--- digested version end ---

One line summary: A nice, solid Nagios introduction a la Nostarch Press !!

Bookspecs:
70+ plugins described !!
464 pages

Introduction (7p)
--- Section I: From Sourcecode to a Running Installation
Chapter 1: Installation (10p)
Chapter 2: Nagios Configuration (22p)
Chapter 3: Startup (8p)
--- Section II: In Mmore detail...
Chapter 4: Nagios Basics (7p)
Chapter 5: Service Checks and How They Are Performed (5p)
Chapter 6: Plugins for Network Services (46p)
Chapter 7: Testing Local Resources (21p)
Chapter 8: Manipulating Plugin Output (2p)
Chapter 9: Executing Plugins via SSH (7p)
Chapter 10: The Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) (11p)
Chapter 11: Collecting Information Relevant for Monitoring with SNMP (36p)
Chapter 12: The Nagios Notification System (24p)
Chapter 13: Passive Tests with the External Command File (7p)
Chapter 14: The Nagios Service Check Acceptor (NSCA) (17p)
Chapter 15: Distributed Monitoring (7p)
Chapter 16: The Web Interface (40p)
Chapter 17: Graphic Display of Performance Data (40p)
--- Section III: Special Applications
Chapter 18: Monitoring Windows Servers (23p)
Chapter 19: Monitoring Room Temperature and Humidity (5p)
Chapter 20: Monitoring SAP Systems (16p)

--- Section IV: Appendix
Appendix A: Rapidly Alternating States: Flapping (6p)
Appendix B: Event Handlers (5p)
Appendix C: Writing Your Own Plugins: Monitoring Oracle with the Instant Client (8p)
Appendix D: An Overview of the Nagios Configuration Parameters (24p)

15 page index

Before we start keep in mind that I have had no what-so-ever experience with Nagios, so I read the
book certainly from a beginners point of view. Keep this in mind, especially when we come to the
more advanced chapters later.

Contents:
The book (in a typical Nostarch style) gives a clear, concise rundown about Nagios in general.
As such it is a well written and sound introduction to the Nagios topic.
The first section will certainly get you set quickly by showing you how to setup & configure
Nagios, however it is really the second section where the book starts to get really interesting.

One of the features of this book was for me basically a new level of "Usability" - or should I
say "reading quality" ? The text contains virtually "links" to related or refered to sections in
other chapters. That allows the reader to jump back and forth to follow up on something. A BIG
time-saver and from my point of view much appreciated.

--- The first section covers the installation, configuration and startup of Nagios.

During the first 10 pages (Chapter 1) you will set up a very basic so to say "mini setup environment"
for Nagios. This is the base from which the auhtor slowly expands in the coming chapters. Chapter 2
introduces the object definition and shows how to define hosts, services, groups, contacts or other
objects which you would need to make your "mini Nagios environment" actually doing something useful.

Chapter 3 concentrates on Testing the configuration created in the previos chapter and after all went
well starting up the Nagios daemon and taking a small look around whats available from the web
interface. So basically after the first 40-45 pages you have the main Nagios system setup.

--- Now that we have the basics done lets look at the second section.

Chapter 4 explains some general considerations which might influence your nagios environment
(network toplogy, reachability,states of services or hosts etc.). Chapter 5 is small but one of the key
points in understanding what and how you can do things with Nagios. The author describes 5 methods
of how you can obtain check results (direct plugin, ssh based plugin, by NRPE, by SNMP and by NSCA
- There are more but lets not get ahead of ourselves).

The following Chapters 6-15 will explain each methods background thoroughly and how they can be
used for your purposes.

So, Chapter 6 focuses on plugins for monitoring network services like ping, smtp, pop, imap, ftp, http
(including virtual servers), proxies, DNS, ssh, tcp ports, udp ports, PostgreSQL, MySQL,(SAP and
Oracle are covered in another chapter), LDAP, DHCP and UPS. That is a lot to cover and ALL is
thoroughly explained !!

Chapter 7 focuses on local resources like HDD capacity, Swap space, System load, Processes, Log files,
Users, system time, mail queue, modification dates of file, UPS, self monitoring, hardware checks and a
dummy plugin.

Chapter 8 is a mini chapter on manipulating plugin ouput data and describing negate and urlize. F.e you
can use "negate" to adjust returned check results statuses if they dont conform to the policy you want
to create. Urlize will allow you to implement results as a link in a web based environment. Its those little
details which the author thought of that make this book so readable.

Chapter 9 will extend the local plugins (chapter 7) by using ssh to be executed on remote systems and
feedback the check results to the main nagios server.

Another method of doing a similar thing is NRPE (Chapter 10). While ssh basically allows you to execute
any command on the remote host (as long as you have the user rights), NRPE allows the user to only
execute predefined commands. This allows you to raise the security level.

To reflect the importance of network devices the author concentrates in Chapter 11 exclusively on SNMP
(and MIB). After an intro to MIB, SNMP protocol versions and the NET-SNMP package as the interface
the authors does show how to get similar system checks results with several SNMP plugin packages from
the community (HDD capacity, System load, temparture sensors, comparing strings,network interfaces
etc.).

Notifications, escalation management, filter and external notification programs (mail, SMS etc.) are covered
in Chapter 12. A detailed flowchart makes the processes from configuration to sending the message
transparent and very easy accessable

The next three chapters (13-15) focus on passive checks in general. Chapter 13 focuses first on the configuration
of Nagios and related upcoming issues (freshness etc.). The NSCA client - server transmission mechanism is
further explained in Chapter 14 using syslog-NG and volatile services as explanation examples.

Chapter 15 focues on transmitting distributed check data from several servers to a central logging server.
This setup is used in clusters or grid environments

Chapter 16 "The Web interface" had a surprise waiting for me. I was wondering why the author would waste
40 pages on describing the user interface itself ? The answer is simple. Mr. Barth is not only describing how
to interact with the user interface but the logic behind the cgi scripts that control the Nagios web interface.
He goes into all the parameter groups of the CGI's, their values and what they actually mean and do. He even
explains how he got those data and how you can find similar data if you need more background knowledge.
It turns out that the excursion actually proves quite useful for getting a better understanding of how to make
Nagios make what you want it to do.

Chapter 17 focuses on "Displaying of Performance Data" - I personally would call that "The reporting feature" ;-)
This is obvious another strong point of Nagios itself. Wolfgang Barth describes the template mechanism and a
wide choice of tools to create a presentation of your data ( Nagiosgraph (charts), Nagiosgrapher (charts), drdraw
(charts), Perf2rrd (DB) and perfparse).

--- Section 3: Special Applications

Chapter 18 is focusing on Monitoring Windows based machines and related differences to their Unix/Linux based
counterparts. Covered are the following packages: NSClient, NC_NET, NRPE_NT, the Cygwin and Perl plugins.
Wolfgang is pointing out the differences to Unix/Linux based amchines including the Windows performance counters.

Chapter 19 is another one of those little chapters that make you go WOW !!
Wolfgang Barth describes how to build, setup and query a reasonable priced sensor system for room temperature
and humidity.

The book finishes off with (Chapter 20) a feast of details for those using the SAP enterprise DB. The author
starts by using the RFC interface together with sapinfo and the check_sap shell script. He then gives a short
intro to SAP's monitoring system (CCMS) and continues how to obtain the necessary SAP permissions for Nagios.
He also shows how to enable additonal functions to be able to deploy all required information.

The appendix contains additonal info which probably didnt fit into the other chapters.
Appendix A explains the nature of what flapping is and how to configure nagios to detect it.
Appendix B focuses on event handlers and how to set them up.
Appendix C describes how to write your own plugins using the check_oracle plugin for the Oracle DB as example.
Appendix D gives an overview of the Nagios configuration parameters.

Summary:

With this book Wolfgang Barth focuses on the "admin's side" of Nagios users. He concentrates on majored
(well established) plugins and describes them from any possible point of view.

The book gives a solid introduction for Nagios users. What is remarkable is, that even though
the Nagios topic is fairly young, the authors manage to describe more than 70+ plugins. The author
- Mr. Barth - is speaking regularly at conferences which also confirms his strong background.
As mentioned before the "links" within the texts refering to other related sections make it very
easy to jump between chapters, that is something that reduces your searchtime to a minmum and provides
a completely new reading quality.

One suggestion I would like to add is that, perhaps in an upcoming 2nd version there is some
more space for an extended section on "Special Applications".

---
Sidenotes:
What immediately meets the eye is that the layout in this book has changed a bit. The edges left and
right are now 4.7cm instead of 4.2cm wide. While that is only a 5 mm difference the books pages seem
much bigger, or emptier, depending how you see it. That empty space alone is now 26%. So, there is now
PLENTY of space to take memos, so to say. Perhaps, the book could have been "compressed" with a smaller
edge making it even more portable. This could be a general trend, but perhaps it was a formatting issue,
I wont further comment on it.

Its interesting that the orginal book is actually from OpenSourcePress (Germany - Oct 2005) even though

it is remarkable readable. Generally speaking I found technical books better written when produced

in the US. The book also has only a few misspellings (mostly funny),f.e. on page 230 he described the SMS

feature and it seems like the editors forgot to remove his mobile phone number ;-), but apart from that,

again, a nice solid Nagios introduction a la Nostarch Press. !!

This review (or a digested version) is also posted at:

Amazon