Nagios Network Analyzer Public Beta Download
Due to the overwhelming demand for the Nagios Network Analyzer public beta interest, instead of the more focus-group oriented beta style, we will be posting the download link and install instructions at the bottom of this post.
If you use it, please do keep in mind it is still beta, and there is a feature freeze, as in bugs have the highest priority. Please inform send bug reports or feedback to nscott@nagios.com.
Install Instructions
Getting Started Instructions
Building a Nagios 4 / Nagios XI Prototype Box
So after an awesome set of presentations at the Nagios World Conference 2012, one of the hot topics for discussion was clearly the upcoming Nagios Core 4 release. Andreas Ericsson has been hard at work overhauling the Core engine to optimize performance and reduce Disk and CPU usage for Nagios, and initial tests are showing his work has paid off in a substantial way. For this experiment, we’re going to use a system with the following specs:
- Virtual Machine running under Vmware Workstation 8
- 2GB of RAM
- 1 CPU, 4 Cores
- 80GB Hard Disk
- Nagios XI Installed
- Nagios binaries replace with Nagios 4 monitoring engine
- ndoutils binaries replaced with with the latest SVN code for ndoutils: nagios/ndoutils/branches/ndoutils-2-0
- No initial performance tweaks other than Nagios 4 and ndoutils 2
I’ll post setup instructions below for users who also want to play around with this setup. Note: This setup is not intended for production installs, use this in test environments only!
Start with Nagios XI installed, either through the pre-installed VM or with a manual installation. I chose a manual installation for this demo so I could set up the hardware to my liking and give it sufficient hard drive space to test a LOT of hosts. My first attempt at the prototype only had 10GB on the box, and filled up quite quickly because of performance data. .I ran the following commands after initial Nagios XI installation and setup was completed.
From the command-line:
cd /tmp yum install -y subversion svn co https://nagios.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/nagios/ndoutils/branches/ndoutils-2-0 svn export ndoutils-2-0/ ndoutils svn co https://nagios.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/nagios/nagioscore/trunk/ coretrunk svn export coretrunk/ nagioscore service nagios stop service ndo2db stop cd nagioscore ./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd make all make install cd /tmp/ndoutils ./configure; make; make install cd db ./upgradedb -u root -p nagiosxi -h localhost -d nagios service ndo2db start service nagios start
You can verify the upgrade succeeded by reviewing the /usr/local/nagios/var/nagios.log file. There should be some new warnings about obsolete definitions like “failure_prediction_enabled”, which we won’t worry about for now. For now I’d like to see what kind of performance impact I can expect for a large number of checks being run on this machine, so I need to quickly create a large number of checks. I’ll achieve this by running a tools script that we include with every installation of Nagios XI.
cd /usr/local/nagiosxi/tools ./create_checks.php --hosts=1000 --prefix=_MASS1_ > /usr/local/nagios/etc/static/_MASS1.cfg
I chose to use static configs instead of the CCM for this benchmark for ease of setup time, and also easy removal later on. This also creates a list of checks with 25% of the services showing up as critica, which is useful in testing a system stressed with alerts and notifications. However, I’m also going to turn off notifications and event handlers during this setup phase just to make sure I don’t bottleneck somewhere and tank the entire box. Now lets restart Nagios to start using the new configs.
service nagios restart
After adding 1000 hosts and 4000 services all at a 5mn interval the CPU load is running at a nominal level, averaging anywhere from .30 – .70, which is pretty impressive for a 4 core system! There is still some Disk IO because performance data processing is happening for each service, and this will likely be one of the noticeable bottlenecks as we add more checks to this system. After the system levels out and all of the checks are settled into a hard state, I turn on notifications and event handlers and begin watching the system and testing for bottlenecks. I’ll post back with some results soon! If there are any XI users out there who want to give this a shot in their test environments and post back with their results we’d love to hear what you find!
Integrating Mod Gearman with Nagios XI
Our newly released guide is now available on how to install Mod Gearman locally on your Nagios XI system(s) and from there tie it in with external worker systems to offload checks from the hardware Nagios XI resides on. This will reduce check latency and increase performance on your Nagios XI machine, allowing for greater check amounts while still keeping your system’s head above water. All this done with a simple install script for CentOS/RHEL versions 5 and 6.
The document is available here: Integrating Mod Gearman with Nagios XI
Nagios Network Analyzer Public Beta
A solution for evaluating and using Netflow and sFlow data has been on the horizon in the Nagios Labs here for a while, and we are now calling for public beta testers for the product. If you would be interested in beta testing such an application please note your interest in the comments below and I will contact you so that we can work together to resolve issues that present themselves in Nagios Network Analyzer.
Nagios Network Analyzer has direct integration with Nagios Core and Nagios XI, and is designed to be used in conjunction with either, while still containing enough of its own features to be functional as a standalone application. It is also designed be very intuitive to use, and to browse your flow data in as straightforward and painless a manner as possible, without sacrificing flexibility.
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Nagios XI 2012 Public Beta
After many months of anticipation and hard work, we are pleased to announce Nagios XI 2012 Beta is ready for public testing! XI 2012 is loaded with a variety of new features, and we’d love your help in making sure that 2012 is ready for full release as soon as possible. A key difference with the release of 2012 is that there will be both an Enterprise Edition and a Standard Edition, with the Enterprise Edition being targeted at users with larger environments.
Continue reading ‘Nagios XI 2012 Public Beta’
Nagios Incident Manager Public Beta
Nagios Incident Manager is an enterprise-class incident management application that allows teams and individuals to track and solve problems faster using a powerful web-based application that offers security, mobility, third-party integration, and tools for collaboration. Nagios Incident Manager can be integrated easily with Nagios XI or Nagios Core’s built-in event handling, or any other third party tool with an easy-to-use web API for creating and managing tickets. Nagios Incident Manager is currently available for public beta testing, with install instructions posted below. Supported installation platforms are CentOS and RHEL 5/6, and we recommend installing the beta on a clean system.
Beta Installation Instructions
cd /tmp wget assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagiosim/nagiosim-latest.tar.gz tar zxf nagiosim-latest.tar.gz cd nagiosim ./fullinstall
Documentation and tutorials are coming soon!
For Nagios XI users, see documentation on Integrating Nagios IM with Nagios XI.
Installing Nagios Core From Source
This document describes how install Nagios Core and Nagios Plugins from source on CentOS and Ubuntu servers, and is intended for use by anyone wishing to install Nagios Core from source.
The documentation may be found here:
assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagioscore/docs/Installing_Nagios_Core_From_Source.pdf
Automated Host Management In Nagios XI
This document describes how to automate adding and removing hosts and services in Nagios XI from the command line. Some administrators may have need to automate the process of adding and removing hosts and services in Nagios XI for use with cloud computing or large environments where solutions like Puppet or Chef may already be implemented. The procedures below outline how administrators can create their own automation solutions to safely add and remove hosts and services in Nagios XI while still maintaining the integrity of the monitoring environment.
Automated Host Management Documentation
Nagios Fusion 2012 Public Beta Available
Nagios Fusion 2012 Beta is now available for user testing! The beta is a free 60-day trial, but existing Fusion customers can use their current license key to authorized Fusion 2012. Nagios Fusion 2012 is a central dashboard and data aggregation for all of your Nagios installations. Fusion 2012 will integrate seamlessly with Nagios XI and Nagios Core 3.x installs, and requires no additional configuration changes on any of your Nagios servers. Requires Nagios XI 2011R2.5 or later for all XI features to be available.
Download Nagios Fusion 2012
Here’s a highlight of the current feature list:
- Unified authentication for all Nagios XI servers
- User-defined, customizable dashboards and menus
- Easily drill down to any Nagios server to find problems
- Fused Tactical Overview information
- Fused Health Summaries for Nagios servers
- Fused Alert Summary
- Fused Alert Histogram
- Fused Top Alert Producers
- Several new data visualizations
- Single Host or Service Dashlets (Nagios XI Only)
- Graph Explorer Timeline and Time-stacked graphs (Nagios XI Only)
- Hostgroup and Servicegroup Summary dashlets (Nagios XI Only)
The power exists in Nagios Fusion to aggregate almost any information across multiple Nagios installs. Here are some screenshots of the new beta release.
Integrating autoIT With Nagios
AutoIT is a very powerful set of software tools whichs allows the recording and writing of scripts to automate windows tasks, from moving the mouse cursor to sending key strokes. In this example autoIT is used in conjunction with an NRPE check to open firefox.exe and record the time it takes to load a URL, then sends this time to the Nagios XI server where the plugin pulls it in as a service. This may also be used to grab the loading time of a specific program or service and the script shows where this can be changed.
Having the ability to run these scripts via NRPE checks allows system administrators to custom tailor Windows server automation without having to initiate them locally.
Some of the abilities of AutoIT are as follows:
- Easy to learn BASIC-like syntax
- Simulate keystrokes and mouse movements
- Manipulate windows and processes
- Interact with all standard windows controls
- Scripts can be compiled into standalone executables
- Create Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)
- COM support
- Regular expressions
- Directly call external DLL and Windows API functions
- Scriptable RunAs functions
- Detailed helpfile and large community-based support forums
- Compatible with Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / Windows 7 / 2008 R2
- Unicode and x64 support
- Digitally signed for peace of mind
- Works with Windows Vista’s User Account Control (UAC)
The above bullet points were taken from www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/
Below is a video showing an example of the check website load time script in action:
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