+2 or 3 for Nagios. We have 2 different installs of Nagios, one at hq & one at our colo facility. Between the two of them we monitor 227 hosts and over 1000 services (ping, disk space, specific services, utilization, etc etc. etc).
We have a Citrix server farm consisting of 6 virtualized Citrix servers, if one of the Citrix servers is down Nagios will notify our individual Exchange mailboxes it will not notify the on-call devices unless all the Citrix servers are down. We have complete dev and test environments that are set to notify our individual Exchange mailboxes of any issues during normal business hours only, on-call never gets notifications on those environments. Just to let you know some of what is possible with Nagios. If there isn't a plug-in to do what you want in Nagios, ask in the Nagios community forums, chances are, in a few months there will be. There is a web-based management for Nagios called Nagios-QL, highly recommend it. Makes Nagios management/configuration essentially a windows based application ;) Yes, Nagios is a lot of work to setup and configure. Once you've done that though, it's pretty much hands-off. We've been using Nagios for 5+ years now. At one point, before we got our nice new UPS and nice new AC unit for the server room, we had Nagios configured to take some actions based on events (power outage, temperature changes) that would start shutting down servers in a 3 tiered list, non-essential like dev, test and redundant systems first, then a more intrusive list, then finally all remaining production systems. Nagios can work too well sometimes also ;) If you don't have your notifications configured properly, you run the risk of becoming "inoculated" to the notifications. That is something to be aware of when setting up Nagios. There’s not a Windows version of Nagios, however there are Windows plugins > to monitor Windows servers, AD, Exchange, even VM’s. > > > > *Jay Dale* > > I.T. Manager, 3GiG > > Mobile: 713.299.2541 > > Email: jay.d...@3-gig.com <kandy.luk...@3-gig.com> > > > > Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including any attached files, may > contain confidential and/or privileged information for the sole use of the > intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby > notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this e-mail and > attachments, if any, or the information contained herein, is strictly > prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive > information for the intended recipient), please contact the sender by reply > e-mail and delete all copies of this message. > > > > > > *From:* John Aldrich [mailto:jaldr...@blueridgecarpet.com] > *Sent:* Friday, April 16, 2010 9:12 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? > > > > AFAIK, isn’t there a Windows version of Nagios? Not that I’m a Linux > doubter (I **run** Fedora at home on my personal machine! J) but not > everyone here is comfortable running Linux. J > > > > [image: John-Aldrich][image: Tile-Tools] > > > > *From:* Jay Dale [mailto:jay.d...@3-gig.com] > *Sent:* Friday, April 16, 2010 10:00 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? > > > > +1 on Nagios. > > > > I’m not a Linux person by any stretch, but there’s a ton of references out > there that helps with the setup of Nagios, and it’s free. > > > > It took about a week to get everything the way I wanted it, but it’s > working good now – email alerts and all, using Exchange 2007. > > > > Jay > > > > *Jay Dale* > > I.T. Manager, 3GiG > > Mobile: 713.299.2541 > > Email: jay.d...@3-gig.com <kandy.luk...@3-gig.com> > > > > Confidentiality Notice: This e-mail, including any attached files, may > contain confidential and/or privileged information for the sole use of the > intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby > notified that any review, dissemination or copying of this e-mail and > attachments, if any, or the information contained herein, is strictly > prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient (or authorized to receive > information for the intended recipient), please contact the sender by reply > e-mail and delete all copies of this message. > > > > > > *From:* Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@smithcons.com] > *Sent:* Friday, April 16, 2010 8:36 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* RE: Server monitoring solution recommendations? > > > > If you want “free and easy and does 95%” – look at Polymon. > > > > If you want “complete and fairly easy” – OpsMgr is the answer. It rocks. > > > > If you want “free and complete” – Nagios is a good answer, but it isn’t > easy to setup. > > > > IMHO. YMMV. > > > > Regards, > > > > Michael B. Smith > > Consultant and Exchange MVP > > http://TheEssentialExchange.com > > > > *From:* James Rankin [mailto:kz2...@googlemail.com] > *Sent:* Friday, April 16, 2010 9:12 AM > *To:* NT System Admin Issues > *Subject:* Re: Server monitoring solution recommendations? > > > > System Center Operations Manager 2007 is what we use here - it has the > capability to monitor ESX hosts and other .nix boxes as well as Windows > servers (although getting the Unix stuff into the console is a bit of a > fight, as I found out last week). It's only drawback from your point of view > is probably the cost, but it does a fantastic job of aggregating everything > that would normally come from Dell IT Assistant, Windows event log > collectors, Citrix XenApp, VMWare VirtualCenter and just about every > application we use, and displaying it all in one nice console on the wall. > YMMV > > On 16 April 2010 14:07, Michael Leone <oozerd...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm investigating server monitoring solutions for my enterprise. What > I'm interested in is real world experiences and recommendations, not > just sales pitches and product sheets that I can get from Google. > > The way I see it, I need 2 basic functions: I need to be able to > monitor various aspects of a server (CPU usage, free disk space, is a > service running, does the web service return a web page in a timely > manner, is the switch at that site being overloaded, etc - the usual > things you'd want to know from a server, I think) and then alert me > when certain triggers or thresholds are crossed; and also to provide > historical reports, showing trends over time. At a previous job, I > used to ServersAlive!, which suited my needs there. But now I am at a > place that has over 100 servers and switches, across multiple sites. > And so I think I'd need something with more heft, perhaps. > > We're an HP shop, and I am looking at HP's SIM (Insight Manager) > software, but that doesn't seem to monitor all the sorts of functions > I want, nor does it seem to present it in a timely manner. > > I'm also looking at PacketTraps PT 360 tool suite (which is free), and > that seems to show me some of what I need, but doesn't seem to have a > lot in the way of reporting, nor have I found a way (yet) for it to > alert me to configurable settings. > > I've also downloaded SpiceWorks, on the recommendation of a colleague, > but haven't had a chance to investigate it yet. > > We're a gov't agency, so I don't have a whole lot of money. But I have > a need, and at the moment, nothing in place to fill it. Getting an > alert email that tells me that my mail server CPU has been up over 80% > for more than xx seconds would be a good thing, so I don't have to get > phone calls from users, asking why mail is so slow, and that's the > first I've heard of it. I'm sure you get the idea. And the boss wants > reports over time, for capacity planning and the like. > > So any recommendations would be welcome, as would anything I've > forgotten. We're almost exclusively a Windows shop, but with 10 VMware > ESX hosts, a number of MS SQL servers (2000, 2005), and a number of > Cisco switches (and a couple Nortel ones scattered here and there). No > Exchange (we're a Notes shop). > > TIA > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > > > > > -- > "On two occasions...I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr Babbage, if you put into > the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able > rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such > a question." > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > -- Sherry Abercrombie "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
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