[Cialug] Nagios vs. OpenNMS vs. ??

[Nathan C. Smith]

It doesn't hurt either that there are at least 4 books (and probably more like 6 or 7) on monitoring with Nagios.  Not that any of them has helped me much, but they exist.

-Nate

From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On Behalf Of Josh More
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 9:42 AM
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Nagios vs. OpenNMS vs. ??

It doesn't matter.

Really.  I've used lots of monitoring solutions.  If you want to find reasons they suck, you'll find them.  If you want to find reasons that they're awesome, you'll find them.  They key is taking the time to learn whatever system you choose and set it up right.  If you go after monitoring half-assed, you'll hate it, whatever it is.

Nagios is scriptable.  You can do whatever you want with it, but the key is "nagios is scriptable".  It's going to take work.  The same is true for mon, smokeping, ZenOSS etc etc etc.  The open source solutions are all going to take work to get them where you need them.  The "professional" systems will take work too, but they tend to have a nice candy coating that makes them look easier and then gets in your way later.

The way it usually goes is that most people can do everything they need with mon, but once they start there they realize "oh my, mon takes a lot of work", so they start looking at things like Cacti and ZenOSS, work with them for a few months to a year and realize  "oh my, these take a lot of work, if I'm going to do this work, I might as well just use nagios".  Then they play with nagios for a few years and think "well, I have a handle on nagios, but my new people don't", and start throwing money at IBM Director / What's Up Gold or any of the many "pro" systems.  Then everything falls apart because the new people look at these high dollar systems and think  "oh my, these take a lot of work".   Since they're not you, they don't care to put in the work and you're out years of time and lots of money.

So really, it doesn't matter.  It's going to a PITA, and it's going to take care and handholding to do it right.  If you don't have what it takes to do it right, don't even bother starting.

That said, I prefer Nagios... largely because the Nagios community doesn't lie to itself and realizes that monitoring takes work.  They'll help you out if you need it.

-Josh More, CISSP, GIAC-GSLC, GIAC-GCIH, RHCE, NCLP
morej at alliancetechnologies.net<mailto:morej at alliancetechnologies.net>
515-245-7701
________________________________
From: cialug-bounces at cialug.org [cialug-bounces at cialug.org] on behalf of Kenneth Younger [kyounger at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 09:26
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Nagios vs. OpenNMS vs. ??
I'm actually looking into this myself, but I have a much smaller number of servers (5-7 probably at most), and I need the ability to script off of events that occur, like reaching certain maximum thresholds, etc. For me, the ease of utilizing the API is just as important as the effectiveness of the monitoring. Which of these solutions should I take a look at first? I had been planning on just using Nagios.

(That table on wikipedia is about has helpful as a bowl of peanuts.)

Thanks,
-Kenny
On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Joseph Pietras <joseph.pietras at gmail.com<mailto:joseph.pietras at gmail.com>> wrote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_network_monitoring_systems

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 2:42 PM, Tom Pohl <tom at tcpconsulting.com<mailto:tom at tcpconsulting.com>> wrote:
Has anyone followed the fork from Nagios to Icinga? Any benefits or drawbacks from the switch?

Thanks!
-Tom


On Aug 30, 2010, at 2:28 PM, Christopher R. Rhodes wrote:

> On 08/30/10 12:54, L. V. Lammert wrote:
>> Doing a clean slate design replacing Big Brother for monitoring about 75
>> bunch of remote backup servers, .. has anyone seen a decent feature
>> comparison published anywhere?
>>
>>      Lee
>
>
>
> While you are looking, consider this one: https://labs.omniti.com/labs/reconnoiter
>
> Theo's done a spectacular job with it.
>
>
> I'll +1 both nagios and opennms.  I have used and loved them both though am currently more aligned with Nagios.
>
>
> crr
> arreyder at apache.org<mailto:arreyder at apache.org>
>
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--
-Joseph
cell 858-337-9922

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