- Author:
- David Josephsen
Build real-world, end-to-end network monitoring solutions with NagiosThis is the definitive guide to building low-cost, enterprise-strength monitoring infrastructures with Nagios, the world's leading open source monitoring tool. Network monitoring specialist David Josephsen goes far beyond the basics, demonstrating how to use third-party tools and plug-ins to solve the specific problems in your unique environment. Josephsen introduces Nagios “from the ground up,” showing how to plan for success and leverage today's most valuable monitoring best practices. Then, using practical examples, real directives, and working code, Josephsen presents detailed monitoring solutions for Windows, Unix, Linux, network equipment, and other platforms and devices. You'll find thorough discussions of advanced topics, including the use of data visualization to solve complex monitoring problems. This is also the first Nagios book with comprehensive coverage of using Nagios Event Broker to transform and extend Nagios. Understand how Nagios works, in depth: the host and service paradigm, plug-ins, scheduling, and notification Configure Nagios successfully: config files, templates, timeperiods, contacts, hosts, services, escalations, dependencies, and more Streamline deployment with scripting templates, automated discovery, and Nagios GUI tools Use plug-ins and tools to systematically monitor the devices and platforms you need to monitor, the way you need to monitor them Establish front-ends, visual dashboards, and management interfaces with MRTG and RRDTool Build new C-based Nagios Event Broker (NEB) modules, one step at a time Contains easy-to-understand code listings in Unix shell, C, and PerlIf you're responsible for systems monitoring infrastructure in any organization, large or small, this book will help you achieve the results you wantï right from the start.David Josephsen is Senior Systems Engineer at DBG, Inc., where he maintains a collection of geographically dispersed server farms. He has more than a decade of hands-on experience with Unix systems, routers, firewalls, and load balancers in support of complex, high-volume networks. Josephsen's certifications include CISSP, CCNA, CCDA, and MCSE. His co-authored work on Bayesian spam filtering earned a Best Paper award at USENIX LISA 2004. He has been published in both ;login and Sysadmin magazines on topics relating to security, systems monitoring, and spam mitigation.Introduction CHAPTER 1 Best Practices CHAPTER 2 Theory of Operations CHAPTER 3 Installing Nagios CHAPTER 4 Configuring Nagios CHAPTER 5 Bootstrapping the Configs CHAPTER 6 Watching CHAPTER 7 Visualization CHAPTER 8 Nagios Event Broker Interface APPENDIX A Configure Options APPENDIX B nagios.cfg and cgi.cfg APPENDIX C Command-Line Options Index
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Index Terms
- Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios
Reviews
Kevin W. Wall
Nagios is modular, open-source software used to observe specified hosts, network devices, and software services. Nagios is typically used to monitor computer systems and their associated networks for problematic behavior. It can alert administrators and operations teams when things go awry, as well as escalate alerts to management. Josephsen’s book was written to help those responsible for systems monitoring infrastructure use Nagios effectively. Those who find themselves in a position to monitor numerous servers, dozens of software services, and a large network should find this book especially helpful. While this book is approachable for someone new to Nagios, and to systems monitoring in general, it does require a beginning knowledge of Perl and Unix shell (bash) scripting languages. In addition, some familiarity with systems monitoring would be helpful as well, since the author often makes implicit assumptions that it’s obvious as to why a particular metric is being monitoring. The book begins with an introduction, followed by eight chapters and three appendices. The first five chapters cover Nagios fundamentals, while the last three chapters cover more advanced topics. Chapter 1, “Best Practices,” attempts to provide a strategic guide to implementing industry “best practice” when deploying a monitoring system infrastructure. It discusses such issues as where and how to deploy monitoring software, what should be monitored (systems, services, or both), and security issues (and, as such, is not really Nagios specific). Chapter 2 covers the various Nagios modules, and how they all fit together into the overall Nagios architecture. Chapter 3 is all about installing Nagios, with an emphasis on Unix-like operating systems (Windows is only mentioned in casual passing). The fourth chapter delves into details on how to configure Nagios manually; chapter 5 describes how to use auto-discovery tools or graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to assist with Nagios configuration. Chapter 6 gets to the heart of what Nagios is all about: watching servers, services, and “other stuff.” The monitoring of both Windows and Unix-like systems is covered, but the author goes the extra mile to cover the monitoring of things like simple network management protocol (SNMP) and various types of environmental sensors. Chapter 7 discusses how to use various visualization tools with Nagios in order to produce graphs and plots of the monitored systems and services. The main section of the book ends with chapter 8, which covers how to extend the functionality of Nagios though the Nagios Event Broker and its C application programming interface (API). The book concludes with three appendices, covering various Nagios configuration options, and an index. Throughout the book, there are numerous tables and helpful diagrams. There are also ample examples, although many of these are littered with typesetting problems—accents are replaced by apostrophes. Those attempting to use the examples, as copied straight from the book, need to be aware of these issues. Most of them are obvious, but a few are not, which could result in subtle problems. In fact, these obvious errors lead me to my biggest complaint about the book: specifically, it offers no advice on troubleshooting Nagios problems. Online Computing Reviews Service
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