10 ways to make Nagios easier

Nagios is a great monitoring tool but using it to manage complex systems can be a real challenge. It can also be unforgiving on anyone less than expert in configuring the system with mistakes being punished by a complete stop in monitoring activity.

Opsview adds a human layer to the Nagios management engine to make it a whole lot easier and more efficient. Here’s 10 ways how…

Distributed monitoring

Opsview takes the complexities of Nagios and makes distributed monitoring simple. All management is performed on a single master server and communication with slaves is handled by Opsview’s middleware layer. Provision is included for geographically diverse monitoring and to cope with potentially unreliable WAN connections between servers.

Host attributes

A feature you won’t find in Nagios, host attributes help simplify configurations by allowing you to create multiple services based on a set of pre-defined attributes. You can assign one or many attributes to a host and set service checks to use the attributes for a host to then create multiple services for monitoring.

Keywords

Opsview’s keyword function gives you a flexible way of grouping hosts and services. You can tag devices, business processes and applications giving you a convenient way of seeing the status of the groups, e.g. critical IT systems, network circuits or business users and customers.

Cloning capability

Chances are when you’re configuring or adding devices and services to your network many of them will be quite similar. To save time you can simply choose to clone an existing device or service monitored with Opsview and add it to the network. Try doing that in Nagios!

SNMP discovery

Nagios provides support for SNMP via its plugin project, but it doesn’t provide support for processing SNMP traps. Opsview does this automatically. A powerful processing engine accepts incoming traps, analyses the data and then decides how they should be processed. In-built SNMP discovery also means SNMP objects can be detected and monitored with ease without the need for human intervention.

Notification profiles

Opsview helps you avoid information overload by easily creating complex business rules that define who gets alerts, how they get them and why. Combined with the Opsview service desk module you get a powerful notification tool that helps speed up mean time to repair and streamline workflows.

Configuration UI

Configuring and maintaining a system with Nagios can become difficult the bigger and more complex the monitoring environment gets. Opsview’s configuration UI means you don’t need to be a Nagios expert to get your monitoring up and running. All the software processes are kept ‘under the hood’ and presented via an intuitive interface so you can see the information that makes a difference to your business without getting caught up with software.

APIs for Automation

Opsview includes automated APIs for configuration, monitoring and notification which makes system set-up pain-free and scaling simple. The APIs also make integrating with other IT Management tools easy.

SLA reporting

Opsview’s Reports Module can automatically generate custom reports in line with business requirements. If you have to produce regular reports for your management or customers, this module will save you hours by generating the reports you need when you need them. The reports can be sent out automatically on email in PDF, HTML, Excel, ODT or XML to your chosen distribution list.

Service desk integration

When you integrate your service desk with Opsview you get a powerful tool for automating incident reporting. Tickets can be created in your system based on alerts generated by Opsview, saving time and freeing up resources. Out of-the-box support is included for Service-Now.com, Bestpractical’s Request Tracker and Atlassian JIRA.

So there you have it, 10 ways Opsview makes Nagios easier. Think of any more? Let us know.