Implementation Plan for Network monitoring project

[Thomas Sluyter]

Hi Sebastian,

Let me tell you.... There is so much stuff to keep in mind, I could  
talk for hours with you :)

What you're asking me about is what I'm doing right now: building a  
completely new Nagios environment within a large organisation.

Unfortunately:
* The organisation is a huge multinational
* The multinational's higher management is quite inflexible
* The environment that needs to be monitored is far from homogenous  
and standardized

Joy \o/

To sum it up very shortly, such a project requires:
* A project proposal.
You need to convince your management that they are in trouble if you  
don't build a proper monitoring environment and that they will need  
to spend money in the course of the project.

* A plan.
Grand projects, require a solid planning. So start thinking of how  
you're going to tackle every of the following steps. How long it'll  
take. Who'll need to do it.

* A requirements document.
Once the project has been accepted, make documents describing what  
your management expects from you. You will need to clearly define the  
expected outcome of the project since this document will be used at  
the end to determine how successful you were.

A separate requirements doc should cover technical aspects: what do  
you want to monitor? how? why? Before you even start working on the  
project, determine what you and your colleagues (and your customers!)  
would like to be able to do with the final product.

* A  design.
Cover your complete infrastructure, your servers, your clients, your  
configuration... Everything :)

* Resource acquisition
You'll need people, hardware, time, network, software... Stuff like  
that. Most of the stuff costs a lot of money, so you'll have to go  
through the proper channels to get these.

* Only then can you start the "real work".

Now... I've gone over this -very- quickly and there's much more to  
tell! I actually plan to write an article about all of this, to  
submit to ;Login: Magazine.

Two aspects of the list are covered by articles I've written in the  
past: making a plan and writing a solid proposal. Both can be found  
on my website, in the Sysadmin section.

Cheers!


Thomas


On 11 Aug, 2006, at 15:10, Sébastien Barbereau wrote:

> Hi list,
> I'm looking to gather some of your experience in implementing your  
> network &
> system monitoring infrastructure. I'm not interrested in technical  
> bits and
> parts (I know Nagios in and out now) but more in the general  
> methodology you
> have been using, project preparation/plans and so on ...
> Of course scope of this questions is not purely related to nagios  
> but has a
> wider spectrum.
>
> Thanks for any info,
> Seb.


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