Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review I am highly likely to recommend Rackspace Cloud Monitoring to a colleague. This is assuming they have a decent background in working on cloud servers. If you don't mind digging in yourself to solve problems, then this is a great resource. If you are just learning how to set up servers on your own, then I recommend at least hiring someone to help you use the service. With that being said, Rackspace makes it easy for people you may hire to seamlessly work within your account. They get their own separate developer account.
Read full review Pros Monitoring of services is one of the biggest benefits for our company. Being able to respond in a timely fashion keeps business smooth. Hardware and device monitoring are easy to set up with proper parameters. Notification to key staff to be able to respond quickly makes issues go away faster. Read full review Immediate email notifications: In case a service is down on our servers, we get immediate email notifications via rackspace cloud monitoring service. This helps us to know about the issues and we get in contact with support team to get it resolved. Configuration on specific services: We can configure this monitoring on specific services. So for example if i don't want to get notified if MySQL concurrent users limit reached, then I do not need to configure this monitoring for MySQL. I can just use it whenever needed for defined services. Group emails and technical contacts emails: The monitoring service can send email alerts to a number of email addresses. Primarily the ones who are added as a technical contact. It helps all people get notified about any issue. Auto ticket management: Rackspace automatically creates a support ticket when a service is down and is notified by their monitoring service. Read full review Cons 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. Read full review It would be nice if there were more templates so that beginners could easily create complex monitors I seemed to stumble upon the cloud monitoring service after having Rackspace for a while Read full review Likelihood to Renew 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.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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].
Read full review I also used
Monitis as a monitoring service for our server.
Rackspace 'S monitoring sends immediate notifications while
Monitis might take a couple minutes to understand if a service is down. Since
Rackspace has their monitoring integrated with their support system, it helps us a lot and we don't need to call support all the time.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review I have overpaid in the past for services I didn't need The steepish learning curve might slow things down at first I have learned a lot using Rackspace Cloud Monitoring! Read full review ScreenShots