Nagios Core Reviews and Pricing

Susantha Kumar

Support on banking at Aithent

Jun 22, 2023

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Helps to monitor server applications

Pros and Cons

"We use the product to monitor server applications."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

What is our primary use case?

We use the product to monitor server applications.

What is most valuable?

I am impressed with the product's alerts and reports.

What needs improvement?

The tool needs to improve the integrations.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is stable. I would rate its stability a six out of ten.

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How was the initial setup?

The tool's setup is straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the product a six out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user978732

Software Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees

Jun 24, 2019

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Improves memory and disc space usage, but is not user friendly

Pros and Cons

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."

What is our primary use case?

We used Nagios Core to monitor our servers in other countries. Our main server is in Cairo, while we monitor other servers in Germany, which are hosting Jenkins and other web services to make sure that the infrastructure is stable and if anything goes wrong it reports it automatically.

How has it helped my organization?

Before using this solution, sometimes Jenkins went down and we didn't know the reason. We eventually discovered that the issue was disc space that exceeded a certain percentage. Now that we have Nagios to monitor the servers, we know if anything goes wrong it can solve the problem before it happens.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features to us are the ability to improve memory usage, disc space usage, and the PDU load of each node.

What needs improvement?

It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through. In addition, I would appreciate an FNP server for sending emails, which now depends on the resting servers for Nagios Core. If it comes with its own FNP server, it would be much better. Also, if it can be installed in other cores, that would be awesome but right now it only uses Linux.

Alias excavation and configurations from the wall rather than the server itself would be great improvements. Also, general UI enhancements and better UX, user experience.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been using Nagios Core for four months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable because it's a Linux based code, which is very basic. It doesn't have many big features, so it's stable. You can add a node in less than half an hour, I think.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We're only currently using Nagios Core on one to ten servers. In the future, we may add more nodes.

How are customer service and technical support?

I haven't tried to contact support. I was searching on the support forums, but that was not for me. I tried many solutions from the support forums. One of them is working, but only after a long time.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to. I had to install them one by one on the app to configure the complication on the app that was solved to authenticate Nagios on the central app. It comes with regular users in files and in order to authenticate, you have to make a lot of confirmations, using Apache as well as Nagios. This was all very hard, and it took me a week to configure it.

I think deployment took about two weeks at the most. We did the deployment by ourselves. We have two people for deployment and maintenance.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Nagios Core is free to use.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate Nagios Core as seven out of ten because it was hard to configure and the implementation process itself took about two weeks. Also, the UI is not friendly. Other products have features that aren't included in Nagios Core. I think that one was the easiest to restore. Also, Nagios supports only Linux, not A/UX. It can't be installed on the servers. If they supported all of these things, it would be much better.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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it_user12222

Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Oct 24, 2013

Everyone ends up using Nagios or a derivative just because everyone else does

Everyone ends up using nagios or a derivative just because... well everyone else does. The size of your org really matters a lot with what you are doing here as Zabbix might fit you right or not at all.

Lately I've been setting up nagios with a graphite back end for people. Then taking advantage of writing your own plugins for nagios to send data to both systems. You can throw a lot of data at graphite and make some super pretty graphs if that is what you are after. For example imagine having all the contents of a vmstat/iostat every X seconds... for ALL your servers that can be queried with less than a minute latency. You can do that with nagios+graphite+yourownfixins. ... and then you show Dev how easy it is to log data into carbon/graphite and become a super hero.

When you start hoarding this much data you can start asking some really detailed questions about disk performance, network latencies, system resources, etc... that before were just guestimates. Now you have the data and the graphs to back them up.

I'm also a big fan of Pandora FMS but I've never implemented it anywhere professionally and the scope it takes is pretty large.

(I should note, nagios is pretty terrible, it's no better than things we had a decade ago.)

The real truth here is that all the current monitoring systems are pretty terrible given that they are no better than what we had a decade ago. Every good sysadmin group makes them work well enough, but there is a lot of making them work. Great sysadmins go on to combine a couple of them with their own bits to make the system a bit more proactive than reactive, which is what most people expect out of monitoring.

Reactive monitoring is fine for certain companies and certain situations and it is easily obtainable with nagios, zabbix, home-brew, stupidspendmoney solution, etc... However reactive monitoring is just the base point for most, it certainly doesn't handle big problems well, or have the capacity to predict events slightly before they are happening. This level of monitoring also doesn't give you much data after an event to figure out what went wrong.

Great admins go on to add proactive systems monitoring and in some cases basic logic monitoring. This is what a lot of us do all the time, to avoid getting paged in the middle of the night, or to know what to pick up at fry's on the way into the office. Proactive monitors a lot more things than basic, and it is essentially the level where everyone works at now, with nagios, etc... That's certainly fine for today and tomorrow. But it doesn't tell you anything about next quarter, and when you ask queries about events in the past they are often very basic in scope.

The other amazingly huge drawback with current monitoring is that if you want to monitor business or application logic, it is going to be something you custom fit into whatever monitoring system you have. This will lead to it being unwieldy and while effective for answering basic questions like, "What's the impact on sales if we lose the east coast data center and everything routes through the west?" That's a fine question but it isn't a question that will get you to the next level, better than your competitors.

So what's next? I'll tell you where I think we should be going and how I am sort of implementing it at some places.

Predictive monitoring on systems AND business logic, with lots of data, and very complex questions being answered. This can be done right now with nagios, graphite and carbon. Nagios fills the monitoring and alerting needs. Carbon stores lots of numerical data, very fast from a lot of sources. Finally with Graphite you can start asking really serious questions like "How did the code push effect overall page performance time, while one colo site was down? What's the business cost loss? Where were the bottlenecks in our environment? Server? Disk? Memory? Network? Code? Traffic?" Once you've constructed one of these list of questions in graphite you can save it for the future, and not only monitor it, but because of legacy data kept on so many key points use it for future predictions.

That said, how do you all that now? Well you throw nagios, graphite and carbon out there and then you CREATE a whole lot of stuff that is specific to your org. This is a lot of work, a lot of effort and takes time and real understanding of the full application and what your end SLA goals are.

So how do we do all this?

You as an admin do this, by creating custom nagios plugins and data handlers on your systems and throwing them in to carbon. As an admin you measure everything, and I mean everything. Think all of the output from a vmstat and an iostat logged in aggregate one minute chunks on every single server you have and kept for years.

From the dev site you get the Lead Dev to agree on some key points where the AppStack should put out some data to carbon. This can be things like time to login, some balance value, whatever metric you want to measure. The key here is to have business logic metrics AND system metrics in the same datastore within Carbon. Now you get to ask question across both data sets, and you get to ask them frequently and fast. You are able to easily make predictions about more load impacting the hardware in what manner, i.e. do we need more spindles, more memory, etc...

This is what I have been doing with some companies in SV right now. It's not pretty or fully blown out yet, because it is a big huge problem and our current monitoring sucks. :D
but it IS doable with current stuff and is quite amazing to know answers to questions that were previously only dreamed about.

What's after that? The pie in the sky next level, would be having an app box in every app group running in debug mode, receiving less traffic of course through the load balancers, and loading all that debug data into carbon. Then you get to ask questions about specific bits of a code release and performance on your real production environment.

... so those are my initial thoughts. Any comments? :)

Further once you have all this, you can now write nagios plugins to poll carbon for values on questions you have created and then alert not only on systems logics and basic app metrics, but real queries that are complex. Stuff like "How come no one has bought anything off page X in the last two hours, is it related to these other conditions? Oh. It is. Create me an alert in nagios so we can be warned when it looks like this is about to happen again." With much more data across more areas you can ask and alert on pretty much anything you can imagine. This is how you make it to next level.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot

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Oct 20, 2016

Chris, do you still find this to be true? Is Nagios still a default tool when people are searching for IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions?

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Massimo Rubboli

Information systems manager at Golfera

Jan 19, 2022

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It's a stable solution for infrastructure monitoring, but it's complex to set up and use

Pros and Cons

"Nagios Core is stable."

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What needs improvement?

The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nagios Core is stable.

How was the initial setup?

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

What other advice do I have?

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

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user196494

IT Coordinator at a tech services company

May 31, 2016

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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.

What is most valuable?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

We have had no issues with the deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been no performance issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How are customer service and technical support?

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

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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

How was the initial setup?

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

What about the implementation team?

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

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's free.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

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

What other advice do I have?

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

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Aymen Dridi

Systems and Virtualization Engineer at Altelios Technology Group

Oct 27, 2022

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Beneficial plugins, large community support, and reliable

Pros and Cons

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."

"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."

What is our primary use case?

We use Nagios Core to detect any issues in our infrastructure, software, system service, and network issues. It is a centralized monitoring service.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want.

What needs improvement?

Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Nagios Core for approximately eight years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Nagios Core is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Nagios Core is very good. We can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client. It's very scalable and we have added the SentryOne as another layer. It's become very easy to use.

This solution is used by two engineering and three technicians. It is not used for end-user.

How are customer service and support?

We use the open-source version of this solution and there is a large community that can provide support for any of our issues.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I am using SCOM in parallel to Nagios Core, it's a monitoring solution by Microsoft. However, I prefer Nagios Core.

How was the initial setup?

Nagios Core is deployed in a Linux operating system and it is simple to do. For a medium-sized infrastructure, the deployment can take a day.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free.

What other advice do I have?

The free version of the solution does not have an interface, but the paid version does.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Nagios Core an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

reviewer1276566

Network Engineer at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 15, 2021

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Efficient and easy to manage with good stability

Pros and Cons

"The solution is quite efficient."

"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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

What is most valuable?

The solution is quite efficient.

The system's alerts are quite good.

The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

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

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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.

How are customer service and technical support?

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.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

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.

How was the initial setup?

The installation is initially a little bit complex.

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

What about the implementation team?

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

What other advice do I have?

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.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user12225

Engineer at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 24, 2013

Nagios vs. SolarWinds - two completely different playing fields

I have setup a Nagios server from scratch as well as worked with Solarwinds pretty extensively. From my perspective they are on two completely different playing fields. Nagios definitely has its place, it's free... and it works well in a smaller environment. Solarwinds is expensive but it is a lot more robust than Nagios. Solarwinds does require you to install "Modules" in order to have in depth application monitoring, etc... Then again, so does Nagios... but you have to pay an arm and a leg for Solarwinds.

So depending on how big your environment is, you'll have to evaluate if the cost is worth it. Nagios, you'll spend your money you save on time to set it up. It takes a lot of time and determination to understand its inner-workings.

Solarwinds is a lot more than just a network monitoring tool. A quick example: You can develop "ghost runs" of an application and have it monitor the latency between steps. Meaning, you could configure it to load a web page, login to the webpage and run a link to gather data, all the while timing how long it takes to get from step to step. That gives you an idea of how much more Solarwinds has to it.

Nagios does have many open-source modules you can use (hell I even used one to telnet into an old AS400 and monitoring running processes).

So like I said, it depends on the environment and what you want out of the system. To answer the question about netflow, Nagios itself I don't think can do netflow but it can pair up with another module that can (and you still get to see it from a single pane of glass). Any specific questions let me know! Pirate

There's a ton of open source software out there that use Nagios and not. Ninja (front end GUI for nagios), Zenoss, What's Up Gold (YUCK!), etc... You could also get things like Alienvault (nagios is built in) that has more than just monitoring in it (it's an Open Source IDS). Cacti can be paired with Nagios to provide you with graphs for bandwidth utilization... Ok now I'm starting to blab, I'll end it here.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user111534Linux Sysadmin at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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May 8, 2014

We've piloted both Nagios and Zenoss here. Since we're starting with nothing Nagios has met our needs well and proved to be a valuable resource almost immediately by setting up simple SSH checks for our Linux hosts and SNMP checks (ie no agent) for our Windows hosts. Zenoss just proved to be overly complicated to get metrics like up/down, disk usage, memory usage etc. Perhaps with more time it would have proved to be more functional than Nagios but the simplicity of Nagios is really appealing.

How do you find installing and configuring Solarwinds vs. Zenoss? Is Solarwinds closer to Nagios or Zenoss?

The one big thing I struggle with with Nagios is that our Windows admins don't want to SSH into a Linux host and configure monitoring by editing text files. Does Ninja include a UI for setting up monitoring of new hosts?

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