Nagios Core Reviews

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.

It is used for monitoring services on a bunch of virtual machines.

In terms of the version, we're fairly up to date. We are perhaps not the most up-to-date, but we're fairly current.

It provides visibility of the platforms.

It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to.

We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier.

In terms of new features, we're just using it for what it is. We are using what we've got now. We don't have any additional requirements as far as I'm aware.

I have been using this solution for four or five years.

It is fine. There are no concerns there. Our biggest challenge is that we get a lot of timeouts, but that seems to be because of our network setup. There are a whole bunch of spurious events being reported, but they're more timeouts in getting to the Nagios agents.

It seems to be all right at the moment. We don't seem to be having any problems with that. We have upwards of 20 users, and it is being used on a daily basis.

I have not contacted them for a long time.

Nagios is the first one.

From what I heard, it didn't seem difficult to set up. It was quite straightforward.

We're still rolling out and deploying new instances of VMs that we want to monitor. It's an ongoing process.

We deployed it ourselves. Its maintenance is done by one or two people.

We are using the free version.

I would recommend it to others. It does what it is supposed to. It is pretty good. 

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

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.

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).

Our main goal with Nagios is to keep a close eye on our servers and the services running in our AWS environment. We’ve got a mix of Windows and Linux systems, each running specific services, and Nagios alerts us whenever something isn’t quite right. It’s also great for monitoring the sites we host on IIS. We've relied on Nagios since 2013, and it’s been a real game-changer when you have so many moving parts to track.

I can say Real-time Monitoring and Alerts, Comprehensive Coverage, Cost-effective Solution, Historical Data and Analysis, and Reliability and Stability

The value of the solution is that we get timely notifications if there are any issues and they can be solved immediately. Nagios provides all the plugins required. 

The UI is a little outdated so it's not as user-friendly as it should be and the graphics should be displayed in a better way. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. 

The scalability of this solution is impressive, particularly because it allows us to expand our monitoring capabilities as our infrastructure grows. With Nagios Core, we can easily add new hosts, services, and devices as needed, ensuring that we maintain visibility across an increasing number of systems. While configuring additional checks can require some setup time, the flexibility it offers makes it well-suited for scaling. Additionally, the open-source community provides plugins and resources that help address scaling challenges, making it adaptable for both small and large environments.

Because the solution is open source, there's no direct support from Nagios. We post our questions to the community and that provides sufficient support. 

Positive

The initial setup is easy and straightforward. Deployment probably took us an hour or two and was not implemented all at once. New areas come up all the time that require monitoring so we research which plugin will be useful and implement that. It's enhanced gradually whenever we have a specific requirement. The implementation was done in-house. There is some maintenance involved, including for the upgrades. I manage the solution but there's a development team to monitor the services, around eight to 10 people. 

The product is open-source, so it’s completely free to use. We have it deployed on an Amazon server, which costs us a small amount approximately $30 per month for AWS hosting

We tested ManageEngine and another open-source product like Zenoss but we found Nagios easier to set up and manage. 

I recommend this solution because it’s very user-friendly. There are excellent resources available online, and it provides everything we need to meet our requirements.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs.

Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available.

I've been using Nagios Core for almost two years.

It is a stable solution, and I would rate the stability at eight out of ten.

I would rate the scalability at five out of ten.

Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees.

Nagios Core is a good tool overall, and I would rate it at six on a scale from one to ten.

I'm primarily using Nagios Core to monitor infrastructure like servers, virtual machines, and telephone usage like IP-DECT antennas. I don't use all of Nagios Core's data functionality. I only use the monitoring features.

The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved.

We've been using Nagios Core for about five years. 

Nagios Core is stable.

The Nagios Core setup is complex, but I can handle it all myself. 

I rate Nagios Core seven out of 10. Nagios Core is not easy to use, so I don't recommend it for everyone.

It is stable and fit for purpose. Various plugins are available as per your need in the open source marketplace to use and customize according to the need.

We use other enterprise products for most monitoring activities. However, Nagios has been the product to go to if we need a cost effective solution that can directly fit our needs. We use it in our business operations center to view dashboards (i.e. it provides a Google map view) of critical systems within stores.

Setup is bit complicated due to the large set of libraries it needs, but this may be because it's open source.

We use only Nagios Core.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

Stability wise it just works without any major maintenance.

It's highly scalable and will scale according to your needs.

It is an open source tool which provides capability to customize it according to the needs. So internally you need to have expertise to consume its servers unless you go for the paid options.

You should be sure that you have the expertise to customize it, and I would recommend the paid-for Nagios XI for the additional support.

This is a fit for purpose product which means that if you have a definite list of requirements and are not willing, or unable, to spend money on big enterprise tools, then Nagios is a tool to go to. Also, any changes to the customization means that you need to have the skill sets internally within the organisation to effectively use it. Otherwise it's a great open source product.