Nagios Core Reviews

Getting the alerts is the most valuable feature. This way I know when servers are acting up or just plainhosed. It also helps me to know which things need to be recovered and when so I do not have to bother with checking into it immediately.

Before we implemented Nagios, we did not know which servers were up or down until a customer told us. Now, I can see trends over time and it gives me perspective of what needs to be improved and we are able to work proactively as opposed to reactively.

Generally, it does what I need it to do, but better error reporting would be great. It's so flexible that I do not use half the capability that it has. Also, Nagios 4 does not work with NConf or Adagios so we haven't upgraded yet.

I have worked with it as a monitoring and alerting solution for 10 years accross two jobs.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no performance issues.

We are monitoring under 200 devices and less than 1200 services so I do not need this availability yet.

I've never needed to contact the vendor as I have always found my answers via the documentation and Google searches.

I have used Zabix and Big Brother, but neither was as workable as Nagios.

Setup is not for the GUI lover as it requires you to perform a lot of CLI work.

You do not need a vendor. I have always deployed it myself.

It's free.

I have looked at other solutions but none are as simple, and I would hate to have to learn another system.

It's well worth it to ensure your up time and to catch the bigger issues.

The most valuable feature of Nagios is its monitoring capability. Once you configure it correctly, it will help you monitor all your servers and services.

When working on ISPs, we used Nagios to monitor all our servers and network switches in the entire city. When any part of the system went down, Nagios would inform us right away with alerts. In most cases, we were able to find the problem before the client did.

We use the free version of Nagios, which needs some administrative skills in order to configure correctly. It would be great to see some of the paid features in the free version, such as web-based administration.

I've used Nagios since 2008 year, and I'm really pleased with it. It helps me a lot with my system administrator work. I used it on my local servers initially, then I started to work at an ISP where I implemented Nagios. It's still in use there.

I rarely upgrade Nagios as everything works fine. I've had no issues deploying it.

I've had no stability issues. It's been very stable.

There have been no issues scaling it.

I've never used tech support and I find all my answers on Google or forums.

I tried Zabbix and OpenNMP but I didn't like them. I use Cacti and SmokePing for detailed graphics.

A few years ago, the initial setup was complex, but now it's not. It just has some config files where you should add your host. Everything is written in the documentation.

I implemented it by myself.

You should really try Nagios. It will help a lot and I have found that it is the best buddy for system admins.

It has been a reliable source of information regarding the state of the servers within the organisation and the flexibility of some of the features including the command structure has been invaluable in tracking some recurring faults.

A good example more recently is where the DHCP/DNS servers kept dropping their scopes, making it difficult for users whose machines were releasing. I managed to come up with a modification to a script that could be inserted into the Nagios client (NSClient++) and checked so that an alert could be generated if the scopes were dropped to allow the administrators to immediately remedy the fault in the short term. By retaining some of the information they could also check for trending as part of their fault finding process for a longer term fix.

Some of the reporting functionality is a bit basic and configuration is a chore although by the use of NagiosQL this can be made a lot easier.

5-6 years

Beyond the usual learning curve when adopting a new package, not really, though I did need to brush up on some Linux skills including Apache so that the web interface could be seen.

None. Under Linux, Nagios is pretty stable to the point that it could stay in place and active longer than most of the servers it monitored. Since the system can self test its configuration, it is normally impossible to start Nagios with a fault present.

No.

Can't comment on this as Nagios Core is supplied without support.

This is one down side to Nagios Core as it is supplied without support (Nagios XI can be obtained for a price which includes support). There are some support boards, however, that are an invaluable source of help which I have both used and contributed to.

The outgoing system ws Network Eagle which was good at monitoring but not very good at presenting its results. Nagios was certainly a step up as we had previously needed to use a Visual Basic add on to display results which was limited to little more than a ping test display.

The initial setup involved making sure that you knew what you were monitoring, where, what and how. Once this was done it was then possible to complete a default template which could be used to set up a server. As ever, the main effort in the beginning (once the product was selected) was in designing the layout. The actual setup was somewhat laborious (as I had not yet set up NagiosQL) and repetitive but once done, the housekeeping was minimal.

This was all completed in-house.

The only actual cost was the cost of a set of feet for the display unit that was used in the service desk area. Everything else was either end of life machinery (i.e. the server) or freeware/gnuware (openSUSE Linux, the packages themselves). There is no day-to-day cost other than the usual running cost of the server.

OpsManager

Zabbix

Nagios Core is a great solution for monitoring pretty much any size of deployment but you do need to know your way around a Linux system to set it up and run it. The skills you need include knowing the Apache setup on your chosen distro, configuring and compiling GCC tarballs and some idea about configuration syntax. Adding NagiosQL makes it simpler but that also needs some fettling to get it to work reliably. It also helps to be good with Windows administration though chances are that if you are looking at this sort of thing, you may be aware of that. Nagios does not detect systems out of the box and while it can be made to use WMI, it tends to be better working with the NSClient++ service on Windows which can be made to work much like the NRPE service which does the same duties under Linux and Unix.

We primarily use the solution for monitoring ops for computers and our server. We're considering adding other device monitoring as well and at points of sale.

The solution is quite efficient.

The system's alerts are quite good.

The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage.

The latest version is a bit more difficult. There have been some changes that have not really improved the solution.

We have a new manager coming in, and they will watch and see over the course of the year if the solution needs any specific improvements. We're still in the process of testing the solution.

The implementation and deployment might need to be slightly improved.

It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly.

It would be good if the solution had some sort of alarm system to alert managers to any issues. We get good alerts, they just need to get to the right person more efficiently.

We've used the solution over the last 10 months or so. It's been almost a year. We initiated the product in 2020.

The stability of the solution is quite good. We haven't had any issues per se. It's been reliable.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. If a company needs to expand it, it should be able to.

We have about 100 hosts and about 10 servers at this point and maybe 19 at the point of sale.

We don't really have technical support from the solution. We rely instead on learning the solution and focusing on documentation if we need assistance. There's also a community online that's quite helpful.

Their documentation is very complete and they have pretty good policies in place.

We did previously use a different solution. We still use it. It continues to monitor our network. We have a new CTO that is looking to make changes. We're evaluating more economical options.

The installation is initially a little bit complex.

The process took several months. Originally, we were using Linux systems.

We didn't have installers or another company assist us. We handled the implementation ourselves.

We're just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Nagios.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

We're still in the early days in terms of usage. We're still feeling the solution out and testing it for its acceptability within the greater framework of our organization's requirements. We're looking to test it at the point of sale to see how successfully it operates.

Overall, I would recommend the solution to other organizations.

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the solution to monitor our IT infrastructure, like servers, the network, and things like that.

I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them. I also find
the plugins by which you can easily add the divisions valuable.

I am satisfied, but I think there is a little bit of improvement that can be made.

Lessening the price point would be an improvement.

I would like to see more training videos. It is a vast product and it covers so many areas and so many kinds of devices, so I do understand that it's a challenge when you want some kind of integration, or add a plugin, to always have documentation. But, yeah, as much as possible on the documentation, if it can be done better, that would be good.

If there was more application monitoring, it would be much better.

I find the solution stable. I don't have any complaints in regards to the instability of the product. We have used this product now for quite some time and we are happy with it.

For technical support, I think I would try to rate it somewhere around seven out of ten.

No, this is the first one that we started using. There was nothing that we have to complain about here from the past experience.

The initial setup was actually done by one of the vendors so we were one of the partners who collaborated with this for the installation. We were working together to do the installation and then they handed it over to us and then we took it over from there.

In terms of advice, I'd say that you need to know what the plan is and try to understand from which direction you are going to monitor. And, to understand what additional things you'll probably want to do from your side, like putting in scripts and other kinds of automation. So the planning is everything. If there is a particular tool you want to integrate with those things have to be properly planned beforehand.

With the number of features that it has and the ease of integration, I would rate the solution somewhere close to nine out of ten.