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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.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

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

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Pricing

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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
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Product Demos

nagios core

YouTube

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

YouTube
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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).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(164)

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 42)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Pavan Mehare | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
So the Nagios [Core] gave us valuable features like report analysis and graphical structure, so it will easily evaluate and track the issue. Also, the email function is very useful, so we get informed at very crucial times with findings, and also generate templates for popular endpoints which make it very better.
May 17, 2021

Nagios for the win

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For us, we use it just [as] a backup for our main Network Monitoring Systems since it only uses ICMP to monitor the device. If you are looking [for] in monitoring devices using SNMP that will provide you auto discovery and details of your device, Nagios is not for you. But as a backup platform, it is a great tool.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If you have an organization with more than 10 critical business systems, then Nagios Core is a great, free solution for monitoring. If you're looking to monitor a network or network performance, then Nagios Core is not the best choice; there are other solutions that handle that better. Nagios Core is really good at monitoring hosts and components on a host, such as a MySQL database.
D. Robert Hamilton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Excellent for host-level integration and usability. End users can get right in and use the tool to monitor their environment. Easily able to add tags and groupings, which is a must nowadays. The tool can integrate with LDAP and active directory, but we don't use that. We do everything on-premises and keep users separate.
Chris Saenz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios does standard monitoring of servers and network devices very well. If you have an environment with many basic protocols to monitor, Nagios will work well out of the box for you. It also runs very reliably. Once it is set up, I have not had many problems with the service being available.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios Core is a great tool. It's open-source and free, there is a great community, shared plugins, and many other reasons which make it a great tool. It's very good for small to medium-sized businesses and if you configure it appropriately it could be used for larger organizations as well.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is great to give you a top-down view of your entire IT infrastructure. It's another tool to improve reliability and be more pro-active than reactive to problems within your IT infrastructure. I would recommend Nagios in all environments from small businesses to enterprise environments.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is well suited to monitoring devices such as network switches, printers, and especially servers, as well as if administrators or end users wish to receive alerts for downtime or other outages so they can be addressed. It is less appropriate for if auditing of services or logging of those services is desired, or if anything beyond up/down or specific application checks are needed in order to monitor a service.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is great at monitoring your internal IT infrastructure and is highly customized to fit your exact needs. Our reliability has improved vastly. We are able to monitor the system more closely and resolve issues before they happen. It's less suited for a hybrid infrastructure.
October 17, 2019

Nagios quick review

Alejandro Rojas | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In Data Centers Controls as first alert dashboards, in a Network Operation Center to map hot spots or graphs data bandwidth usage. Take advantage of event handlers to perform automated event based tasks or trigger email (sms) alert as a result of those events. As a result of his difficult configuration process it may not suitable for escenarios where you have to scale as a regular basis.
Steven Peterson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is well suited for use with skilled system administrators who know what they need to monitor and what they need for alerts.
It is not well suited if you just want general monitoring with out a good grasp of why they are monitoring.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is primarily an open source technology. It's very well suited for environments that either work on a restricted budget and require a solution that can be customized heavily to fit. I would not recommend it to anyone with a limited time frame, tech skills, or someone looking for a canned monitoring or data collecting solution.
John Reeve | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is great for engineers, sys admins, and do it yourself types. If any of my colleagues are of this type of field I'll recommend Nagios. If you are not familiar with the Linux command line, I would sway you away from Nagios and recommend a third party web-based monitoring service instead.
Ricardo Melo | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is essential in a scenario where it is necessary to solve problems with monitored computational resources as soon as they are detected. It's also suited to manage SLA of network links and monitor to generate data about the use of these computational resources. I do not see an environment where it would not be appropriate to use the tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Nagios is well suited for everyone whether there is 1 server or 100+. It's a way of keeping your server secure and up. The alternative is just keeping the terminal open 24/7 but that won't tell you everything at once. You would need to look for different issues which Nagios assists with.
Nicolas Pla | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I don't know if there is a less appropriate scenario. If you have an infrastructure and need to monitor it, Nagios is the best option. Not only can you monitor, but Nagios also alerts users and allows you to take actions depending on the alert. It helps a lot with automatization and is a tool you must have in your infrastructure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
If you have a lot of servers and network devices to keep an eye on Nagios is an excellent product. It gives you both a quick overview of the network as well as alerts you when action is needed. As long as you are comfortable with Linux I highly recommend you implement Nagios as your infrastructure monitoring tool.
Shawn Brito | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.

August 07, 2018

Nagios Overview

Dario Leon | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
  • The best scenarios: Big or medium companies with own [their] datacenters. For example 20 or more servers, routers, switches.
  • The worst scenarios: Servers in the cloud (they can use other solutions) or less than 5 servers in the company.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Great for basic, up/down component monitoring. Also good for canary checks, file directory monitoring, etc. It's a good Boolean monitoring tool, but once it fires off an alert, obtaining more data is problematic. It's nice, but it can be noisy if not implemented in an enterprise-wide, scalable, and manageable way.
Eric Krueger | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
This tool is very appropriate for IT staff to have the information they need at their fingertips. Notifications are timely and response time to issues has been cut down immensely. If you are looking for Nagios to be the one network monitoring tool for your department then you are in the right place. Nagios will allow your staff to focus on problem resolution and create efficiency by putting more information at their disposal.
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