A slightly longer edition of the presentation. Held on 2015-08-22 @ FrOSCon 2015 at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University in Sankt Augustin, Germany

1. www.icinga.org
Why favour Icinga over Nagios
2015-08-22

2. Markus Frosch
• Consultant @NETWAYS
• Icinga Team since 2012
• Organisation of Icinga 2
• Debian developer
@lazyfrosch

3. THE ICINGA PROJECT

4. Open Source Enterprise Monitoring
Icinga is a scalable and extensible monitoring system
which checks the availability of your resources, notifies
users of outages and provides extensive BI data.

5. You?

6. • originally forked from Nagios in 2009
• focus on improvements and scalability
• independent version Icinga 2 since 2014
• web interfaces and addons

7. Icinga Core
Nagios based C-source
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle
Icinga Core
Nagios based C-source
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle
Icinga Quality, Testing and Community Support
Website and Open Source Ticketing System
Icinga Quality, Testing and Community Support
Website and Open Source Ticketing System
3rd
Party Tools3rd
Party Tools
Icinga Web
based on PHP using ExtJS, Agavi MVC
Icinga Web
based on PHP using ExtJS, Agavi MVC
IDOUTILSIDOUTILS
Icinga Web 2
Based on PHP / responsive design
Icinga Web 2
Based on PHP / responsive design
Icinga 2
C++-based source
with multiple components
Icinga 2
C++-based source
with multiple components
IDOIDO LivestatusLivestatus ClusterCluster APIAPI ……

8. ICINGA 2 INTRODUCTION

9. • monitors everything
• in a regular interval
• preferring active checks
• gathering status
• collect performance data / metrics

10. • notifies using any channel
• detects dependencies
• handles events in configured way

11. • forwards logs to Logstash and Graylog
• passes performance data to Graphite,
OpenTSDB or InfluxDB
• integrate with other tools?

12. Icinga 2
• release 2.3.8 (2015-07-20)
• new code base on C++ and Boost
• similar ideas to Nagios
• Puppet, Chef and Ansible integration
• Packages and Vagrant Box available

13. WHY NAGIOS™ IS GOOD?

14. Nagios™ is good, because:
✔ monitoring things is very easy
✔ very simple software stack
✔ no complex external dependencies

15. Nagios™ is good, because:
✔ active checks are powerful
✔ gathering performance data
✔ huge community
✔ thousands of Plugins

16. OK, BUT WHY ICINGA THEN?

17. Nagios™ does not scale
✗ it's just a single loop
✗ limitations using external interfaces
✗ large installations are difficult

18. Icinga 2 on the other hand
✔ provides a multithreaded engine
✔ distributes load in cluster automatically
✔ is able to monitor thousands of devices
every few seconds

19. MODULES

20. Modules in Nagios™?
# tar xzvf mk-livestatus-1.2.4.tar.gz
# cd mk-livestatus-1.2.4
# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/icinga
--exec-prefix=/usr/local/icinga
# make
# cp src/livestatus.o /usr/local/icinga/bin
define module {
module_name mklivestatus
path /usr/local/icinga/bin/livestatus.o
module_type neb
args /usr/local/icinga/var/rw/live
}

21. CheckerChecker
NotifyNotify
API
(soon)
API
(soon)
CompatCompat ClusterCluster
IDOIDO GELFGELF
GraphiteGraphite
PerfdataPerfdata
OpenTSDBOpenTSDB
LivestatusLivestatus

22. # icinga2 feature enable livestatus
# icinga2 feature enable ido-mysql
# vim /etc/icinga2/features-
available/ido-mysql.conf

23. DEMO

24. CLUSTERING

25. How about high available Nagios™?
✗ there is no integrated failover mechanism
✗ configuration is not distributed
✗ no shared monitoring information

26. What Icinga 2 provides you
✔ zones for multitenancy environments
✔ support for logic splits in the config
✔ availability and scaling zones
✔ automatic redistribution of checks
✔ master / satellite / agent

27. central
datacenter
central
datacenter
CheckerChecker ConfigConfig
Live
status
Live
status
CheckerChecker
DatabaseDatabase
IDOIDO
IDOIDO
remote
location
CheckerChecker

28. Nagios™ and security
✗ NSCA works, but not in a good way
✗ NRPE has a couple of security issues
✗ You can make it secure … by hand

29. Icinga 2 clustering is PKI TLS only
✔ bidirectional connections
✔ helps you setting up a CA
✔ replication of events and status

30. DEMO

31. CONFIGURATION

32. Nagios™ config tricks are weird…
define service{
host_name linux1,linux2,linux3,...,linux9
service_description ssh-check
other service directives ...
}

33. Nagios™ can only do lists
define hostgroup{
hostgroup_name linux-servers
alias Linux Servers
members linux1,linux2,linux3
}

34. Icinga 2 brings logic
apply Service "ssh" {
import "generic-service”
check_command = "ssh”
assign where host.address && host.vars.os == "Linux”
ignore where host.vars.test == true
}

35. Icinga 2 wants to unterstand you
object HostGroup "mysql-server" {
display_name = "MySQL Server"
assign where match("*mysql*", host.name)
assign where host.vars.role == "mysql-server"
ignore where host.vars.environment != "production"
}

36. Imagine a host you manage
object Host "shop1.nbg.de.bratwurst.de" {
import "generic-host"
address = "192.0.2.123"
vars = {
environment = "production"
role = "webserver"
location = "nbg1"
application = "bratwurstshop"
team = "appsupport"
}
}

37. Maybe add templates
template Host "webserver-default" {
import "generic-host"
vars = {
environment = "production"
role = "webserver"
}
}
object Host "shop1.nbg.de.bratwurst.de" {
import "webserver-default"
address = "192.0.2.123"
vars.location = "nbg1"
[...]
}

38. Now add some services
apply Service "http" {
import "generic-service"
check_command = "http"
assign where host.role == "webserver"
}
apply Service "https" {
import "generic-service"
check_command = "http"
vars.http_ssl = true
assign where host.role == "webserver"
}

39. Get notified
apply Notification "host-prod-oncall" to Host {
import "mail-host-notification"
user_groups = [ "datacenter-oncall" ]
timeperiod = "non-workhours"
assign where host.environment == "production"
}
apply Notification "appsupport-prod-oncall" to Service {
import "mail-service-notification"
user_groups = [ "appsupport-oncall" ]
timeperiod = "non-workhours"
assign where host.team == "appsupport"
&& host.environment == "production"
}

40. Define dependencies
apply Dependency "host-in-nbg1" to Host {
parent_host_name = "router.nbg1.bratwurst.de"
disable_checks = true
disable_notifications = true
assign where host.location == "nbg1" &&
host.role != "router"
}

41. Safe and powerful commands
object CheckCommand "fancy-vendor-check" {
import "plugin-check-command"
command = [ PluginDir + "/check_vendor_foo" ]
arguments = {
"-H" = "$host.name$"
"-C" = "$snmp_community$"
"-m" = "$vendor_mode$"
"-w" = "$vendor_warning$"
"-c" = "$vendor_critical$"
}
vars.snmp_community = "public"
}

42. Easy to use
apply Service "fancy-vendor test" {
import "generic-service"
check_command = "fancy-vendor-check"
vars.snmp_community = "isthissecure"
vars.vendor_mode = "proprietary-magic"
vars.vendor_warning = "80"
vars.vendor_warning = "90"
assign where host.type = "fancy-vendor-node"
}

43. Using commands
●
safe against shell injections
●
clean interface, easy to write
●
just set a var in service or host
●
check our ITL template library

44. ONE MORE THING...

45. Icinga 2 is enhanceable
object Service "webservice" {
import "generic-service"
check_command = "load"
host_name = "a really great server"
vars.load_wload1 = {{
if (get_time_period("9to5").is_inside) {
return 40
} else {
return 60
}
}}
}

46. WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET

47. Nagios CGI

48. Icinga Classic

49. Icinga Web 1

50. ✗ limitations in current Icinga interfaces
✗ parsing the status.dat is not fast
✗ executing commands is tedious
✗ really hard to extend and integrate
✗ no unified interface so far

51. Icingaweb 2
• easy to extend and embed
• multiple authentication providers
• reads from IDO database
• responsive
release soon
TM

52. Web 2MySQL /
PostgreSQL
MySQL /
PostgreSQL
2
or Icinga 1
The simplest setup
set up within a few minutes...

53. Web 2
MonitoringMonitoring DocsDocs
BPBP GraphiteGraphite PNPPNP

54. Demo

56. CONCLUSION

57. Where to start?
• Go to docs.icinga.org
• Try our Vagrant VMs
• Use Icinga 2 packages
• Rethink you configuration
• Install Icinga Web 2 and play with it
• Give us feedback
#icinga

58. You?

59. Berlin 2016
March 1st
Berlin 2016
March 1st
Portland 2015
October 10th
Portland 2015
October 10th
Icinga Camp community meetups

60. THANK YOU!
www.icinga.org
exchange.icinga.org
docs.icinga.org
dev.icinga.org
git.icinga.org
@icinga
/icinga
+icinga