OS, Hardware, Network - Logging, Monitoring, and Alerting

Thu Jun 26 13:59:02 UTC 2008

Rev. Jeffrey Paul wrote:
> Hi.  I've a (theoretically) simple problem and I'm wondering how others
> solve it.

Taken one at a time, mos of them are simple.  Most of life is like that.

> 1) Is SNMP the best way to do this?  Obviously some of the data (service
> checks) will need to be collected other ways.

I've actually been out of the admin biz for some time but back in the 
day I was very found of SNMP tools for all sorts of reporting.

For output I liked MRTG for most things, WhatsUpGold had some nice 
features if you would rather pay money.

For alarms, I used some unix hack or another (home-made).

I also used home-made hacks to gather data about things that did not 
have a suitable SNMP interface.

> 2) Is there any good solution that does both logging/trending of this
> data and also notification/monitoring/alerting?  I've used both Nagios
> and Cacti in the past, and, due to the number of individual things being
> monitored (3-5 items per OS instance, 5-10 items per physical server,
> 10-50 things per network device), setting them both up independently
> seems like a huge pain.  Also, I've never really liked Nagios that much.

See MRTG, RRD, et al.

> I recently entertained the idea of writing a CGI that output all of this
> information in a standard format (csv?), distributing and installing it, then
> collecting it periodically at a central location and doing all the
> rrd/notification myself, but then realized that this problem must've
> been solved a million times already.
> 
> There's got to be a better way.  What do you guys use?

I had the luxury of management that thought managing was a good idea, so 
I had a machine pretty much dedicated to systems management and all the 
machines (including routers, bridges, hubs, and such) reported to it. 
We had a web interface to the MRTG and MRTG-like presentations.

> (I'm not opposed to non-free solutions, provided they work better.)

Just before the fired me for being too old, they bought all the HP and 
cisco stuff in the world.  I do not recommend any of it.
-- 
Requiescas in pace o email              Two identifying characteristics
                                              of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio        Infallibility, and the ability to
                                              learn from their mistakes.
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