Nagios plugins (was: [hobbit] Nagios client, Hobbit server anyone?)

[Anna Jonna Armannsdottir <annaj (at) hi.is>]

On þri, 2008-11-11 at 21:13 +0000, Henrik Størner wrote:
> I wouldn't mix bbproxy into this at all. Write a simpler tool to
> run the Nagios plugin, extract the relevant data from the output, 
> and generate Hobbit-style status-messages. Then send these the
> usual way (either invoke the "bb" utility to do it, or if you
> link your program with the "libbbgen.a" library from Hobbit, then
> you can use Hobbit's "sendmessage()" routine.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Henrik

Hi Henrik,
I like Your idea. 
It seems that even admins tend to forget that running 
servers is a continuous task of many people. Let me for 
instance take the IT department of the University of Iceland. 
There are 8 (eight) people involved in system administration 
of many kinds of hardware and at least 5 kinds of Operating 
Systems. Each person has their own way of doing things, 
and some will not let other admins get access to the system 
they are administering. 
To get real quality control and quality assurance, the warning 
levels and alert levels must be reviewed at each incident. 
For this, it is necessary to have a centrally configured system 
controlled by the person responsible for monitoring Quality.
Preferably, all admins have equal access to change the 
configuration, under quality assurance responsibility. 

Exactly this is where Xymon stands out from the rest. 

Technically, the central configuration is enabled by the 
bidirectional channel between Server and Client, 
the central configuration of the Client in the 
hobbit-client.cfg and client-local.cfg files. 

If it is possible to control Nagios plugins by a central 
configuration, then this contributes to an even more 
versatile Xymon, by being able to use Xymon/Hobbit and 
BB addons and Nagios plugins. 

I am not a PHB, but I know that the administration effort 
is their concern. Compared to BB, The administration of 
Xymon is much easier and has considerably better quality 
management because of the centralised configuration. 

This is one of the strengths of Xymon, lets use it. 

-- 
Anna Jonna Armannsdottir <annaj (at) hi.is>
University of Iceland Computing Services