What Is

Nagios?

Nagios is a powerful
monitoring system that
enables organizations to
identify and resolve IT
infrastructure problems
before they affect critical
business processes.
What Nagios Provides
Designed with scalability and flexibility in
mind, Nagios gives you the peace of mind
that comes from knowing your

organizations business processes wont be

affected by unknown outages.
Nagios is a powerful tool that provides you
with instant awareness of your
organizations mission-critical IT
infrastructure. Nagios allows you to detect
and repair problems and mitigate future
issues before they affect end-users and
customers.
By using Nagios, you can:
Plan for infrastructure upgrades before
outdated systems cause failures
Respond to issues at the first sign of a
problem
Automatically fix problems when they
are detected

 Coordinate technical team responses

Ensure your organizations SLAs are
being met
Ensure IT infrastructure outages have a
minimal effect on your organizations
bottom line
Monitor your entire infrastructure and
business processes

How It Works
Monitoring
IT staff configure

Nagios to monitor critical IT

infrastructure components,
including system metrics, network
protocols, applications, services,
servers, and network infrastructure.

Alerting
Nagios sends alerts when

critical infrastructure components

fail and recover, providing
administrators with notice of
important events. Alerts can be
delivered via email, SMS, or
custom script.

Response
IT staff can acknowledge alerts and
begin resolving outages and
investigating security alerts
immediately. Alerts can be
escalated to different groups if
alerts are not acknowledged in a
timely manner.

Reporting
Reports provide a

historical record of outages,

events, notifications, and alert
response for later review.
Availability reports help ensure
your SLAs are being met.

Maintenance
Scheduled downtime

prevents alerts during scheduled

maintenance and upgrade

windows.

Planning
Trending and capacity

planning graphs and reports allow

you to identify necessary
infrastructure upgrades before
failures occur.

4: Nagios
Nagios (Figure D) is considered by
many to be the king of open source
network monitoring systems. Although
not the easiest tool to set up and
configure (you have to manually edit
configuration files), Nagios is incredibly
powerful. And even though the idea of
manual configuration might turn some
off, that setup actually makes Nagios
one of the most flexible network
monitors around. In the end, the vast
number of features Nagios offers is
simply unmatched. You can even set
up email, SMS, and printed paper
alerts!

Review:
Nagios XI
network
monitoring
tool

Nagios enables the network

administrator to keep a very
close watch on all systems
on the network no matter
how many systems are on
that network.
If you are a network or systems
administrator, your primary
goal is making sure those
systems are up and running
24/7. To do this efficiently you
need monitoring tools. If you

are looking for a cost effective,

flexible tool that also happens
to be open source, then you
might want to take a good look
at one of the standard bearers
for network monitoring in the
open source community
-Nagios.

Requirements

Product: Nagios XI network

monitoring tool
Operating system: Linux
(or UNIX variant)
C compiler
TCP/IP configured for the
network
License: GNU General
Public License Version 2
Initial cost: Free download

Support: Support plans for

the enterprise start at
$2,495.
Additional vendor
information
TechRepublic Photo Gallery

Who's it for?
Nagios is relevant for any sized
network. From SMB to
Enterprise, Nagios can handle

just about anything you have.

But you will need a bit of
patience, because, although
Nagios is simple to install,
making it really work for you
can take some time and
tweaking. There are
configuration files to edit,
plugins to add, and more.

What problem does it

solve?
Nagios enables the network
administrator to keep a very
close watch on all systems on
the network. But it doesn't just
randomly watch anything and
everything - Nagios only
watches what you set it up to
watch. And when something
goes wrong, Nagios will alert
you.

Standout features
Incredible flexibility
Easy installation
Scalable
Easy to navigate webinterface
Plenty of plugins
Alert system
Event handlers help with
problem remediation

Capacity planning and

trending
Reporting system

What's wrong?
The only issue Nagios has is
that it does not auto-discover
devices. You will have to
configure each device you
want to monitor by creating a
configuration file for that
device.

Competitive products
Zenoss
Groundwork
Zabbix

Bottom line for

business
If you are ready and will to do a
little work, Nagios will be an
outstanding network monitoring
tool. Not only will it do a

remarkable job once up and

running, you will find it very
tweak-able to best suit your
needs. Nagios is the perfect
solution for any business
looking for amazing features at
zero cost.

User rating
Have you encountered or used
Nagios? If so, what do you
think? Rate your experience

and compare the results to

what other TechRepublic
members think. Give your own
personal review in
the TechRepublic Community
Forumsor let us know if you
think we left anything out in our
review.
Read our field-tested reviews
of hardware and software in
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each Thursday. We explain

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Nagios XI

Monitor your entire IT infrastructure

quickly with the most powerful
monitoring solution on the market.

Download Now

Nagios Log Server

Quickly and easily view, analyze,

and archive logs from any source in
one central location.

Download Now

Nagios Network
Analyzer

See where your bandwidth is

dipping or spiking with our
commercial grade netflow data
analysis solution.

Download Now

Thanks for
Downloading | Your
Next Steps
1. Download
Your download has already
started. | Direct Link

2. Install
You will need Microsoft
VirtualPC or Hyper-V to
run the virtual machine.
Unzip you download.
Using VirtualPC simply
open the .vmc file.
Using Hyper-V, import
the .vhd file into your
Hyper-V server.

Default CLI Credentials:

User: root
Pass: nagiosxi

3. Finalize
Installation
Once install is complete,
visit the URL displayed to
complete the install

1. Download
Your download has already
started. | Direct Link

2. Install
You will need a vSphere
Server, VMware
Workstation, Player or Virt
ualBox to run the virtual
machine.

Simply open the

downloaded .ova (OVF
Template) file with the
virtual server of your
choice, and power on the
machine.
Default CLI Credentials:
User: root
Pass: nagiosxi

3. Finalize
Installation
Once install is complete,
visit the URL displayed to
complete the install