Monitoring Server Remotely

[geoffreykobrien]

I have a large number of Mac mini's globally that id like to keep a better eye on, not to mention my jss servers that are windows VMs. We are a SCOM shop, and the support for OS X is non-existent, and im familiar with Nagios from a past life. My question is, what, if any, monitoring solutions are being used in the community to keep track of the server infrastructure. Im looking for preferably open source options. Thanks.

[Nix4Life]

@geoffreykobrien I am using Nagios XI. Not sure when you last saw it, but it has become a lot more "Mac Friendly". The free CentOS VM will allow 7 servers ( 6 + the localhost) to be monitored with out restrictions, luckily I have 6. I also run Puppet, and I have installed Factor as a "cheat" to simplify a few checks ( looking at you "uptime"), as well as bash and python scripts. 3 Servers are OS X 10.8, everything else is CentOS 6

hth

Larry

[geoffreykobrien]

I have used XI in the past, what are you using for a mac agent now, and do you think the agent works on the core edition?

[Nix4Life]

We are using the Mac OS/X agent, not sure about Nagios Core, maybe NCPA would work

Larry

[rawmal]

If you're going to be using the Core version of Nagios, then I'd also recommend you try a lesser known monitoring software suite called Pandora FMS. They also have an equivalent to Nagios Core with their Community Edition. As far as I know, they're pretty Mac OS friendly and they're really good when it comes to server monitoring.

[davidacland]

We've used Solarwinds tools in the past with some success. Watchman Monitoring is also a good tool specifically for OS X.

It would be worth watching Andrew Seago's presentation from the recent London MacADUK conference. He's using Casper to monitor and manage his large fleet of Mac mini servers: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_cg9x9GpE4

[Graeme]

We are using Xymon running on CentOs but I believe you can run it on OS X using Macports. A part from a couple of Mac mini servers and one CentOS we are windows shop and monitor everything with XyMon. For the JSS server we monitor the standard things that Xymon (BBWin) does like disk, memory and CPU as well as the web interface and the following services (including the status when I copyed the list, "green" :-))

green Application Management is running
green Certificate Propagation is running
green Cryptographic Services is running
green DNS Client is running
green Diagnostic Policy Service is running
green Windows Event Log is running
green COM+ Event System is running
green Group Policy Client is running
green IKE and AuthIP IPsec Keying Modules is running
green IP Helper is running
green Server is running
green Workstation is running
green TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper is running
green Windows Firewall is running
green MySQL is running
green Netlogon is running
green Network Location Awareness is running
green Network Store Interface Service is running
green IPsec Policy Agent is running
green Remote Registry is running
green RPC Endpoint Mapper is running
green System Event Notification Service is running
green Print Spooler is running
green Apache Tomcat 7.0 Tomcat7 is running
green Hyper-V Heartbeat Service is running
green Hyper-V Data Exchange Service is running
green Hyper-V Guest Shutdown Service is running
green Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor is running
green Windows Time is running
green Windows Update is running

Regards
Graeme

[Chris_Hafner]

We run NagiosXI as a department... however, I began monitoring some time ago with what's now called BMC TrueSight Pulse and I love it (used to be Boundary). I may still shift to Nagios XI along with the rest of our services, but '"Pulse's" performance absolutely floors everything else I've tested. I may be able to get very similar performance from Nagios. I'm just having a hard time moving from something that's been working so well for me. Perhaps I will be a little extra enticed when the bill comes up for renewal.