Nagios Vs. Big Brother

[Jamie Bohr]

Has any one done this for Big Sister?

- Jamie

On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 15:30, Williams, P. Lane wrote:

> 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.
>         
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. The ability to set security and authorization of designated
>         CGI’s and command functions. 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. Nagios supports active service checks.  Active service checks
>         are initiated from the Nagios server, providing server-side
>         network monitoring.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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. 
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. Nagios supports the integration with other software such as
>         Port sentry, RRDTool, MRTG…etc.
> 
> 
>  
> 
>      1. 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
>         
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-- 
Jamie Bohr <Jamie_Bohr at Agilent.com>
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