Dibbler's Net

I finally found time to install Nagvis this weekend on a small Nagios server I manage. http://nagvis.org/

Nagvis is a really interesting idea that allows you display network status in a more graphical option. I believe in simple, let the monitor show me only what is broken. But there are times and places where you want to show the overall map. The part I really liked about Nagvis is that it allows me to export any of my existing network drawings as a png and then add service and host data on top of it to make it dynamic. When I firs saw Nagvis in action I thought it would configure similar to Nagios 3D status or some of the others where you hand coordinate everything and it can take a long time to get everything lined up just right.

The Install:
Well as the sys req’s say Nagvis depends on NDO. I personally have worked to avoid NDO since I have always liked having my Nagios work without a Database dependency. However sometimes a DB is needed and I hadn’t been through the process lately. Luckily my PHP was already V5 and I had GD pre-compiled in. I am running on FreeBSD 6 and had one issue with mysql compiling right. That was easily fixed with a gcc -I that wasn’t adding in right.

Once that was done NDO was compiled and I was ready to start. Nagvis was easy to install but I do need to spend some time looking at the file perm changes it asks for. Once installed the configuration part was easy and pretty much worked right out of the box.

While I feel the use of this type of tool is limited for help desk use I do see where it has management and/or customer access appeal. Now that I have it running I will see how well it works on a running setup for a few weeks and report back. Overall I say kudos to the Nagvis team on a good extension to Nagios.

D~

http://www.nagios.org/development/changelog.php

Nagios 3.0.1 is now out (yes 3 was released about 2 weeks ago) but there were 2 issues with Trends and another item that Ethan put out a patch this week. If you are new to Nagios then stay tuned as you will see many more posts on this topic here including code samples and other tidbits.

If you have never heard of Nagios that’s okay. Nagios is a Fault Management and System/Network Monitoring application similar to Openview or Tivoli with two major differences. First it works, second it’s opensource. I won’t say it’s free cause any product you install will cost you time and resources. It just helps when the software is free.

With 3.x being released now is a good time for those of you with Commercial Monitoring apps to take a fresh look at nagios and see if it’s time for you to switch.

D~

So a while back Symantec bought Veritas. Like many other mergers this has led to in my opinion worse support, and delayed product development. For a long time the standard for System Clustering and Failover was Veritas Clustering Tools. Even with the Symantec buyout and the problems that caused there were not alot of options for Clustering. Sun has long had Sun Clustering but it has always been a version or two behind Veritas and lacked certain features and real commercial adoption like Veritas had. Well in the last year I have seen a real shift. Sun has had time to catch up as Veritas 5 has been only a minor improvement on 4. To add to all this Sun has done something very new. As part of their open source movement Sun has released their clustering software as open source and now with version 3.2 has released what looks to be a real contender to Veritas. http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/cluster/features.xml

Sun has added support for Oracle with RAC and several other commercial applications that it was previously missing. The interesting part is that Sun is making this less expensive than a similar Veritas install and now has a very comparable and in some ways better product. We are used to price giving you better quality but that is something that is changing more as vednors are drastically changing how they market their products.

If your using Veritas then I would recommend taking some time and downloading Sun Cluster and giving it a try. If your using vxfs then also look at Sun SAM +QFS for that replacement. Eventually we will see the best of QFS in ZFS which will then really trump vxfs but until then the SAM+QFS works well.

D~