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10. Nagios Integration
Nagios is a powerful, highly extensible open source tool for monitoring network hosts and services. The core Nagios software
package will typically be installed on a server or virtual server, the central Nagios server.
Console servers operate in conjunction with a central/upstream Nagios server to distribute and monitor attached network hosts
and serial devices. They embed the NSCA (Nagios Service Checks Acceptor) and NRPE (Nagios Remote Plug-in Executor) add-
ons—this allows them to communicate with the central Nagios server, so you won’t need a dedicated slave Nagios server at
remote sites.
Even if distributed monitoring is not required, the console servers can be deployed locally alongside the Nagios monitoring host
server, to provide additional diagnostics and points of access to managed devices.
Figure 10-1. Nagios application.
SDT for Nagios extends the capabilities of the central Nagios server beyond monitoring, enabling it to be used for central
management tasks. It incorporates the SDT Connector client, enabling point-and-click access and control of distributed
networks of console servers and their attached network and serial hosts, from a central location.
NOTE: If you have an existing Nagios deployment, you may want to use the console server gateways in a distributed
monitoring server capacity only. If this case and you are already familiar with Nagios, skip ahead to Section 10.3.
10.1 Nagios Overview
Nagios provides central monitoring of the hosts and services in your distributed network. Nagios is freely downloadable, open
source software. This section offers a quick background of Nagios and its capabilities. A complete overview, FAQ, and
comprehensive documentation are available at: http://www.nagios.org
Nagios does take some time to install and configure; however, once Nagios is up and running however, it provides an
outstanding network monitoring system.
With Nagios you can:
Display tables showing the status of each monitored server and network service in real time.
Use a wide range of freely available plug-ins to make detailed checks of specific services—for example, don't just check that a
database is accepting network connections, check that it can actually validate requests and return real data.
Display warnings and send warning e-mails, pager, or SMS alerts when a service failure or degradation is detected.
Assign contact groups who are responsible for specific services in specific time frames.
Central site (Nagios
server)
LES1102A
Managed hosts and
services
Remote site
Network