This software application is written in C language, which was mainly designed to run under the Linux operating systems. But it can also run under Unix and Windows operating system.

This software application is available in its following two variants:

Nagios Core: The Nagios is also known as a Nagios Core. It is an open-source product. It is released on 1^st March in the year 2002.
Nagios XI: It is an extended version of Nagios. It provides advanced components and tools for monitoring. This variant needs a software license.

Why Nagios?

Following are some reasons for using the Nagios software application:

It is used for monitoring the performance issues of servers.
It helps the users of this software application to easily find the root cause of any problem.
It is also used to detect all the possible networks.
We can easily maintain the issues of security and also detect the availability of the services.
This application automatically fix the problems or issues when occurs.
Users can easily run it on any operating system.
Before the failure of a system, it helps you to update the infrastructure.
Using this application, user can quickly detect any type of infrastructure issues.
It also monitors the various servers of database such as SQL Server, MySQL.

What is Continuous Monitoring

Continuous monitoring starts when the deployment is done on the production servers. From then on, this stage is responsible to monitor everything happening. This stage is very crucial for the business productivity.

There are several benefits of using Continuous monitoring −

It detects all the server and network problems.
It finds the root cause of the failure.
It helps in reducing the maintenance cost.
It helps in troubleshooting the performance issues.
It helps in updating infrastructure before it gets outdated.
It can fix problems automatically when detected.
It makes sure the servers, services, applications, network is always up and running.
It monitors complete infrastructure every second.

History of Nagios

1996:

In this year, Ethan Galstad creates a new application using the third-party application which is used for creating the Nagios.

1998:

In this year, Ethan starts to build a new application using the ideas and architecture which is designed to run under Linux.

1999:

He releases his work which is done in the year of 1998 as a free and open-source project under the name “NetSaint”. He hopes that there are one dozen people who are interested in this application.

2002:

In this year, he decided to rename the project name as Nagios, because there was the trademark issue with the “NetSaint” name. And, the plugins project of ‘NetSaint’ is also moved to ‘Nagios’ plugins project.

2005:

In the June month of this year, the Nagios project becomes the SourceForge.Net project.

2007:

In this year, LinuxWorld.com rates the Nagios project in the enterprise as one of the top 5 open security tools.

2009:

In this year, Nagios is renamed as Nagios Core, and the enterprises of Nagios release the first commercial version of Nagios as Nagios XI.

2011:

In this year, Nagios BPI is released for monitoring the process of a business. And, the WebHostingSearch.com awarded Nagios as a “best web tool“.

2013:

In this year, the 4^th version of Nagios Core is released.

2016:

In this year, Nagios Core cross the 7,500,000 downloads from the SourceForge.Net website.

Features of Nagios

Following are the various features or characteristics of Nagios application:

This application provides an attractive web interface.
It is highly secure and scalable.
Users can easily manage it.
This software application perfectly stores the data, because there is a log management system.
Plugins of data graphing are available in this application.
It defines the event handlers which are running during the services.
It supports for backend database.
It also supports to implement the unnecessary monitoring hosts.
It has an optional web interface for viewing the notifications, log files, etc.
Users can also set up this application in ‘distribute’ system, if they require to have a monitoring system in multiple locations for monitoring.
It helps the users for defining the hierarchy of networks hosts using parent hosts.
It monitors the various services of a network such as SMTP, HTTP, FTP, SSH.
It also monitors the various resources of a server such as memory, processor, and disk drives, system logs.
Users can easily monitor or detect the whole infrastructure of IT and business process with a single pass.
It provides the remote monitoring through SSL and SSH encrypted tunnels.

Architecture of Nagios

The architecture of Nagios is built on the basis of server-client architecture.

The server of Nagios usually run on a host and the plugins run on the remote server/ or remote host which are to be monitored.

The plugins of Nagios collect the useful data and send them to the process scheduler, which displays the information over the graphical user interface (GUI).

Following are the three main components in the architecture of Nagios application:

Scheduler
GUI
Plugin.

Scheduler

The scheduler is the server part of the Nagios system. This component checks the plugins at regular interval and according to their results perform some action.

GUI

It is a user interface of the Nagios system, which is displayed on the web pages generated by the CGI. GUI can be a button to red or green, graph, sound, etc.

The button of green color becomes red color on GUI, when the plugins returns an error or warning.

Plugins

Plugins is a component of the Nagios system, which is configurable by the users. This component detects the services and return the results to the server of Nagios.

Nagios – Products

Nagios contains various products as discussed in detail below −

Nagios XI

It provides monitoring for complete IT infrastructure components like applications, services, network, operating systems etc. It gives a complete view of your infrastructure and business processes. The GUI is easily customizable giving the used flexibility. The standard edition of this tool costs $1995 and enterprise edition costs $3495.

Nagios Core

It is the core on monitoring IT infrastructure. Nagios XI product is also fundamentally based on Nagios core. Whenever there is any issue of failure in the infrastructure, it sends an alert/notification to the admin who can take the action quickly to resolve the issue. This tool is absolutely free.

Nagios Log Server

It makes searching of log data very simple and easy. It keeps all the log data at one location with high availability setup. It can easily send alerts if any issue is found in the log data. It can scale to 1000s of severs giving more power, speed, storage, and reliability to your log analysis platform. The price of this tool depends on the number of instances – 1 Instance $3995, 2 Instances $4995, 3 Instances $5995, 4 Instances $6995, 10 Instances $14995.

Nagios Fusion

This product provides a centralized view of complete monitoring system. With Nagios Fusion, you scan setup separate monitoring servers for separate geographies. It can be easily integrated with Nagios XI and Nagios core to give the complete visibility of the infrastructure. This tools costs $2495.

Nagios Network Analyser

It gives the complete information of the network infrastructure to the admin with the potential threats on the network so that admin can take quick actions. It shares very detailed data about the network after in-depth network analysis. This tools costs $1995.

So, this brings us to the end of blog. This Tecklearn ‘Overview of Nagios, its architecture and Nagios products’ blog helps you with commonly asked questions if you are looking out for a job in DevOps. If you wish to learn Nagios and build a career in DevOps domain, then check out our interactive, Continuous Monitoring using Nagios Training, that comes with 24*7 support to guide you throughout your learning period. Please find the link for course details:

https://www.tecklearn.com/course/continuous-monitoring-using-nagios/

Continuous Monitoring using Nagios Training

About the Course

Tecklearn has specially designed this Continuous Monitoring using Nagios Training Course to advance your skills for a successful career in this domain. The course will cover different components of Nagios and how they are used in software development operations. You will get an in-depth knowledge of these concepts and will be able to work on related demos. Upon completion of this online training, you will hold a solid understanding and hands-on experience with Nagios.

Why Should you take Continuous Monitoring using Nagios Training?

The average salary for Nagios Monitoring Engineer is $107,506 per year, ranging from $85,655 to $124,818.
Oracle, Raytheon, Abacus, Next, Apple, Wells Fargo & many other MNC’s worldwide use Nagios across industries.
According to Grand View Research, the DevOps market size is estimated to be worth $12.85 billion by 2025. DevOps professionals are highly paid and in-demand throughout industries including retail, eCommerce, finance, and technology.

What you will Learn in this Course?

Introduction to DevOps

What is Software Development
Software Development Life Cycle
Why DevOps?
What is DevOps?
DevOps Lifecycle
DevOps Tools
Benefits of DevOps
How DevOps is related to Agile Delivery
DevOps Implementation

Continuous Monitoring using Nagios

Introduction to Continuous Monitoring
Introduction to Nagios
Nagios Architecture
Monitoring Services in Nagios
Installing Nagios
Nagios Plugins (NRPE) and Objects
Nagios Commands and Notification
Monitoring of different servers using Nagios

Got a question for us? Please mention it in the comments section and we will get back to you.

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