[CentOS] Migrating away from Nagios

[Whit Blauvelt]

> Jane Curry wrote:
> > I'd try Zenoss.  I wrote a big paper comparing Nagios, OpenNMS and
> > Zenoss (
> > http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/jane/open_source_mgmt_options.html )

Thanks for sharing that, Jane. Great paper.


On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 07:40:10AM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:

> Also OpenNMS has had a lot of development in the last couple of years.
> Maps are in the core code, much more configuration can be done through the
> web interface ....

All good stuff. But there's a big trade off. Web-based GUIs get coupled with
XML. XML, when you need to go into it, is not as human-friendly as the
bracketed-text config files of Nagios. That said, the default file
arrangment of Nagios isn't brilliant. But Kocjan's book, Learning NAGIOS 3.0
offers a far more coherent installation scheme.

As Jane's paper makes clear, Nagios less the networking tool, and more the
extensible way to monitor specific systems and applications. If hand editing
configuration files scares you, it's not for you. But anything that's trying
to go fully GUI these days goes XML. And if hand editing configuration files
seems to you - like to me - the perfect way to precisely control vital
system daemons, then XML is a distinct disadvantage.

Whit