nagvis ideas?

Israel Brewster israel at frontierflying.com
Tue Aug 19 20:55:25 CEST 2008




On Aug 19, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Paul Weaver wrote:

>> It seems to me, that there are 2 basic ways to "view" our
>> conglomeration of systems. One is geographic, and the 2nd is
>> from a network topology point of view. Frankly I think a
>> nagvis presentation of both would be useful. The network
>> topology version is fairly straightforward (I think, but I
>> would like to here others point of view on this). The
>> geographic version however, frankly I am struggling with. If
>> I show the systems on the large area map, they are fairly
>> spread out. I am thinking of doing that, and making dynamic
>> links for each cluster. These links would be color coded
>> based upon the status of all of the computers in that
>> cluster, and would provide a link to a more detailed view.
>>
>> I'd love to hear what other peoples thoughts on this are.
>
> Our old monitoring solution was a product called solarwinds,
> the main view was a map which had little icons for various
> machines (it didn't monitor a lot more, great for monitoring
> all the interfaces on the network, but useless for system
> monitoring)
>
> I felt the map was pointless. If something did break, you
> would get a little red dot in the corner. When I implemented
> Nagios I decided to ignore nagviz for a bit.
>
> The only "map" I can see being off use would be something like
> http://www.nagvis.org/sites/default/files/screenshots/c_by_dave_rearden_
> 2.png
>
> If you had a monitor hanging in the apps room. but even then, we  
> rarely
> have hardware problems, and if we do, the machine will have a flashing
> red led. And even if we didn't, they're all labelled.
>
> If you are truly physically seperated (not just different rooms in the
> same building, on the same power feed)
> http://www.nagvis.org/sites/default/files/screenshots/nagvis_map_2.png
>
> Could show you areas where there are invading tanks knocking out your
> infrastructure, but a network topology might be better.
>
> (Of course if you use nagios to monitor your country's defence  
> systems,
> a physical map might be a good way of doing it)
>
> 1 of the 3 nagios installations I know about here have a default  
> screen
> of "service problems". Our installation has a custom-written screen
> which highlights problems affecting users. The other isn't a real
> nagios installation, it was provided by an external company -- it  
> barely
>
> monitors hosts, and only does about 20 anyway, the statusmap is fine
> for that.
>
> I'd be interested to know how many people find "maps" helpful for
> anything
> other than impressing management.
>

Well, in my company impressing management (or random guests who walk  
through) is an entirely legitimate reason for having some sort of  
network map ;) From a more practical standpoint, however, having a  
visual map can help tell at a glance where the problem lies- for  
example, do we just have one computer in Nome down, or is our entire  
Nome station having problems? The answer to this question lets us know  
where to start looking for a solution, and a visual map tells us at a  
glance how widespread an issue is by the numbewr of red blotches in a  
given area. It also shows at a glance that it is Nome, and not Barrow  
that is having problems (since they are geographically separated). If  
all we have is a text list of "Service Problems" we have to go over to  
it (or take the time to pull it up on our local computers) to figure  
out where the problem is, and how wide spread. A quick glance in the  
general direction will only tell us "something" is down, not where or  
how widespread.

That said, I have yet to manage to get Nagvis to work well enough for  
us to be worth the time to set it up. In order to get a decent map out  
of it (in my experience, at least) you have to set it up manually,  
adding each host and link individually, which when you have hundreds  
of hosts would take quite a while. [Rant] The automap feature of the  
newest version I tried worked decently, but did not appear to be  
customizable (which I definitely want), and also did not appear to  
show all the hosts I was monitoring. I need something that  
automatically populates the map with your hosts and links, but allows  
you to then customize the populated map to your heart's content- 
modifying an already populated map takes way less time than creating  
one from scratch. Something like nexsm (nexsm.sf.net) but that works  
with nagios 3. [/Rant]

-----------------------------------------------
Israel Brewster
Computer Support Technician
Frontier Flying Service Inc.
5245 Airport Industrial Rd
Fairbanks, AK 99709
(907) 450-7250 x293
-----------------------------------------------
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