Nagios

Supported Versions	Type	Authentication Type
3, 4	Agent	Bearer Token

IT staff can configure Nagios to monitor critical IT infrastructure components, including system metrics, network protocols, applications, services, servers, and network infrastructure.

Nagios sends alerts when critical infrastructure components fail and recover, providing administrators with notice of important events. Alerts can be delivered via email, SMS, or custom script. You can schedule downtime to prevent alerts during maintenance and upgrade windows. When you integrate this service, you can acknowledge alerts and begin resolving outages and investigating security alerts immediately. Alerts can be escalated to different groups if they are not acknowledged in a timely manner.

The Nagios integration contains reporting features that provide a historical record of outages, events, notifications, and alert response for later review. Availability reports help ensure your SLAs are being met. Trending and capacity planning graphs and reports allow you to identify necessary infrastructure upgrades before failures occur.

Open Integration Manager

The Open Integration Manager is available for use with this integration. For more information, see the Open Integration Manager documentation.

Payload size

Alert payloads must be 6MB or smaller. Larger payloads will fail to process with BigPanda. We recommend reviewing your configurations to ensure that only actionable, useful information is being sent to BigPanda.

Ways to Integrate with Nagios

BigPanda provides two ways to integrate with Nagios—via notifications or via logs. The notification-based method is the default and recommended integration. Review this detailed feature comparison to choose the method that best meets your needs.

Feature	Notifications	Logs
Alert Processing	Processes only Nagios alerts that generate notifications.	Processes all Nagios alerts, regardless of filtering options set for notifications.
Incident Updates	Updates when the next notification is sent, which is based on the interval defined for the notification.	Updates when the status of an alert changes.
Notifications	Manage in Nagios for alert logic and suppression rules and in BigPanda with Environments and AutoShare rules.	Manage in BigPanda with Environments and AutoShare rules.
Custom Tags	Add custom tags independently as needed.	Add custom tags by contacting BigPanda support.

Feature	Notifications & Logs
Maintenance Windows	Automatically handles downtime scheduled in Nagios as a maintenance window.
Correlation & Incident Management	- Provides all the benefits of managing alerts in BigPanda, including correlating alerts into actionable incidents, organizing events into a concise alert life cycle, and normalizing data on the Incidents tab, where users can manage the incidents to closure. - Maintains all the event data for the BigPanda incidents that contain Nagios alerts so that you can report on and search through your data. - Syncs with the Nagios status.dat and object.dat files so that BigPanda can recover from connectivity lapses and can enrich alerts with additional attributes that help users resolve problems quickly. - Automatically resolves BigPanda incidents when all related alerts are resolved.

Feature

Notifications & Logs

Maintenance Windows

Automatically handles downtime scheduled in Nagios as a maintenance window.

Correlation & Incident Management

- Provides all the benefits of managing alerts in BigPanda, including correlating alerts into actionable incidents, organizing events into a concise alert life cycle, and normalizing data on the Incidents tab, where users can manage the incidents to closure.

- Maintains all the event data for the BigPanda incidents that contain Nagios alerts so that you can report on and search through your data.

- Syncs with the Nagios status.dat and object.dat files so that BigPanda can recover from connectivity lapses and can enrich alerts with additional attributes that help users resolve problems quickly.

- Automatically resolves BigPanda incidents when all related alerts are resolved.

Migrate Between Nagios Integrations

If you have previously installed the log-based Nagios integration, you can migrate to the notification-based integration. Similarly, you can migrate from the notification-based integration to the log-based integration.

Before You Start

Ensure your BigPanda agent is upgraded to version 8.3.0 +. You can check the version in the agent configuration file: /etc/bigpanda/bigpanda.conf. If your version is older than the required version, upgrade to the latest version of the BigPanda agent.
Obtain access to the Nagios configuration files.
Determine the app key for your current Nagios integration.

Migrate from Nagios Logs to Nagios Notifications

Configure the BigPanda Agent

Remove the log-based integration from the agent by running the following command:
bigpanda-config --remove <YOUR_APP_KEY>
Add the notification-based integration by running the following command:
bigpanda-config --add nagios-notifications --app-key <YOUR_APP_KEY>
Restart the BigPanda agent service by running the following command.
sudo service bigpanda restart

Configure Nagios to Use the BigPanda Contact

Add the Nagios user to the bigpanda group by running the following command:
sudo usermod -a -G bigpanda <Nagios username>
In the nagios.cfg file:
- Add the following line: cfg_file=/etc/bigpanda/bigpanda-contact.cfg
- Ensure that notifications are enabled. enable_notifications=1
In the file where your host objects are defined (for example, templates.cfg)
- Add the bigpanda contact to the contact_groups.
- Set the notification_options for the host to: d,r,u,f,s.
```
```JSON Example
define host{
        name                            generic-host
        contact_groups                  admins,bigpanda
        notification_period             24x7
        notification_options            d,r,u,f,s
}
```
```
contact_groups
If the contact_groups option is not already listed in your definitions, you can add it.
In the file where your service objects are defined (for example, templates.cfg):
- Add the bigpanda contact to the contact_groups.
- Set the notification_options for the service to: c,r,w,u,f,s.
```
```JSON Example
define service{
        name                            generic-service
        check_period                    24x7
        contact_groups                  admins,bigpanda
        notification_interval           60
        notification_period             24x7
        notification_options            c,r,w,u,f,s
}
```
```
Notification options
If you have already configured notification options on a more specific template or definition, those settings will take precedence over the generic settings. To get the most out of this integration, ensure all of the desired notifications are sent to BigPanda.
Restart the Nagios service.

Migrate from Nagios Notifications to Nagios Logs

Configure Nagios to Stop Using the BigPanda Contact

In the nagios.cfg file, remove the following line: cfg_file=/etc/bigpanda/bigpanda-contact.cfg
In the files where your host and service objects are defined (for example, templates.cfg), remove the bigpanda contact from the contact_groups list in the generic-service and generic-host definitions.
```
define service{
        name                            generic-service
        check_period                    24x7
        contact_groups                  admins
        notification_interval           60
        notification_period             24x7
}
```
contact_groups
If bigpanda is the only contact in your contact_groups option, you can delete the whole line.
Restart the Nagios service.