Nagios Core Reviews

Name: Nagios Core
Brand: Nagios
Rating: 4.0 (50 reviews)

Vendor: Nagios

4.0 out of 5

50 reviews
79% willing to recommend

455 followers

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What is Nagios Core?

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Get the Nagios Core Buyer's Guide and find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core, Datadog, Zabbix and more!

Nagios Core is the #6 ranked solution in best Network Monitoring Tools and #9 ranked solution in Infrastructure Monitoring tools. PeerSpot users give Nagios Core an average rating of 8.0 out of 10. Nagios Core is most commonly compared to Datadog: Nagios Core vs Datadog. Nagios Core is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 56% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 15% of all views.

Helped 830,824 peers since 2012

Featured reviews

Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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Julian-Lewis

Senior application performance monitoring and alerting specialist at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The functionality in Nagios Core is limited compared to the enterprise version, Nagios XI. If I ever need a free tool that offers similar capabilities to Nagios, I would choose Zabbix because it provides all the features in one tool. While both Nagios and Zabbix have their own strengths, some vendors specifically require Nagios for monitoring. In those cases, Nagios Core fits in quite nicely. I have previously spun up versions of Nagios Core in the cloud on AWS and Azure to test and explore their capabilities. Additionally, I have been able to automate deployments using Ansible. Integration with a third party is easy. I recommend the solution. Overall, I rate it an eight out of ten.

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Nishith Vyas

Sr. System Administrator at Guj Info Petro Limited

I started working with Nagios Core when RHEL 5 was there & since then it is still in functioning mode various types of hosts and services have been configured such as the IBM AIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows, Cisco Routers, WLCs, Switches & certain gateway level firewalls. (Fortigate, Juniper Netscreen, Checkpoint, Radware AppDirector Load Balancer) As my knowledge gains, I've started deploying additional plug-ins (as stated above) to have a productive monitoring environment. Please Note: Nagios Exchange is a great source of plug-ins for testing purposes. Nagios is still functional & doing well after many years despite having 500+ nodes & 2500+ services. Moving further, the Nagios HA pilot project is in progress to have a high availability & business continuity. In opposite to Nagios XI, Nagios Core needs to be configured through a shell console only. Though open-source GUI Content Management tools are available I'm good @ shell level only. Using NCPA, We monitor active & passive checks both. However, Active checks mostly work well in my architecture. The biggest difference between Nagios Core & XI is, everything comes pre-built with Nagios XI, while for Nagios Core, all add-ons need to be configured individually. So, Nagios Core Engineer/Administrator requires in-depth shell-based knowledge & a clear understanding of Nagios Structure for all kinds of troubleshooting.

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Nagios Core mindshare

Product category:

As of January 2025, the mindshare of Nagios Core in the Network Monitoring Software category stands at 3.4%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

PeerAnalyst reports

Type	Title	Date
Category	Network Monitoring Software	Jan 15, 2025	Download
Product	Reviews, tips, and advice from real users	Jan 15, 2025	Download
Comparison	Nagios Core vs Zabbix	Jan 15, 2025	Download
Comparison	Nagios Core vs Auvik Network Management (ANM)	Jan 15, 2025	Download
Comparison	Nagios Core vs Datadog	Jan 15, 2025	Download

Title	Rating	Mindshare	Recommending
Datadog	4.3	4.2%	96%	186 interviews Add to research
Zabbix	4.1	11.5%	95%	103 interviews Add to research

Valuable Features

The valuable features of Nagios Core, according to the reviews, include its ability to integrate with Python and Bash Script for monitoring services, impressive alerts and reports, customization options for specific needs, compatibility with various types of hosts and services, and availability of plugins for testing purposes.

Users like the timely notifications for issue resolution, application performance monitoring, flexibility and configurability, ease of installation and management, ability to check server availability and network connectivity, and monitoring of uptime and assets with alerting features.

Additionally, users appreciate the simplicity and user-friendliness of the interface.

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."
"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."
"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."

Room for Improvement

Areas for improvement on Nagios Core include the lack of a graphical display, the need for better integrations, limited plugins for cloud monitoring, the absence of a user-friendly GUI, an outdated and non-interactive user interface, a cumbersome initial setup process, the requirement of using Nagios XI for a user interface, the lack of compatibility with big data platforms, difficulty with mapping, the need for a user traffic sensor, the desire for an improved graphical interface, limitations in the free version, the need for aggregations when servers go down, and the need for an improved dashboard and monitoring features.

"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

ROI

Users reported significant cost savings and recognition from their organization for using Nagios Core for monitoring, as it prevented the need for purchasing a paid tool.

Pricing

Users have varied experiences with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Nagios Core. Some reviewers find Nagios Core to be a cost-effective solution, rating the pricing positively. They appreciate that it is an open-source product with no licensing fees. However, some mention that while Nagios Core itself is free, there may be costs associated with hosting it on an Amazon server.

Nagios Core can be converted into Nagios XI, a paid version, by contacting nagios.com.

"The product is cheaply priced."
"It's free."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

Popular Use Cases

The primary use case of Nagios Core is for monitoring server applications, infrastructure, system services, and network issues. It is used to monitor CPU, memory, storage, running services, and various parameters on Windows and Linux nodes. It is also used to monitor Cisco nodes such as switches, WLCs, APs, and routers, including CPU and memory utilization, bandwidth utilization, PING RTA, jitter, packet loss, temperature, free interfaces, IOS version, and switch stack status.

Additionally, Nagios Core is used for monitoring services like DNS/domain name expiry and SSL expiry. It is deployed on-premises and provides notifications on the status of monitored systems. The solution is used by companies in various industries, such as sales, security, and infrastructure monitoring.

Service and Support

The customer service and support for Nagios Core are not directly provided by Nagios themselves due to it being an open-source product. Instead, users rely on the community for support, which has been sufficient for users' needs. There is a large community that can provide assistance for any issues that arise. Additionally, there is a complete knowledge base available for users to find information about the solution.

Deployment

The setup process for Nagios Core was described as not difficult, straightforward, simple, easy, and not complicated. Some users mentioned that the setup is well-documented and the steps mentioned in Nagios' documentation are helpful. However, a few users found the setup process for application monitoring to be more complicated compared to infrastructure monitoring.

Scalability

Some express concern about scalability, stating that the single Nagios Core setup has limitations and may require a distributed monitoring environment for better scalability. However, others mention that the solution is scalable with no issues.

Stability

The stability of Nagios Core is highly rated by users, with ratings ranging from six to ten out of ten. Users consistently describe the solution as stable, reliable, and highly stable. They also mention that the performance is good and that there are no concerns regarding stability.

Some users attribute occasional timeouts and spurious events to their network setup rather than any issues with Nagios Core itself.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Nagios Core Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.