[hobbit] Hobbit vs Nagios (was: The latest version of hobbit.)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:50:32PM -0500, McGraw, Robert P wrote:
> Has anyone else looked at nagios and why did you prefer hobbit over nagios?

I've used Nagios as well as Big Brother (BB) on the job. Wasn't very
happy with either. Both have about the same amount of advantages and
disadvantages. Hobbit has less disadvantages than BB and there are
only a few Nagios features I would like to have which neither BB nor
Hobbit have, so I stick with Hobbit and we're currently replacing our
BB on the job with hobbit. For our Linux User Group I will replace a
Nagios with Hobbit soon.

So here's my short comparision chart:

What I like with Nagios which is neither in BB nor Hobbit
---------------------------------------------------------

+ Service Dependencies (if MySQL is down, the Website is broken, too,
  so report MySQL as the source of the problem)

+ Host Dependencies (if the router is down, it's clear that all hosts
  behind must be down, too).

+ Event Hooks (good for connecting IRC Bots :-)

What I like with Hobbit which isn't in Nagios
---------------------------------------------

+ Pushing the reports by default. This enables two further advantages:

  + Having a "no reports recently" state.

  + Possibility to mark hosts as "dialup", so you can monitor hosts
    with changing IPs or not permanently running hosts (desktops,
    workstations). This is the killer feature for me, on the job as
    well as at home.

+ 2-dimensional (host x service) tables, which give IMHO a better
  overview (YMMV)

+ More flexible in generating own pages for groups of machines.

+ Configuration easier to overview, needs less lines of code per
  host. (YMMV)

(If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though
available, please correct me. :-)

P.S.: I also had a short look at Pandora FMS (http://pandora.sf.net/),
      but it seemed to be overkill for my purposes.

		Kind regards, Axel Beckert
-- 
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