Tag Archive for 'plugin'

How To Set Up A Nagios XI License Maintenance Status Check

There are a few ways to set up a Nagios XI license maintenance status check. It is also very easy to check the Nagios XI license maintenance status inside Nagios XI. Here’s how…

Once logged in to Nagios XI you can navigate to the Admin menu then click on the License Information link on the left (However, many administrators simply forget to do so!). From the License Information screen you can view the time remaining on your license and/or click the renew now link to begin the renewal process. That’s all there is to it; nice and easy!

Setting Up a license Status Check in Nagios XI

Some Nagios XI users showed interest in setting up a license status check in XI. Having such a check makes perfect sense.  If you were notified that your license is about to expire, you would renew it on time thus avoiding any possible service interruptions. Also, you may be running several Nagios XI instances. You wouldn’t want to log in to each one just to check when each license expires. You could monitor all of the licenses from one central Nagios XI server.

I wrote a small bash script, which can be used to set up a license status check in XI. You can download the plugin from here:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagiosxi/scripts/check_license.sh

Install it as you would normally install any other plugin in Nagios XI.

Admin -> Manage Plugins -> Browse -> check_license.sh -> Upload Plugin

You can test the plugin from the command line by running:

To view the usage (help) menu, run the plugin with passing a “-h” or “–help” flag.

nagios license status check

After you verify that the plugin works from the command line (see the example in the help menu), you can proceed with setting up a command and a service check under the Core Config Manager in Nagios XI.

check nagios license status

 

nagios check license

Save and Apply Configuration.

From the Nagios XI web interface go to the “Service Detail” menu and click on the newly added service. Schedule a forced immediate check to make sure the check returns the expected output.

service detail screen of license check status in nagios xi

For more information, please review our documentation (“Nagios XI – How To Set Up A Nagios XI License Maintenance Status Check“):

https://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagiosxi/docs/How-To-Set-Up-A-Nagios-XI-License-Maintenance-Status-Check.pdf

Happy Monitoring!

Nagios XI VMware Virtualization Wizard Released

Nagios Enterprises is excited to announce the release of the VMware Virtualization Wizard for Nagios XI.

The VMware Virtualization Wizard monitors your VMware virtual environment by offloading the VMware checks to a vSphere Management Assistance (vMA) appliance.

This is achieved by utilizing the plugin box293_check_vmware, which has been written specifically for use on the vMA. Troy Lea (the author of box293_check_vmware) received a lot of feedback at the VMworld Conference after giving his talk on the plugin.

Why use the box293_check_vmware plugin? The plugin utilizes the VMware SDK. The SDK is notoriously CPU and Memory hungry, which can easily overload and cripple your Nagios XI host. By offloading the plugin to the vMA appliance, your Nagios XI server will not be affected as you monitor your VMware virtual environment.

The VMware Virtualization Wizard and installation instructions are available for download from the Nagios Exchange.

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Monitoring Gas Prices Using Capacity Planning in Nagios XI

Nagios XI is the most powerful IT infrastructure monitoring solution on the market.  You can use it to monitor virtually anything.  Although Nagios XI is typically meant for more “serious” work, you can have some fun with it as well!  I guess I have been somewhat nostalgic lately…  Do you remember when a gallon of gas used to cost less than a dollar? 🙂

In this article I will show you how to install the check_gas_price.py plugin, set up a dummy host, and add multiple services to it.  This will allow you to check the gas prices in the USA.  Then you may use the Capacity Planning component in Nagios XI Enterprise Edition to view the trends of gas prices in the USA.

First, download the check_gas_price.py plugin from this URL:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagiosxi/scripts/check_gas_price.py

Next, install the plugin from the Nagios XI web interface by going to: Admin –-> Manage Plugins –-> Choose File, then select the check_gas_price.py file and click Upload Plugin.

If you would like, you can view the plugins’ usage by typing in terminal:

Your output should look like this:

Monitoring gas prices with Nagios XI - check_gas_price.py

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Integrating autoIT With Nagios

AutoIT is a very powerful set of software tools whichs allows the recording and writing of scripts to automate windows tasks, from moving the mouse cursor to sending key strokes. In this example autoIT is used in conjunction with an NRPE check to open firefox.exe and record the time it takes to load a URL, then sends this time to the Nagios  XI server where the plugin pulls it in as a service. This may also be used to grab the loading time of a specific program or service and the script shows where this can be changed.

Having the ability to run these scripts via NRPE checks allows system administrators to custom tailor Windows server automation without having to initiate them locally.

Some of the abilities of AutoIT are as follows:

  • Easy to learn BASIC-like syntax
  • Simulate keystrokes and mouse movements
  • Manipulate windows and processes
  • Interact with all standard windows controls
  • Scripts can be compiled into standalone executables
  • Create Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs)
  • COM support
  • Regular expressions
  • Directly call external DLL and Windows API functions
  • Scriptable RunAs functions
  • Detailed helpfile and large community-based support forums
  • Compatible with Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / Windows 7 / 2008 R2
  • Unicode and x64 support
  • Digitally signed for peace of mind
  • Works with Windows Vista’s User Account Control (UAC)

The above bullet points were taken from http://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/

 

Below is a video showing an example of the check website load time script in action:

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