Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Nagios Core

Nagios Core

Overview

What is Nagios Core?

Nagios provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components. Multiple APIs and community-build add-ons enable integration and monitoring with in-house and third-party applications for optimized scaling.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Nagios, a popular IT infrastructure monitoring tool, has proven to be a valuable asset for organizations across various departments. With …
Continue reading

Nagios for the win

6 out of 10
May 17, 2021
Incentivized
We use Nagios as our alternative Network Monitoring Software for our data centers and out branches. It helps you monitor branch with down …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Single License

Free

On Premise

Single License

Free

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.nagios.com/products/nagios…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Product Demos

nagios core

YouTube

Nagios Exploit DEMO - Remote CodeExec CVE-2016-9565 & Root PrivEsc CVE-2016-9566

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Nagios Core?

Nagios provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network infrastructure. Multiple APIs provide for simple integration with in-house and third-party applications. Thousands of community-developed add-ons extend monitoring and native alerting functionality. Third-party add-ons are available for monitoring in-house applications, services, and systems.

The vendor says Nagios is the industry standard In IT Infrastructure Monitoring. The vendor says the powerful Nagios Core 4 monitoring engine provides a high level of performance, and that its high-efficiency worker processes allow for scalability and monitoring effectiveness. It is designed to provide a central view of a company's entire IT operations network and business processes. Multi-user access to web interface allows stakeholders to view relevant infrastructure status. User-specific views ensures clients only see the infrastructure components they’re authorized for.

Nagios Core Features

  • Supported: Advanced Graphs & Visualizations
  • Supported: Performance & Capacity Planning Graphs
  • Supported: Configuration Wizards
  • Supported: Advanced Infrastructure Management
  • Supported: Configuration Snapshot Archive
  • Supported: Advanced User Management
  • Supported: Service-Level Agreement (SLA) Reports
  • Supported: Extendable Architecture

Nagios Core Integrations

Nagios Core Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
Supported CountriesGlobal
Supported LanguagesEnglish, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Polish

Frequently Asked Questions

Nagios provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components. Multiple APIs and community-build add-ons enable integration and monitoring with in-house and third-party applications for optimized scaling.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 7.7.

The most common users of Nagios Core are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(162)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Nagios, a popular IT infrastructure monitoring tool, has proven to be a valuable asset for organizations across various departments. With its robust monitoring capabilities and ease of setup, Nagios has become a go-to solution for many users. Users have found Nagios useful for a wide range of use cases, including monitoring applications and computing resources, gaining insights through reporting features, and proactively detecting potential issues. Nagios' ability to handle a large number of servers and services without stability issues has been commended by users. It also offers hassle-free implementation of plugins behind firewalls, supporting both Pull and Push Monitoring methods. The customization options in Nagios allow users to create plugins in various programming languages, making it adaptable to their specific needs. Integration with other technologies like MySQL, NRDP, Pnp4Nagios, and Grafana further enhances its functionality. For example, Nagios can be integrated with MySQL for storage and retrieval, NRDP for push alerting, Pnp4Nagios for RRD graphing, and Grafana for aggregated graphing, dashboards, heat-maps, and alerts.

Nagios plays a vital role in monitoring infrastructure for multiple departments within organizations. It is widely used by network operations teams to monitor infrastructure 24/7 and configure alerts for application status. Users have also found Nagios instrumental in identifying bottlenecks and patching issues during the testing phase. With its ability to monitor a diverse range of server operating systems and components like disk space, CPU and memory utilization, network availability, Kerberos replication, Active Directory, Novell NDS driver monitoring, among others; Nagios provides comprehensive coverage for system monitoring needs. It saves time by automating server space checks and sending real-time information to the IT team. Additionally, Nagios proves its worth in data centers by issuing early alerts on sensitive equipment such as servers, switches, routers, firewalls, and air conditioners. The tool is also used by various departments like Data Center Operations, Provisioning, Operations, Infrastructure, and Enterprise Monitoring to ensure the health and performance of their respective areas. Overall, Nagios stands out as an excellent open-source monitoring tool with a large community of users and scripts available for monitoring diverse applications, servers, websites, and services.

Flexibility and Configurability: Many users have praised Nagios for its extreme flexibility and configurability. They appreciate the ability to customize the monitoring according to their specific needs, including agent and agentless monitoring solutions with a variety of plugins.

Intuitive User Interface: The simplicity and ease of use of Nagios' user interface are highly praised by users. They mention that the interface is intuitive and easy to read, allowing them to quickly understand the monitoring status and identify any issues.

Extensibility through Plugins: The extensibility of Nagios through plugins, scripts, and customizations is highly valued by users. They mention that they have been able to add any needed functionality using plugins and scripts, making Nagios more flexible than other monitoring systems.

Dated and Unattractive User Interface: Several users have criticized Nagios for its dated and unattractive user interface, which they find less appealing. The interface is in need of a major overhaul to improve usability and streamline the experience. Some users have suggested improvements to make it less confusing and easier to navigate.

Reliance on Community-Driven Plugins: Users have expressed frustration with the reliance on open source community-driven plugins for third-party applications and hardware support in Nagios. This can lead to unpolished or broken plugins, requiring additional time to configure. Configuring and deploying these plugins was troublesome for some users, requiring patience to connect all the various components.

Steep Learning Curve: The learning curve for Nagios can be steep, especially for those not familiar with Linux. The configuration process can be messy and prone to accidental breakage, making it challenging for new users. Additionally, some background knowledge of Linux is required during the initial configuration process.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 38)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Unlike SL1 and IBM NOI, you do not need to buy licenses or pay for support. You can begin deployment immediately. You don't need to purchase expensive equipment or study confusing manufacturer's manuals. Zabbix can also be used freely, but it is not so common and you may need paid support from the manufacturer. Sometimes software manufacturers fail to correct errors in their programs in a timely manner, and you are limited in the ability to adapt them to your own needs
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios Core can do literally anything you need it to thanks to the amazing developer community and their ability to program custom addons. Need to monitor servers all over the world.The main advantage of Nagios Core is that it allows you to be aware of the status of each host and services belonging to a network. - Another advantage that Nagios Core has is that it has several types of alerts, with which it indicates the type of failure that a host can present and thus be able to solve it as quickly as possible
Pavan Mehare | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (npm)
Because we get all we required in Nagios [Core] and for npm, we have to do lots of configuration as it is not as easy as Comair to Nagios [Core]. On npm UI, there is lots of data, so we are not able to track exact data for analysis, which is why we use Nagios [Core].
May 17, 2021

Nagios for the win

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a backup NMS, it is better to invest to Nagios since it costs less than any other competitors which [provide] the same level of service. Maybe PRTG gives more features but you don't need all [those] features for your daily use so Nagios gives you what you need when it comes to monitoring.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We chose Nagios Core over Zabbix and Zenoss because it was easier to get up and running and configure than the other two products. They required network scanning for assets and then required you to enter every little detail about the host. With Nagios Core, we just entered our hosts in a single configuration file, then added services for each one. It took about an hour to begin monitoring 25 hosts.
D. Robert Hamilton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is a great tool for the price. Lots of bang for your buck if you know what I mean. The tool installs easily and has a very lightweight footprint. This also allows for great batch installation and configuration. Tags can be applied and pushed throughout the org. We'll continue to use it.
Chris Saenz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Centreon has some added benefits to Nagios, mostly in how configurations are made and data is presented. Nagios is perhaps more reliable because of its simplicity. They are both based off of Nagios, so they are similar in many ways, but Centreon adds some of their own customizations and interface stuff on top.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
I have been using Nagios for 10+ years, so I am very familiar with it. The learning curve with SolarWinds was more difficult for me to pick up than Nagios and it wasn't as easy (at first) to duplicate, edit, etc. in SolarWinds. I genuinely think Nagios is a great product for many reasons, one of which is the unbeatable price.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios may not have as much metrics reporting or as many visualizations as the other products, but outdoes the others in ease of configuration and the ability to deliver multi-faceted alerting across a variety of applications, with the help of plugins or with the user community's assistance on coding checks. The flexibility of scripts that support its plugins are also superior to the other products.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The cost is considerably better. Others are probably more complete and even overkilled if all you're looking for is simple SNMP alerting and reporting. If you're looking for integrated analytics or more complex reporting/alerting, there might be better options. Nagios also provides basic NetFlow monitoring in a separate module (also purchased separately) but I don't believe it's all that intuitive and might require additional efforts to set it up compared to other NetFlow tools.
Steven Peterson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Commercial tools where expensive and not as capable for our needs.
Many had other functions that where not as useful for monitoring, such as automation, scripting, software installation. Many of which we had migrated to purpose-built tools that served our needs better.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Other products were evaluated, but Nagios Core was chosen mainly due: 1. To Cost - it is free 2. Exceptional Customization features 3. Tremendous Community support 4. Ability to run on older hardware
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We selected Nagios because of the size of its community. We've used some of the others in the field over the past few years, Nagios had the best features out of the box coupled with it's following made it an easy selection.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have actually tried several. Nagios does what it was designed to do well. Some of the other products we have do more than Nagios, but they were designed to do more detailed and specific things. Many we have found do a good bit less than Nagios does. Nagios is a nice product for doing what it was designed to do.
Shawn Brito | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have tested several other monitoring products which were able to monitor the basic matrix (Memory, DiskUsage, CPU%, UpTime, Running Service Status, Port 80 Up/Down). Although some offered far better UIs, they lacked the ability to monitor ANYTHING. Zabbix, being the only contender worthy of competing, is a good alternative to Nagios. We also tried Zenoss Core & OpenNMS which were good enough for non-Linux engineers to get started with. OP5 was another service-oriented monitoring solution we evaluated. Apart from Nagios, Consul is heavily used to monitor & register the micro-service systems & end-point URLs. Due to the time invested (9+years) in Nagios, we were able to get more components installed/configured easily than alternatives.

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is a good start, but as soon as an alert is triggered, you have to go searching and digging. It's better as a trigger and integrated with more robust, intelligent monitoring tools.
Eric Krueger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is an easy to use intuative tool that gives a great return on investment. It has better monitoring features that IT needs than competitors and won't break the bank. Support for this tool is first class and the techs will help you to get the most out of the product.
Return to navigation