-based configuration files are
far superior to Big Brother configuration files in areas of configuring
notifications, time frames, contacts, contact groups, host, host groups,
service and host dependencies, command definitions, host and service
escalations...etc.

 

3.	The ability to set security and authorization of designated
CGI's and command functions. 

 

4.	A PHP (widely-used general-purpose scripting language) web
interface has been developed to make changes to the configuration files.

 


Service Functionality


 

Some of the service functionality Nagios has built-in that Big Brother
lacks or does not support:

 

1.	Nagios supports event handlers.  Event handlers are optional
commands that are executed whenever a host or service state change
occurs.  An event handler could proactively fix problems, troubleshoot
failures, or any myriad of customized events.

 

2.	Nagios supports active service checks.  Active service checks
are initiated from the Nagios server, providing server-side network
monitoring.

 

3.	Nagios supports flap detection.  Flapping occurs when a service
or host changes state too frequently, resulting in a storm of problem
and recovery notifications. Flapping can be indicative of configuration
problems (i.e. thresholds set too low) or real network problems.  When
flap detection is enabled Nagios will suppress notifications, until
flapping has stopped.

 

4.	Nagios provides more flexible UNIX support.  The UNIX (Sun, HP,
Linux, Mac OSX, AIX...etc) clients provide both active and passive
checks.  Active checks are handled by the "nrpe" daemon and passive
checks are handled by the "nsca" daemon.  Client checks are handled by
plugins.  Plugins are scripted or compiled applications that gather
information from the client.  Client programs can be written to gather
disk, cpu, memory, network, LDAP, database, web-server, or just about
any metric you may wish to monitor.  Nagios comes with pre-defined
plugins that can be customized to meet any UNIX environment.

 

5.	Nagios provides more flexible Microsoft support.  The Microsoft
client of choice is NSClient.  NSClient provides support for disk, CPU,
file age, services, processes, uptime, memory, and practically any
available performance counter.  NSClient does not currently support
Event Log messages (in development).  Not to worry, the power of PERL
prevails.  Using the PERL Net::Nsca  module, a client side application
can be written to capture Microsoft Event Log messages and send to the
Nagios server as a passive check.  Three other options are using SNMP or
with some modification the "Event Catch" application Tim Dunlevy wrote
or a UNIX syslog facility could be used as a viable Event Log reporting
service for Nagios.  Because of this versatility, monitored Event Log
messages can be better defined. 

 

6.	Nagios supports notification escalations.  Notification
escalations are used to add additional contacts to service and host
notifications if a problem persists.  

 

          Example:  After a problem with a service occurs a notification
message will be sent to the individuals responsible for the
administration of the specific server.  If that problem persists,
without acknowledgement, then after a predetermined number of
notifications the server administrator(s) and a group of second-level
individuals would be notified.  This escalation process can continue for
as many levels of notification that are needed to obtain a response to
the alert.

 

7.	Nagios supports logging of performance data.  Performance data
can be used to graph and report on system performance metrics.  This
service is useful for troubleshooting and trending possible problems.

 

8.	Nagios supports the integration with other software such as Port
sentry, RRDTool, MRTG...etc.

 

9.	Nagios supports service check parallelization and service check
interleaving.  Parallelization means Nagios can spawn numerous checks at
once on the monitoring server.  Interleaving allows for a more even
distribution of service checks, reduced load on remote hosts, and faster
overall detection of host problems.

 
 

Lane Williams 
Linux Systems Administrator 
ITSD/IDS 
Johns Hopkins University APL 


	-----Original Message-----
	From: nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net
[mailto:nagios-users-admin at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of Brent
Ryan
	Sent: Wednesday, March 09, 2005 2:46 PM
	To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
	Subject: [Nagios-users] Nagios Vs. Big Brother
	
	
	I know there is some obvious answers to this, but is there any
documentation of pros/cons for these monitoring applications?
	 
	Why is nagios better then Big Brother?
	 
	 
	Brent
	Don't miss the 2005 Blackboard Users Conference April 12-14 in
Baltimore, MD!  
	Visit http://www.blackboard.com/about/events/BbUC05/index.htm
<http://www.blackboard.com/about/events/BbUC05/index.htm>  for more
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