Learning Nagios 4 Paperback – March 21, 2014

If you are not familiar with Linux and/or how to configure apache, don't count on this book to help you install Nagios! It will only confuse the issue.The best way to teach anyone an application is to give them step by step instructions on how to set it up with the default configuration so that he can get a point of reference. Only after installation do you start talking about how to configure the software. This book starts out with how to install Nagios but half way through the installation, it starts talking about custom configurations that are totally unnecessary to finish installing.Although chapter 3 has a section about setting up the web interface, the book did a very poor job at explaining how to setup Apache to work with Nagios.Once I got to chapter 3 I decided not to waste anymore time reading this book. Instead, I used time saved from not reading this book to write my own script to automate Nagios install by reading the various articles that were put out on the net for free.

I'm a beginner in Nagios and I started learning the latest version 4 with the help of this book. Rated it as very good for several reasons - the book contains well presented material and all the required topics of Nagios monitoring are covered. I believe it's a must have for those who wish to start dealing with Nagios or those who want to complement their existing skills.

Great reference for getting started.

Very, very poorly written and difficult to read. English is clearly not the author's first language.

The book starts out by explain what Nagios is, what it can do, and why it is so popular, it then moves on to a step by step guide on how to install Nagios 4. Throughout the book step by step guides are given for both RedHat and Debian based systems although the book does state it mainly focuses on Ubuntu.You quickly have a basic installation and start to gather the basics of how everything works, the book then moves on to how Nagios can be used and its GUI. This gives you all the information you need to be able to start using Nagios and quickly start learning more advanced operations. This is the first time as well the book starts to talk about popular 3rd party additions, how to install them, and how to extend the Nagios functionality. The book then takes you through more advanced options about monitoring remote hosts, distributing load, using and creating your own plugins and new functionality introduced in Nagios 4.The book goes through monitoring all types of devices and operating systems, including Windows, Linux, network devices and 3rd Parties such as Amazon AWS and VMWare. In the final chapters example custom plugins are given in a multitude of languages including php, perl, python, tcl and explains how each one works and interacts with Nagios.The detail the books goes in to in every chapter from start to finish makes it appeal to the beginners, but the summary at the beginning of each chapter allows more advanced users to skip bits they already know. I would advise however not to to skip any as the book is full of great advise and gotchas from a clearly experienced author that will get even the most experienced asking themselves questions. For the beginners illustrations are used to help get the point across and to explain how Nagios fits together making it really easy to understand. The book does go through some 3rd party applications and plugins but I feel it could refer to a few more especially alternatives to the NSCA Daemon etc which has its limitations. This however is possibly a journey the reader should take on their own and the book does give the correct information and links to the reader to investigate things themselves. Beginners will love the troubleshooting sections in this book as Nagios can be a pain to debug sometimes and the tips given throughout the book are invaluable.This is a great book for beginners and Nagios masters a like. A beginner will have the skill to go it alone after reading the book and the confidence that they are doing things the correct way which with Nagios can be the one question you ask yourself the most. More advanced users will benefit from the lists of configuration options as a reference but also some great ideas on how to set things up and expand in the future. A must read for anyone either administering a current set up or looking at starting from scratch.

Learning Nagios 4 by Wojciech Kocjan is an ambitious project. Its preface sets out its goal: to be a practical guide for setting up Nagios 4. It begins with installation, describes the tools available and their configuration and concludes with more advanced topics such as programming service checks and using query handlers. In between, it systematically covers the most important tools available to the sysadmin and how to use them. If that scope sounds ambitious, its 400 page length presages the thoroughness of its content.Although there is abundant documentation available from the project maintainers, that documentation is thorough, almost too much so. Equal weight is given to the less-commonly used options in that documentation, and reading it can become a burden. Kocjan's book, by selecting the most important topics, is better focused for practical implementations. The book thus achieves a practicality that only an experienced professional can attain.Nagios 4 -- a September 2013 milestone release -- is a good point for experienced administrators to review the application from the basics up. Periodic continuing education is important and milestone releases are an appropriate time to thoroughly review skills from the foundation up. Yet the book is also written at a level appropriate to new Nagios administrators. While a thorough knowledge of basic Linux skills is necessary, even those unfamiliar with Nagios will be able to build a monitoring system. While stating it is focused on Ubuntu, there is adequate discussion of installations from source and RPM-based distributions for administrators of other Linux distributions to understand Nagios. However, there are likely details specific to those other distributions that are not covered and will require additional research on the administrators part.Installation and ConfigurationThe book begins with basic installation and configuration tasks. The author's experience is evident. While some of the material looks like it is drawn directly from the maintainer's documentation, the format is much more practical. As opposed to the topic-based organization of the maintainer's technical documentation, the author's format is organized in an order that reflects a real-world implementation. For instance, the author includes a concise discussion of topology definitions with host definitions -- the point at which an administrator would define topology. Descriptions of the web interface and basic plugins follows. These are illustrated with practical examples.The author proceeds with advanced topics, such as organizing definitions in a maintainable manner with suggested sets of definitions and version control. Indeed, troubleshooting a Nagios installation that is not well organized will invariably add a great deal of time simply searching for errors in a poorly organized system. That organization is the foundation upon which more advanced definitions such as dependencies and templates are built.Having established a well-defined framework, the author then addresses the whole point of a monitoring system: events, notifications and escalations and event handlers. These are also illustrated with practical examples. Event handlers are often afforded only light coverage in Nagios manuals; that is not the case here. Event handlers a a Nagios strength that automate responses to events; the code required to restart a web server serves as an example. Adaptive monitoring is also often overlooked altogether, but is adequately described here.Advanced Nagios 4 Configuration and FeaturesEstablishing this solid foundation is only half the book. The second half explores much more advanced topics such as workload distribution, scalability and extending Nagios to monitor additional platforms.The Nagios Service Check Acceptor (NSCA) is more difficult to understand and implement, but the author does a good job explaining and providing an example. So, too, is the description and illustration of load distribution using ssh and the Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE), preferable to ssh because it reduces Nagios server overhead. SNMP is a protocol that, well-implemented, affords a great deal of availability and performance data. However, it can be a bit difficult to learn and understand. Here, the author's experience is evident as the text provides a very practical, understandable and thorough description of the protocol and its application.Finally, the last quarter of the book addresses the most advanced topics, such as Windows, distributed monitoring, programming and query handlers.Windows is ubiquitous in the enterprise, but requires expertise to monitor using Nagios. NSClient++ is the agent used and it provides NSCA, NRPE and other functionality. It also acts as an "interpretor" for Nagios to record Windows-specific data. Yet here, the author does not explore deploying and maintaining NSClient++ using Active Directory Group Policy Objects. Rather, the example provided is limited to manual installation and configuration -- an onerous and possibly impractical task for a Windows enterprise. However, the descriptions and examples provided are otherwise thorough and practical.Distributed monitoring is discussed only at a high level and examples are rather basic. However, implementing a distributed Nagios implementation is a complex task worthy of a book itself. This book lays out the reasons and higher-level architecture of distributed Nagios well enough for an administrator to recognize when it is required and with the necessary architectural understanding to research and design it.Programming, too, is covered at a high level. Several languages may be used and the author uses C for examples. Examples include web services, VMWare and Amazon Web Services -- topics of current and practical interest.The book ends with a discussion of Query Handlers -- a feature new to Nagios 4. Think of it as a Unix domain sockets communications implementation for Nagios. Query Handlers, using tools such as the Nagios Event Radio Dispatcher (NERD) and Google's open source Gource provide a framework to receive real-time updates from Nagios.ConclusionLearning Nagios 4 has an ambitious scope. Kocjan has the experience to deliver a thorough and well-organized book. The expertise is apparent from his recommendations for organized definitions and the logic flow of the presentation. The book is detailed enough for a new Nagios administrator to learn the application quickly. There is enough detail for seasoned administrators to learn about advanced features and how they are implemented. Even experts can benefit from a top to bottom review of the milestone Nagios 4 release.

Very useful for anybody wanting to configure Nagios to monitor their network.

Con questo testo son arrivato alla configurazione di un sistema completo e implementazione dei monitoraggi.Ovviamente lo step successivo è stato un lavoro di analisi e di creatività per trovare i punti da monitorare del mio sistema ela realizzazione di piccole procedure che restituissero i dati a Nagios.Il libro mi ha permesso un'ottima comprensione dello strumento.