On Apr 16, 2008, at 11:25 AM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote: > On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:20:29AM -0800, Israel Brewster wrote: >> To some extent, yes, but not necessarily a service we can monitor. > > There are cases that fit this description, but I'm not sure if the > examples you provide are. > >> For example, printers. > > Telnet to 9100 and look for a banner. Or the equivalent for non > JetDirect printers..
Ok, that one might be of some use, in the case where the printer is responding to pings (host up) but not accepting connections (service down). Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look into it. >> Even some more essential devices such as switches... > > And moving traffic; you might find it useful to ping-check other > things > on that switch. Or at least ssh-check the switch controller itself. Yep, we are - all the hosts connected to the switch. That's not a service check on the switch, though, that's host checks on devices connected to it. Trying to monitor something like this directly on the switch as a service check would just be redundant. Maybe save a few seconds, but if you see all the hosts on the far side of a switch go down, while the switch is still up, it should be fairly obvious that the switch is having problems :-D >> Not to mention the rather large category of client machines > > Sure. But for workstations, you're not monitoring diskspace? Open > TCP > listens (to watch for trojans) Well, we could, and for some places this sort of through monitoring is overkill. >> So yeah, while this may not be the way nagios is designed to work, >> and >> may never be (which I can live with if so), I really don't see this >> as >> being all that unusual a situation, as some responses seem to imply. > > Well, it's not that it's unusual, I think; I believe the assertion > being made is that only doing a ping is not the Best Practice. I guess I see your point, in that there is typically something on any device which could be monitorable as a service. One could also argue that if it could be an issue (such as disk space on a client machine, or Open TCP listens), it should be monitored. These are valid arguments. However, I would argue that cluttering up your nagios display with services that either a) are fringe cases which would be quickly noticed anyway, or b) which you really don't care about, not to mention the additional network, monitoring server, and client load this imposes, is not best practice. Best Practice, in my mind at least, is Keep It Simple. Just monitor what you need to in order to provide the best service to your clients you can. ----------------------------------------------- Israel Brewster Computer Support Technician Frontier Flying Service Inc. 5245 Airport Industrial Rd Fairbanks, AK 99709 (907) 450-7250 x293 ----------------------------------------------- > > > Cheers, > -- jra > -- > Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL > PROTECTED] > Designer +-Internetworking------+--------- > + RFC 2100 > Ashworth & Associates | Best Practices Wiki | > | '87 e24 > St Petersburg FL USA +-http://bestpractices.wikia.com-+ +1 > 727 647 1274 > > If you can read this... thank a system administrator. Or two. > --me > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference > Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save > $100. > Use priority code J8TL2D2. > http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone > _______________________________________________ > Nagios-users mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users > ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when > reporting any issue. > ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save $100. Use priority code J8TL2D2. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone _______________________________________________ Nagios-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users ::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. ::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null
