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.
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Scout
Score 9.1 out of 10
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Scout, from the small American company of the same name, is an IT infrastructure monitoring service.
Nagios monitoring is well suited for any mission critical application that requires per/second (or minute) monitoring. This would probably include even a shuttle launch. As Nagios was built around Linux, most (85%) plugins are Linux based, therefore its more suitable for a Linux environment.
As Nagios (and dependent components) requires complex configurations & compilations, an experienced Linux engineer would be needed to install all relevant components.
Any company that has hundreds (or thousands) of servers & services to monitor would require a stable monitoring solution like Nagios. I have seen Nagios used in extremely mediocre ways, but the core power lies when its fully configured with all remaining open-source components (i.e. MySQL, Grafana, NRDP etc). Nagios in the hands of an experienced Linux engineer can transform the organizations monitoring by taking preventative measures before a disaster strikes.
Scout does a fantastic job with all of the modules and it is easy to navigate. A nice addition was the cyber security module. I can not think of a less appropriate scenario.
I specifically use the risk assessment module and do risk assessments on any new product we introduce into our network or any company that we are thinking about taking on as a client.
I also use the vendor management module for any due diligence that comes up with a new company or a company that we may use once and then not use again.
Nagios could use core improvements in HA, though, Nagios itself recommends monitoring itself with just another Nagios installation, which has worked fine for us. Given its stability, and this work-around, a minor need.
Nagios could also use improvements, feature wise, to the web gui. There is a lot in Nagios XI which I felt were almost excluded intentionally from the core project. Given the core functionality, a minor need. We have moved admin facing alerts to appear as though they originate from a different service to make interacting with alerts more practical.
There are not many areas that I would change in Scout. If I were to change anything it would be just to add a description of when I would use a report, such as managers, board of directors, or regulators.
We're currently looking to combine a bunch of our network montioring solutions into a single platform. Running multiple unique solutions for monitoring, data collection, compliance reporting etc has become a lot to manage.
The Nagios UI is in need of a complete overhaul. Nice graphics and trendy fonts are easy on the eyes, but the menu system is dated, the lack of built in graphing support is confusing, and the learning curve for a new user is too steep.
I haven't had to use support very often, but when I have, it has been effective in helping to accomplish our goals. Since Nagios has been very popular for a long time, there is also a very large user base from which to learn from and help you get your questions answered.
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].
I've already explained why this product beats Excel hands down in time and money. I also love the way it sends you an email when you forget any due diligence or testing that needs to be done.
With it being a free tool, there is no cost associated with it, so it's very valuable to an organization to get something that is so great and widely used for free.
You can set up as many alerts as you want without incurring any fees.
I like that everything is in one place. We used to use Excel spreadsheets and it was very hard to keep everything in one place or to find something specific. Now it is very easy finding what you're looking for with this all in one solution.
This solution pays for itself with the time saved from not looking at spreadsheets.
When the regulators come and they ask for a assessment I can get it for them in very short order.
