[Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies

2008-02-11 Thread mark . potter
I know that this has been discussed ad nauseam and I have read quite a bit 
of those discussions this morning and over the preceding weekend. I still 
am at a bit of a loss. I have a pretty firm understanding of parenting and 
dependencies and how they both work. I think I have a good grasp on what 
we need in our environment but I seem to be missing the point in 
explaining this to my boss. So here is an overview of what I have to 
monitor, what my boss is asking, and what I think we need and maybe 
someone can beat some sense into me.

I have a medium sized network (100-200 hosts).
Hosts are in cabinets on site (no off site monitoring yet)
Cabinets are not setup by subnet (I think this is fairly normal)
1 switch per cabinet
Multiple subnets across the farm

The boss and I agree that the switch in each cabinet needs to be part of 
our monitoring setup and be part of some sort of parenting/dependency. 
This is where we cease seeing eye to eye. For the purpose of making this 
easy lets say we are dealing with three subnets and ten cabinets only. 
Here is what the boss wants (at least as far as I can understand): Setup 
three hosts per cabinet to represent the three subnets, that actual IP 
would be the IP of the switch. Parent the hosts in the cabinet to these 
and parent these to the gateways for the subnet. This is, with the 
parameters above, thirty extra hosts, and IMO a management nightmare.

Since the switch is not part of the route my thought is that we parent in 
the normal manner as I understand it, host parents to router, and so on 
and at that point we would make the hosts have a dependency on the switch 
through which their connection passes. The current setup doesn't take into 
account the switches at all but rather is setup to where each host is 
parented to it's gateway IP and that has been working rather well but if a 
switch dies we need to be able to see that via nagios and not have 20 or 
servers and their services going off all at once.. I cannot see why adding 
tens of special hosts for the boss's parenting solution will help anything 
in the long run.

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to respond to this as I 
probably haven't explained very well to begin with.

Best Regards,

Mark L. Potter
Systems Engineer
Academy Sports  Outdoors-
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Re: [Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies

2008-02-11 Thread Marc Powell


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:nagios-users-
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 11:14 AM
 To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net
 Subject: [Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies
 


 I have a medium sized network (100-200 hosts).
 Hosts are in cabinets on site (no off site monitoring yet)
 Cabinets are not setup by subnet (I think this is fairly normal)
 1 switch per cabinet
 Multiple subnets across the farm
 
 The boss and I agree that the switch in each cabinet needs to be part
of
 our monitoring setup and be part of some sort of parenting/dependency.
 This is where we cease seeing eye to eye. For the purpose of making
this
 easy lets say we are dealing with three subnets and ten cabinets only.
 Here is what the boss wants (at least as far as I can understand):
Setup
 three hosts per cabinet to represent the three subnets, that actual IP
 would be the IP of the switch. Parent the hosts in the cabinet to
these
 and parent these to the gateways for the subnet. This is, with the
 parameters above, thirty extra hosts, and IMO a management nightmare.
 
 Since the switch is not part of the route my thought is that we parent
in
 the normal manner as I understand it, host parents to router, and so
on
 and at that point we would make the hosts have a dependency on the
switch
 through which their connection passes. The current setup doesn't take
into
 account the switches at all but rather is setup to where each host is
 parented to it's gateway IP and that has been working rather well but
if a
 switch dies we need to be able to see that via nagios and not have 20
or
 servers and their services going off all at once.. I cannot see why
adding
 tens of special hosts for the boss's parenting solution will help
anything
 in the long run.
 

Both solutions sound overly complex to me. It seems to me that you only
need to add the 10 switches, with their own IP's, as parents. I expect
that you shouldn't really care what subnet a server is on through that
switch, you should only be thinking about physical connections. If
Switch1 goes down, what servers are connected to it and unreachable as a
result? Do you think the switch could fail in such a way that one of the
subnets would work and the others won't? It's been my experience that a
switch works or it doesn't, outside of human error. 

The parents directive is used to determine network outages (down v.s.
unreachable) and would represent the problem correctly if your switch is
down. In your situation I would end up with something like --

Host (subnet1) has parent Switch1 has parent Router1
Host (subnet2) has parent Switch1 has parent Router1

Host (subnet1) has parent Switch2 has parent Router1
Host (subnet3) has parent Switch2 has parent Router2

And so forth.

Is there some additional complexity that I'm not grasping? Using
dependencies _would_ add the tens of extra definitions that you don't
want because you'd need a host dependency for host1 - switch1, then
another for switch1 - router1, etc, etc.

--
Marc

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Re: [Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies

2008-02-11 Thread Marc Powell


 -Original Message-
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:nagios-users-
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Marc Powell
 Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 11:40 AM
 To: nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net
 Subject: Re: [Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies
 


 The parents directive is used to determine network outages (down v.s.
 unreachable) and would represent the problem correctly if your switch
is
 down. In your situation I would end up with something like --
 
 Host (subnet1) has parent Switch1 has parent Router1
 Host (subnet2) has parent Switch1 has parent Router1
 
 Host (subnet1) has parent Switch2 has parent Router1
 Host (subnet3) has parent Switch2 has parent Router2

Ack. Switch2 has parent Router2 only. ;)

--
Marc


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Re: [Nagios-users] Parenting vs Dependencies

2008-02-11 Thread Justin Hitt
Mark,

On Feb 11, 2008 12:13 PM,  [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 this to my boss. So here is an overview of what I have to monitor, what my
 boss is asking, and what I think we need and maybe someone can beat some

I know listening to the boss is good for your long term employment,
however, who has to troubleshoot the environment should you get an
alert?  Setup what ever makes the most since for identifying root
cause and narrowing down a problem -- neither way suggested is wrong,
just start with what's easiest to get setup today.

Best,

Justin
-- 
Attention Sales And Marketing Professionals Who Serve B2B Executives
   http://hittpublishingdirect.com/

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