Nagios Core Reviews

The most valuable features of this product are the very lightweight code and easy-to-manage plug-ins.

Apart from the main Nagios core engine, one can add several APIs and add-ons to make the Nagios engine more stronger without compromising it's performance.

Each config parameter can be easily tuned as per individual's need. Many proven frontends are available to get performance related output from the Nagios engine.

Also, Nagios can work without any database back end. It generates a single file for each day and maintains it in a separate directory until a Linux System Admin removes it manually. In Nagios terms, it is called archiving. When someone wants an availability report for a particular server for the last year, Nagios simply fetches all of the relevant files and outputs the data within the shortest period of time. There is no need to query any database to get historical data, which puts extra burden on CPU and memory.

Using Nagios, I'm managing more than 1000 services, which involves the following operating nodes:

• IBM AIX
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• HP-Unix
• Windows enterprise-grade OS
• Cisco router/switches
• FortiGate and WatchGuard firewalls
• APC UPS systems
• Many more...

The majority of the above nodes support SNMP v1/2, thru which one needs to tune up the monitoring plug-in as needed.

Considering my utilization of Nagios on a daily basis, it would be really great if Nagios can concentrate on the following areas of improvement:

• Custom availability report and export as PDF
• Nagios SLA. I'm currently working on Nagios Digger, which has many code-level problems. In my present configuration, I've observed PHP level coding issues. I'm able to fetch all Nagios data into the Nagios Digger database (mariadb in rhel7) successfully, but found difficulties fetching and replicating it into the PHP front end. I've already contacted its author and coordination is in progress to make it available for the community.
• SMS tool integration with Nagios

I have been using Nagios for more than five years.

In Nagios Core, I haven't had any minor problems in terms of stability. If any did arise, I never knew about it....!!!

I require less customer service because I am using an open source product. But, sincere thanks to the Nagios community for providing excellent and prompt support as and when required.

Initial setup was very straightforward. Just check the official Nagios website (www.nagios.org) for installation instructions.

If a person has basic or in-depth level knowledge of all required network/server equipment, than he/she can easily implement Nagios.

Also, it is advisable to have proper knowledge of SNMP v1/2/3 with Nagios agents for Windows and Unix-like OS.

I started learning and configuring out data centre monitoring system by using Zabbix and openNMS. But, finally I selected Nagios due to its very large user community and maximum tunable parameters.

I use Nagios Core for basic monitoring of my systems and services.

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

I have found Nagios Core to be challenging in terms of its centralized architecture and configuration complexities, especially in a Microsoft environment. Making optimizations or changes often requires reinstalling the server, which can be inconvenient.

I have been using Nagios Core for over a year.

It is a very stable product. I would rate the stability as a seven out of ten.

Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers. However, it is scalable in sizing, allowing for easy updates and upgrades without much complication. Just need to adjust settings in the software during the process. I would rate the scalability as a six out of ten.

I have worked with Centreon in my organization as well.

The installation of Nagios Core was relatively straightforward with no major complexities. My team managed to install it within a day. Maintaining it is straightforward for us. We don't do frequent updates; it is a one-time install. The only ongoing task is occasional security adjustments, mainly related to access control. 

I would recommend Nagios Core for CentOS organizations, especially for simpler evaluations or smaller projects where a significant investment isn't required. It is suitable for those without extensive monitoring needs. Overall, I would rate the solution as a six out of ten.

Our primary use case is for Infrastructure monitoring.

Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well.

Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it. We have multiple agents and scripts available with the Nagios Core portals and the internet. The cost is also very acceptable.

Datadog provides the compatibility to integrate with these big data platforms like Cloudera and others. These services are very efficient and they provide customer support with it. In this case, I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future.

I have been working with Nagios Core for the past five or six years.

Nagios Core is highly stable.

Nagios Core is scalable for our purposes.

The implementation was completed in-house because previously it was an open source tool. We can configure it to our own needs, based on our own requirements. The only task we had to complete is creating the script and using the tool. We had alerts created for our mobile phones, email and dashboard.

When we look at pricing version eleven requires purchasing a license. With version seven no license was required since it was open source. When you upgraded to the licensed version only then did you pay for a license

I would rate Nagios Core a nine out of ten.

We use Nagios for one of our customers to monitor all the servers, firewalls, routers, and cameras. While monitoring the server we get alerts, this enables us to raise a ticket and notify end users that we are aware of the issue before they need to notify us.

We have 80 people using the dashboard and getting the alerts. Depending on the number of servers, routers, and firewalls we are monitoring in current clusters. When one cluster goes down, it will automatically take data from another cluster. 

We support 24/7 because our client is a financial company, if the critical servers go down, they would face financial issues. 

The features of Nagios Core that we find most valuable are the plugins we use, we can check the uptime and see how many servers and routers and create groups accordingly. From these groups, we can check how many servers and routers go down. 

We also like the alerting features. One of the dashboards they provide monitor total assets and how many are up and how many are down.

If we need to process quicker, we use third party plugins to avoid downtime.

Nagios Core would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down. 

Comparing Nagios UI and Nagios Core, in Nagios Core we need to do some coding while Nagios XI has everything in UI. If you go with Nagios XI the developer task is minimized because they help provide the UI. With Nagios Core, we need to log into the Linux servers and we need to change that particular directory. We need to write a code for each and every server.

I have been working with Nagios Core for two years.

We deploy Nagios on a cloud, so there are features like plugins. The help desk tickets plugins so we can monitor the lock files as well from main server and create dashboards.

The security-related features also are there to monitor antivirus and install or not on each and every server. 

We were working with ELK. Due to costing we switched to Nagios Core because it is free for the alerting feature. 

The initial setup of Nagios Core is straightforward. We installed as per the steps mentioned in Nagios' documentation. It can be deployed in a day.

I completed the installation myself.

Most of the features in Nagios Core are free. Most plugins are free. 

When considering Nagios Core you should consider how many servers, firewalls and routers you need to monitor. Then determine which services need to be monitored by Nagios Core and how many service alerts are needed so you can create clusters and keep your gig size and RAM size accordingly.

I would rate Nagios Core a 7 out of 10.

Our primary use case for this solution is an APM for application performance monitoring. For example, we deployed the solution on-premises so we could observe the solution. We look at the threats at the web containers, the data source, and all these components under this monitoring.

The application performance monitoring feature is valuable. We primarily use it for user experience monitoring and determining which layer the problem happened to resolve it.

The initial setup process could be improved.

We have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable but we are still familiarizing ourselves with tool and have not scaled largely yet.

We do not have experience with customer service and support.

The initial setup process could be easier. For example, the setup for infrastructure monitoring is straightforward, but in the case of application monitoring, it is more complicated.

We primarily implement through vendor teams.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good, but the initial setup process could be easier. I recommend the solution to users who want a more diverse environment for monitoring.

We use Nagios to monitor networking infrastructure and services.

The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful.

The mapping is a little hard.

I've been using Nagios Core for three to five years.

Nagios is 100 percent stable.

Nagios is appropriate for companies of all sizes, but a larger enterprise might require a bigger IT team. The largest team I've seen was 50 people. You can easily scale Nagios up, but I've never done it. 

Nagios support is good. They also have a complete knowledge base, so if you need to figure something out, you can find everything about the solution in one place.

I used Pandora about seven years ago, so I can only speak about the capabilities of the solution as it existed at the time. Pandora was excellent, but the documentation was too complicated.

It depends on infrastructure, but normally Nagios is easy to deploy, and I could do it by myself. It usually takes two or three days, but I needed a week for one deployment. You need to install and configure everything and deploy the agents on various servers.

After deployment, you need to do periodic updates and patching. You download the latest pack from the Nagios server with the client. You can do an ATT update depending on if you have Red Hat or Windows between the platforms.

It's monitoring all of our production environment and alerting us to any issues that might pop up.

The benefits are that it's free and it allows us to monitor all of our production. So it gives us a comfort level of knowing that if there is a problem that pops up, we get notified.

• GUI interface
• Notification capabilities
• Real-time reporting

In terms of any further features, that would bump us into their paid product. For what we get and what we use, and all the libraries that are available, it's pretty robust.

However, for the version we're using, making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do.

It has been rock solid.

So far, it has met our needs. As far as I know, from reading blogs and the like, it can go to many more servers and even multiple data centers. It seems like it's pretty scalable.

Tech support has been pretty good. There have been a couple of occasions where we've had to pick up the phone and call, and for the most part, they are very prompt, very quick, very responsive.

I had used this solution before and there wasn't anything in place here that was any good, so it was a no-brainer for me.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are 

• flexibility
• supportability
• scalability.

I set the whole thing up. It wasn't complex, it was just that I had to do a lot of planning. If you follow your plan then you won't end up in trouble. If you deviate from the plan, you are going to have trouble.

We have the ability right now to see and create reports to tell whether or not we're meeting our SLAs on our production servers, through it. That is something that we wrote and implemented as a plug-in.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10 because it's relatively easy to implement and the cost is great, it's free.

My advice would be, save yourself a lot of time - go get it and install it.

Nagios doesn't get the respect it deserves; most likely due to the fact that it doesn't have a licensing cost. However, when implemented correctly, this is a powerful enterprise toolset. Specifically, Nagios provides massive flexibility in terms of the types of endpoints you want to monitor (infrastructure, rudimentary application, process, and storage) and a wide variety of conditions to evaluate across including binary type conditions analysis (like threshold exceeded or not) or degrees of conditions violations (such as 30% warning; 80% critical). The dashboarding and heads up display is practical and useful for enterprise/network operations center use cases. The extensibility of Nagios also allows for integration to ticketing systems further adding value for service support and production monitoring use cases. 

• Low cost approach for massive scale infrastructure monitoring
• Rapid deployment, if you know what you are doing you can have a solid Nagios implementation up and running in short order
• Accurate and actionable information 
• Ability to fine tune alert and condition management engines

Dashboards and HUDS could use a facelift to be more in line with next generation monitoring tools that really have amazing UI’s. Sadly, many people may think that Nagios itself as a tool may not be sophisticated because it lacks the typical definition of a sophisticated UI. This is to ensure it is more in line with next generation monitoring tools that really have amazing UI’s. Sadly, many people may think that Nagios itself as a tool may not be sophisticated because it lacks the typical definition of a sophisticated UI.
 
Nagios has significant capability and opportunity for customizations to really “dial-in” the implementation to suit your specific enterprise requirements. But, enabling many of these capabilities requires an SME and to sustain and support the implementation requires effort and manpower. The larger the implementation and more extensive the customizations- the more resource intensive the deployment will become.

Application level monitoring is limited.

To really maximize the power of Nagios, you need an SME (but true if anything in IT).