Nagios best practices?

[Russell Adams]

So, there's a wiki on NagiosExchange, and NagiosCommunity.

Does someone have a preference? Which is more popular?

I'd be happy to start a topic.

On Wed, Aug 15, 2007 at 05:07:36PM -0500, Russell Adams wrote:
> We should start a list of these on the Wiki (we do have a wiki now,
> right?).
> 
> I'd be curious to see what feedback is received and what other ideas
> are proposed.
> 
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 02:08:01PM +1000, Matthew Joyce wrote:
> > Good advice.
> > 
> > 
> > I'm happy to say we can tick most of those boxes.
> > For logs I've been using the free Splunk, quite handy for post incident
> > forensics.
> > 
> > I'd also add :
> > Pay attention to host parents and service dependencies.
> > Getting them right can be the difference between knowing what is going
> > on and a notification blizzard.
> > 
> > I'd also propose only monitoring what you need to, seems obvious but
> > it's easy to start monitoring because you can.
> > 
> > Matthew Joyce 
> > 02 9382 0051 | IT Manager | Children's Cancer Institute Australia for
> > Medical Research 
> >  
> > 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: nagios-users-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net 
> > > [mailto:nagios-users-bounces at lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf 
> > > Of Russell Adams
> > > Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2007 10:17 AM
> > > To: nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
> > > Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Nagios best practices?
> > > 
> > > My $0.02:
> > > 
> > >    Use a text editor and version control.
> > > 
> > >    Minimize and automate as much as practical.
> > > 
> > >    Try out NACE. Make a template, setup a query to find systems to
> > >    apply it to. Don't be the administrative bottleneck when systems
> > >    need to be added, or they won't be. Set standards and let
> > >    automation do the work for you.
> > > 
> > >    Make sure you have two methods for notification. Email is good,
> > >    backup IXO/TAP/SMS via modem on POTS is better (Sendpage).
> > > 
> > >    Have a dedicated UPS on your Nagios system. Power's out,
> > >    notifications continue.
> > > 
> > >    Use a trending (Torrus) and log monitoring (Syslog-ng & Logmuncher)
> > >    tool in conjunction with Nagios to ensure all your bases are
> > >    covered. Tie them in to use Nagios notification engine as needed.
> > > 
> > >    Consider using SNMP for common checks on platforms with decent
> > >    snmpd's (Linux, Windows 2000+, AIX 5.3, etc). This saves you from
> > >    deploying NRPE everywhere, minimizing the client side software.
> > >    (This'll start a flame war, so I'll point out you should only use
> > >    SNMP on an internal network and use host ACL's to confine SNMP to
> > >    read only queries from the Nagios server and one alternate for
> > >    upgrades. ) Check out Patrick Proy's snmp plugins,
> > >    http://nagios.manubulon.com/ .
> > > 
> > >    Choose what you monitor and how you notify carefully. Apathy caused
> > >    by too many off hours notifications is a real problem when that
> > >    important message goes out. I'd suggest email for all
> > >    notifications, but SMS only for critical services in a critical
> > >    state.
> > > 
> > > Good luck!
> > > 
> > > On Mon, Aug 13, 2007 at 09:30:19PM +0100, Jim Avery wrote:
> > > > On 13/08/07, Steve Huff <shuff at hmdc.harvard.edu> wrote:
> > > > > Hello folks!
> > > > >
> > > > > I'd like to roll out Nagios to replace our aging Mon 
> > > installation; 
> > > > > however, setting up Nagios has been more difficult than I had 
> > > > > expected, which makes me wonder if I'm going about it the 
> > > wrong way.
> > > > >
> > > > > Can you recommend a Nagios best practices document or howto?
> > > > 
> > > > The relevant page in the official Nagios documentation you need to 
> > > > look for is "Time-Saving Tricks For Object Definitions".  I 
> > > would give 
> > > > you the url, but for some reason I can't get to that page 
> > > just at the 
> > > > moment.
> > > > 
> > > > An excellent introduction to Nagios which goes through how to 
> > > > configure it is the book 'Nagios' by Wolfgang Barth published by 
> > > > NoStarch Press.  You can buy it online in .pdf form, 
> > > printed form or 
> > > > both.  It's getting slightly dated now, but IMO it's an easier read 
> > > > than some of the alternatives if you're just starting out.
> > > > 
> > > > Using hostgroups and templates judiciously you should be able to 
> > > > achieve what you want pretty easily.  My recommendation would be to 
> > > > start with a simple config and expand from there rather 
> > > than trying to 
> > > > do everything at once.
> > > > 
> > > > hth,
> > > > 
> > > > Jim
> > > > 
> > > > 
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> > > Russell Adams                            RLAdams at AdamsInfoServ.com
> > > 
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