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Nagios Core : A viable alternative....if you have the time
Updated March 21, 2019

Nagios Core : A viable alternative....if you have the time

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Nagios

As an alternative to a paid solution, Nagios Core was implemented as a monitoring tool for several servers. The solution if successful would have been rolled out to all servers in the organization providing a solid monitoring appliance at no cost.
  • Extreme customization through add-ons provided by a wide community of users.
  • Simple yet effective interface. Provides essential information to the administrator in an easily readable format.
  • Best part, the Core version is free and fully functional.
  • Runs on Linux and is fairly light.
  • The configuration of the application can easily be backed up for DR purposes. In most cases a simple compressed folder wold suffice.
  • Allows agent\agentless monitoring.
  • Takes some work to get running. Installation documentation while complete was not always clear necessitating a trip to various help forums. Unless the XL version is used.
  • Installation of add-ons in Nagios Core can be difficult as most depend on creator supplied documentation. At times provided instructions made assumptions which resulted in a lot of time in extra research to get them installed.
  • Built in reports are simplistic.
  • No realtime graphing unless an add-on is installed.
  • Lack of a proper installation file\script. Install of the application is done mainly via CLI and by running supplied commands. This may turn away some users.
  • Nagios Core is free and runs on Linux. This allowed us to leverage older existing hardware, essentially deploying a monitoring solution at no cost.
  • Due to the complexity of the initial configuration, a lot of time needs to be devoted to the product. This may result in employee resources being removed from more vital tasks.
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
Nagios Core would best be suited for a small organization with about 50-100 computers. With the free version, the ability to deploy on a Linux box allows the business to benefit from a free, fully functional and heavily customization tool that can, if done right, hold its own against paid options.