[c-nsp] PRTG OR ZABBIX MONITORING TOOL what is your opinion

[Phil Mayers]

On 09/11/2013 08:59 AM, Florian Lohoff wrote:

> Basically we dropped most of the packaged nagios-check scripts except
> the very simple tcp/udp/dns checks. But thats a one-time thing to do.

Yeah, if you want subtle monitoring then nagios might involve a bit of 
coding of checks - the stuff on nagios exchange tends to be very 
server-oriented.

e.g. we had to write checks monitoring STP root placement, presence of 
all vlans on all uplinks, and so on.

>
> Then we wrote an exporter for our config/asset database to generate a nagios
> config with all the parent relations, alert groups etc ...

+1 this is the way to go - export your asset DB, and force it to be 
authoritative. Ongoing maintenance of nagios is then close to zero; the 
occasional bit of patching, tweak thresholds here and there, etc.

> Now we export config via cron - people just tell in the asset/config db which
> interfaces or details to monitor (packet discard, error, temperature,
> filesystem free %) with which threshholds and whom to alert.
>
> Not for someone without config/asset database purely relying on
> autodiscovery.

Frankly, if people are relying purely on autodiscovery then they have 
bigger problems to solve than what monitoring system to use IMO!

Using auto-discovery to supplement an asset DB - for example, populating 
serial numbers, current software versions - is a very sensible strategy. 
Even using it to populate the asset DB the first time around. But not to 
*define* the list of things you monitor!