Review of the book
Pro Nagios 2.0
by James Turnbull
Publisher: Apress (April 17, 2006)
ISBN: 1590596099
One line summary: Advanced monitoring solutions for senior IT staffs
[Review: long - 20-30 minutes]
--- DISCLAIMER: This is a requested review by Apress, however any opinions expressed within the review are my personal ones. ---
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With 366 pages this is the most compact Nagios monitoring solutions guide on the marcet. Period !
You can easily take the book with you anywhere you go.
Note however, that Turnbull seems to hit the ground running. The reader is assumed to have at least
some general knowledge of Linux, the command console and roughly how the system works.
Also Turnbull does give a basic function rundown of Nagios in the first 80 pages of the book, it is more
the advanced users that will appreciate the countless documented approaches for monitoring solutions
that are documented in the rest of the book.
He covers a wide range of topics and virtually goes the extra mile. While I found especially the sections
on Security, NRPE, NCSA and SNMP very detailed, the book does really cover a lot of ground in ALL
chapters with a nice mix of details within the text.
Turnbull clearly covers topics which are either not at all or at least not in such detail documented in other
books I have read so far (f.e. failover, redundancy, indirect monitoring, on demand macros, daisy chaining,
adaptive monitoring, freshness checks, the event broker etc.)
... and the good thing is he doesnt stop there ;-)
The books contents is at least 3-6 months newer than other books on the marcet. So simply put, if you are
serious about learning advanced monitoring solutions than you currently have no choice but to get this book.
>> Please find a more detailed review and book comparisons by deploying my profile. <<
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Table of contents:
Chapter 1 - Installation (27p)
Chapter 2 - Basic Object Configuration (56p)
Chapter 3 - Security and Administration (24p)
Chapter 4 - Using the Web console (29p)
Chapter 5 - Monitoring Hosts and Services (65p)
Chapter 6 - Advanced Commands (38p)
Chapter 7 - Advanced Object Configuration (18p)
Chapter 8 - Distributed Monitoring, redundancy, and failover (29p)
Chapter 9 - Integrating Nagios (42p)
Chapter 10 - Developing Plug-ins (23p)
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Whenever a new topic (or section) starts Turnbull gives a quick rundown first, then steps through the
necessary tasks in slow motion and follows up the chapter at the end with ressource links and checkpoints.
Turnbull clearly includes a strong focus on security and points out any issues right on spot.
The "basics" are covered in Chapter 1-4, while the second part of the book (from page 143) covers
the "advanced" scenarios.
He starts off the book with the chapter 1 on "Installation", and a discussion where to position the server before
going into SW/HW considerations, capacity planning, redundancy, backup and finally the installation itself.
The configuration of Nagios itself and plugins is described from chapter 2. Note that the book approaches
Nagios from an object point of view. Everything you configure are objects (hosts,services,contacts, groups,
notifications, timeperiods, commands, event handlers etc.) Putting those objects together with Nagios itself
and the plugins will provide you with the monitoring solutions you are looking for.
Its nice to see that the author devoted chapter 3 exclusively to "Security and Administration" to gives a
general outline what to watch out for when setting up Nagios and how to check the configuration.
(external commands, file permissions, authenticatiand authorization, server validation etc.)
Chapter 4 "Using the Web console" is basically a screenshot tour based user guide version. Turnbull
does cover the key points to make you see how the objects inter-relate to each other and how you can
follow up on the status of each defined object, regardless if its a host, a service or anything else.
Chapter 5 "Monitoring Hosts and Services" is where the book starts to get really interesting (its also
the biggest chapter).Turnbull basically introduces all monitored objects based on the (active) connection
types (local, network, remote, NRPE, SSH, SNMP, NSClient++ etc.) He does cover their usage, and
also any advantages or limitations. At latest, by now your Nagios system should be all set up and running.
The following chapters will extends that knowledge with advanced scenarios and passive connection types.
Chapter 6 "Advanced commands" is covering macros, event handlers, notifications, external commands
and performance data (reporting), MySQL, the RRDtool, Nagiosgraph ... Whats nice is that f.e. notifications
are covered whith a wealth of configuration examples and explanations, which generally makes the topics easy
digestable.
Those admins working in a bigger company with (SLA's) will be happy to hear that chapter 7 "Advanced
object configuration" focuses on host and service dependencies and escalations (notifications). The examples
described will allow you to separate messages (f.e. for the support staff, managers etc. based on the elapsed
time) or create escalation shortcuts.
Chapter 8 covers distributed monitoring *with passive monitoring checks (NCSA based) and any direct or
indirect related issues that may arise. One particularly interesting feature is the "freshness check" used for making
sure that the received check results are actually "fresh" and not old (perhaps even stale) data).
Turnbull then covers a two host based automatic redundancy and failover setup. He does describe two versions
on how to approach the topic from a birds view before he deepens in one of them. At the end of the chapter he
puts the passive monitoring scenario and the failover, redundancy based scenario into one final showcase.
"Integrating Nagios" - Chapter 9 leads us to integrating Nagios with other applications which you might want to
use f.e. syslog-NG (Logserver), MRTG (Statistics & graphs) and a looooong detailed SNMP section.
The book finishes of with the Chapter 10 on "Developing Plug-ins" in Perl and as a shell script, the Nagios
Event Broker and NDO utilities. (It does also mention a C based plugin, but I was unable to find that in the book.)
Summary:
With 366 pages this is a very compact guide which allows you to easily take the book with you anywhere you go.
Note however that Turnbull seems to hit the road running. Also Turnbull does give a basic function rundown of Nagios
in the first 80 pages of the book, it is more the advanced users that will appreciate the many documented approaches
to monitoring solutions. Beginners or junior system administrators might find that the text has some "rough" corners.
This book is clearly text focused and with exception to the web console chapter does not provide many screenshots.
Therefore it is clearly targeted for the advanced users like senior system administrators, software engineers, software
architects and developers.
As described in detail above the many described monitoring solution scenarios make this a worthy book for many IT
professionals. The highlights of the book Pro Nagios 2.0 are certainly the last three chapters with their focus on
"Distributed environments", "Nagios integration" and "Developing Plug-ins".
Most advanced users will find at least the last 3 chapters very rewarding.
Its also a good feeling to know that an incredible detailed 34 page index at the end of the book will be waiting for you,
should you ever get lost in one of the many covered topics ;-)