7. In defense of Nagios
Been around since 1996
Has Service dependencies
Easy to write plugins
Easy-ish to troubleshoot
ROCK SOLID
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8. Valid attacks on Nagios
No automated discovery
It's complicated to setup
Text files – really?
Front end won't win any beauty contests
Development is slow
Stats collection is a PITA
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9. Solutions
Use Icinga!
Use Puppet to auto configure
Stats – leave it to graphite. It's really good at that
Big boys and girls learn their tools
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10. Icinga
Fork of Nagios
Configurations are compatible
More solid architecture ( core, API, Web, IDODB )
Nice front end, nice mobile front end
Can use NRPE
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13. Things to configure with Standard Types
icinga.cfg (file) => icinga main config file
Apache icinga.conf (file) => http access to each server
cgiauth.cfg (file) => cgi access
cgi.cfg (file) => options, users
templates.cfg (file) got lazy => use for basic classes
idomod.cfg (template) => template for hostname to DB
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19. Store Configs
Store puppet info in a DB
Retrieve information from DB
Share info across nodes
Use thin_storeconfigs
Set up on puppet master
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20. Exporting Nagios_host Resources
Export = Save to DB
Use facter for dynamic data
PRO TIP: use ENC
PRO TIP: use targets
PRO TIP: hostgroups
PRO TIP: use tags
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22. PRO TIP: use targets
Use cfg_dir in icinga.cfg
Create a unique file per host or
service
Addition and removal are now
super easy
Also default dirs are in a
horrible place /etc/nagios
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23. PRO TIP: hostgroups
Add machines to a hostgroup
Add services to a hostgroup
New machines inherit all of the
services associated with a
hostgroup
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24. PRO TIP: use tags
Tags allow you to filter
resources so that you only
realize those resources that
you need
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43. #monitoringisawesome
REMOVE unreliable checks
Just MONITOR – don't bolt on - especially stats
TIER your monitoring
Use timeperiods for sanity
Delegate responses
Use dependencies to pin down problems quickly
Work smart
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