Tag Archive for 'passive checks'

How to Passively Monitor Windows Machines with NRDS & Nagios XI

In my previous article, I demonstrated how easy it is to passively monitor Linux machines with Nagios Remote Data Sender (NRDS) and Nagios XI. In today’s article, I will cover passive monitoring of Windows machines via NRDS.

Monitoring Windows machines via NRDS is no different than monitoring Linux boxes. You need to follow the same three steps:

  1. Adding Configuration
  2. Client Installation
  3. Configuring the host and its services

Step 1 – Adding Configuration

Go to Admin -> Monitoring Config -> NRDS Config Manager, click on Create Config, select Windows (32- or 64-bit) from the Operating System drop-down menu, and click on the Next button. You will see the Edit NRDS Config page. Most of the config options will already be populated for you with the default options. All you will need to do is type a config name, select a token from the drop-down menu, and click on the Apply button. For this example, we will be creating a config called “Win7x64”.

Edit NRDS Config

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How to Passively Monitor Linux Machines with NRDS & Nagios XI

When active agent-based monitoring is not an option (because of a firewall, or security restriction), passive monitoring can provide the solution necessary to maintain network security and health. Today we will be discussing Nagios Remote Data Sender (NRDS) and how it can monitor Linux machines using passive check results. Passive results are sent to the Nagios Remote Data Processor (NRDP) server and processed in Nagios XI.

The NRDS client configuration can be managed centrally via the NRDS Config Manager Component in Nagios XI. Updated configuration files on the NRDS server are automatically picked up by all clients. The NRDS client runs on a cron job at a specified interval. Each time it runs, it will do the following:

  • Run all of the commands, specified in the config file
  • Send the results back to the Nagios XI server
  • Check if there is a new version of the configuration file on the Nagios XI server, and if there is one, it will download it
  • Download all of the plugins it needs from the server and install them on the client

In this article, I will show you how you can start monitoring a Linux host passively in three easy steps.

Step 1  – Adding Configuration

Go to Admin -> Monitoring Config -> NRDS Config Manager, click on Create Config, and select Linux from the Operating System drop-down menu.

Create NRDS Config

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