[nycbug-talk] favourite monitoring tools

[pete wright]

On 11/22/05, Dru <dlavigne6 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> I have a client who is torn between spending $1995 on a commercial
> monitoring package that only installs on Windows or an Open Source
> solution which will run on his FreeBSD servers. His requirements are SMS
> paging ability (a must) and the ability to pay for support or at least
> access to decent documentation. GUI interface that won't scare the other
> admins is also a bonus.
>
> Looking through ports/net-mgmt shows that Nav looks promising on features
> (though lean on documentation other than the mailing lists). Anyone using
> this product? http://metanav.ntnu.no/moin.cgi/
>
> Experiences good/bad with Bigsister, Nagios and Zabbix also appreciated.
> The client needs to manage just over 100 systems, a mix of routers, switches
> and servers.
>

I use nagios very extensively on a pretty large network (5000+
hosts/switches/routers).  It is kinda pain to setup, but quite stable
and has scaled well for us.  Our checks are a mixture of binaries,
perl/python/shell scripts and we do make heavy use of SNMP as well to
monitor a wide range of things (disk space/system load/network through
put).  You can also purchase third party support for Nagios I believe,
but have no experience with any of those vendors:

http://www.nagios.org/support/

So, I'd give Nagios a +1 despite the some things I'd like to change
from a configuration management perspective.  It also seems to full
fill all of your prerequisites.

-p

--
~~o0OO0o~~
Pete Wright
www.nycbug.org
NYC's *BSD User Group