Nagios provides centralized monitoring of all the computers, software and network services in complex and geographically dispersed data centers. Opengear's SDT for Nagios extends this to provide NOC operators and administrators with a single point of access and control for this entire infrastructure.
Opengear - Nagios partnership
Nagios itself provides central monitoring of the hosts and services in your distributed network. You can freely download Nagios (refer faq288) and it will provide an outstanding management system. Nagios displays the real time status of each host and network node and each service running; and displays warnings and raises alarms when a service failure is detected. Administrators can simply edit the objects in Nagios' config files enabling it to monitor, alert and perform event handling on any network service, host resource or environmental factor.
Nagios central management with SDT extensions
Opengear has integrated its SDT Connector management client and console servers with Nagios to deliver point-and-click access and control of hosts and services from the one Nagios console.
Opengear console servers all embed the Nagios NSCA client (refer faq279) which enable scheduled check-ins with the remote Nagios server. SDT for Nagios uses this facility to automatically upload all the network configurations and user access privileges from the console server infrastructure.
SDT for Nagios then provides health and status summary information for all the servers, routers, switches, power devices and related services it is monitoring. It also provides notification mechanisms that alert the administrator of potential problems, highlight critical events that require immediate attention and escalate the alerts if not rectified.
Administrators can click on Connect via SDT on their Nagios management screen and instantly be securely connected to the console on the host or network device needing attention using VNC, RDP, HTTP, Telnet or SSH.
So SDT for Nagios gives administrators secure in-band and out-of-band remote access all their physical and virtual ICT assets from a single screen. This access is securely tunneled with strong selectable encryption, flexible authentication, access control and audit tracking.
Distributed Monitoring
In a more general Nagios monitoring environment, Opengear console servers also extend the monitoring capabilities. Nagios can be configured for distributed monitoring which can overcome the challenges of navigating complex distributed network hierarchies. This offloads the overhead of performing all the service checks from the one central monitoring server out to the distributed servers (and when monitoring hundreds or even thousands of hosts this may become quite important).
At the remote site, each Opengear console server functions as a distributed Nagios server and performs checks on all the hosts and services that you define for that site. The Nagios NSCA client and NRPE server are embedded in the console server enabling it to perform these checks. These programs enable scheduled check-ins with the central Nagios monitoring server and send check results across the network to the remote monitoring server.
In the event that the checks find something wrong with a network service or host resource at a remote site, the console server then informs the central Nagios monitoring server which in turn sends the administrator an alert. For more details refer faq279 and faq282
