www.icinga.org

Why favour Icinga over Nagios

2015-08-16

Markus Frosch

• Consultant @NETWAYS• Icinga Team since 2012• Organisation of Icinga 2• Debian developer

@lazyfrosch

THE ICINGA PROJECT

Open Source Enterprise Monitoring

Icinga is a scalable and extensible monitoring system which checks the availability of your resources, notifiesusers of outages and provides extensive BI data.

You?

• originally forked from Nagios in 2009• focus on improvements and scalability• independent version Icinga 2 since 2014•web interfaces and addons

Icinga Core

Nagios based C-sourceMySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle

Icinga Core

Nagios based C-sourceMySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle

Icinga Quality, Testing and Community Support

Website and Open Source Ticketing System

Icinga Quality, Testing and Community Support

Website and Open Source Ticketing System

3rd Party Tools3rd Party ToolsIcinga Webbased on PHP using ExtJS, Agavi MVCIcinga Webbased on PHP using ExtJS, Agavi MVC

IDOUTILSIDOUTILS

Icinga Web 2Based on PHP / responsive designIcinga Web 2Based on PHP / responsive design

Icinga 2

C++-based sourcewith multiple components

Icinga 2

C++-based sourcewith multiple components

IDOIDO LivestatusLivestatus ClusterCluster APIAPI ……

Icinga 2

• release 2.3.8 (2015-07-20)•new code base• similar ideas• Puppet, Chef and Ansible integration•Packages and Vagrant Box available

WHY NAGIOS™ IS GOOD?

Nagios™ is good, because:

✔ monitoring things is very easy✔ very simple software stack ✔ no complex external dependencies

Nagios™ is good, because:

✔ active checks are powerful✔ gathering performance data✔ huge community✔ thousands of Plugins

OK, BUT WHY ICINGA THEN?

Nagios™ is open core

Nagios™ Inc. is not into community

✗ mailinglist has been converted to a „customer support forum“

✗ trademark enforcement✗ focus on selling the enterprise product

Icinga wants to be open

✔ community support✔ all components 100% free software✔ contributions welcome✔ we won't sell our software

Nagios™ does not scale

✗ it's just a single loop✗ limitations using external interfaces✗ large installations are difficult

Icinga 2 on the other hand

✔ provides a multithreaded C++ Core✔ distributes load in cluster automatically✔ is able to monitor thousands of devices

every few seconds

MODULES

Modules in Nagios™?

# tar xzvf mk-livestatus-1.2.4.tar.gz# cd mk-livestatus-1.2.4 # ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/icinga

--exec-prefix=/usr/local/icinga# make# cp src/livestatus.o /usr/local/icinga/bin

define module { module_name mklivestatus path /usr/local/icinga/bin/livestatus.o module_type neb args /usr/local/icinga/var/rw/live }

CheckerChecker

NotifyNotify

API(soon)API(soon)

CompatCompat ClusterCluster

IDOIDO GELFGELF

GraphiteGraphite

PerfdataPerfdata

OpenTSDBOpenTSDB

LivestatusLivestatus

# icinga2 feature enable livestatus# icinga2 feature enable ido-mysql

# vim /etc/icinga2/features- available/ido-mysql.conf

CLUSTERING

How about high available Nagios™?

✗ there is no integrated failover mechanism✗ configuration is not distributed✗ no shared monitoring information

What Icinga 2 provides you

✔ zones for multitenancy environments✔ support for logic splits in the config✔ availability and scaling zones✔ automatic redistribution of checks✔ master / satellite / agent

centra

l

datace

nter

centra

l

datace

nter

CheckerChecker ConfigConfig

LivestatusLive

status

CheckerChecker

DatabaseDatabase

IDOIDO

IDOIDO

remotelocation

CheckerChecker

Nagios™ and security

✗ NSCA works, but not in a good way✗ NRPE has a couple of security issues✗ You can make it secure … by hand

Icinga 2 clustering is PKI TLS only

✔ bidirectional connections✔ helps you setting up a CA✔ replication of events and status

CONFIGURATION

Nagios™ config tricks are weird…

define service{host_name linux1,linux2,linux3,...,linux9service_description ssh-checkother service directives ...}

Icinga 2 brings logic

apply Service "ssh" {import "generic-service”

check_command = "ssh” assign where host.address && host.vars.os == "Linux” ignore where host.vars.test == true}

Nagios™ can only do lists

define hostgroup{hostgroup_name linux-serversalias Linux Serversmembers linux1,linux2,linux3}

Icinga 2 wants to unterstand you

object HostGroup "mysql-server" {display_name = "MySQL Server“assign where match("*mysql*", host.name)

assign where host.vars.role == "mysql-server" ignore where host.vars.environment != "production"}

ONE MORE THING...

Icinga 2 is enhanceable

object Service ”webservice" { import "generic-service” check_command = ”load” host_name = “a really great server”

vars.load_wload1 = {{ if (get_time_period(“9to5”).is_inside) { return 40 } else { return 60 } }}

}

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

✗ limitations in current Icinga interfaces✗ parsing the status.dat is not fast✗ executing commands is tedious✗ really hard to extend and integrate✗ no unified interface so far

Icingaweb 2

• easy to extend and embed•multiple authentication providers• reads from IDO database • responsive

release soonTM

Web 2MySQL /PostgreSQL

MySQL /PostgreSQL2

or Icinga 1

The simplest setup

set up within a few minutes...

THE COMMUNITY

You?

Berlin 2016

March 1st

Berlin 2016

March 1st

Portland 2015

October 10th

Portland 2015

October 10th

Icinga Camp community meetups

Where to start?

• Start with the documentation•Download Icinga 2•Rethink you configuration• Install Icinga Web 2 and play with it•Give us feedback

#icinga

THANK YOU!www.icinga.org

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docs.icinga.org

dev.icinga.org

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@icinga

/icinga

+icinga