The only thing that I found helpful not in the Nagios documentation is the scripting piece. It provides good ideas for creating nagios configs for large environment quickly. I was looking for at least a detailed information on integrating it with a third party rrd tool such as cacti for creating trends based on historical data.

Main benefit of this book is that it will teach you many things in a short time. You might want to purchase it if you want a quick start on Nagios, and don't plan to use Nagios on larger systems. Also, although the author's (brief?) style has some benefits, it also has some drawbacks.

Things like distributed monitoring, fail-over, passive checks,... are barely touched. If you are installing Nagios for the first time, you probably won't miss these subjects elaborated, because you will want to have it running soon as possible. However, I think the Apress book covers these advanced topics much better, and gives a more comprehensive overview of Nagios. The decision is up to you. I preferred the lengthier book with more things explained, although it was a bit harder to read.

One more thing that I disliked was that for Passive checks author references Chapter 2. I couldn't find anything about passive checks there, so I checked the Index. No mention of them there either. I gave this book a relatively bad review due to this kind of unclear issues and for the lack of distributed monitoring and failover coverage, which I think is very important for a monitoring system in a serious installation.

As said, some things are better in this book than in Apress one (like ie. Windows check explanation), but in general, Apress book left a better impression on me.

Main benefit of this book is that it will teach you many things in a short time. You might want to purchase it if you want a quick start on Nagios, and don't plan to use Nagios on larger systems. Also, although the author's (brief?) style has some benefits, it also has some drawbacks.

Things like distributed monitoring, fail-over, passive checks,... are barely touched. If you are installing Nagios for the first time, you probably won't miss these subjects elaborated, because you will want to have it running soon as possible. However, I think the Apress book covers these advanced topics much better, and gives a more comprehensive overview of Nagios. The decision is up to you. I preferred the lengthier book with more things explained, although it was a bit harder to read.

One more thing that I disliked was that for Passive checks author references Chapter 2. I couldn't find anything about passive checks there, so I checked the Index. No mention of them there either. I gave this book a relatively bad review due to this kind of unclear issues and for the lack of distributed monitoring and failover coverage, which I think is very important for a monitoring system in a serious installation.

It's well written, but it didn't provide much more insights and coverage than reading the existing documentation you can download for free. There are also some glaring gaps in its coverage. There's nothing about passive checks! And I don't think it was written before v3.0 came out.

If you like written docs for stuff you reference often, it will be worth the money. But don't go to it with any significant troubleshooting problem.

It's well written, but it didn't provide much more insights and coverage than reading the existing documentation you can download for free. There are also some glaring gaps in its coverage. There's nothing about passive checks! And I don't think it was written before v3.0 came out.

If you like written docs for stuff you reference often, it will be worth the money. But don't go to it with any significant troubleshooting problem.

This book takes the fairly complicated matter of configuring Nagios for monitoring your network infrastructure and makes it straight forward. Kudos and many things to Mr. Josephsen.

I use Nagios heavily at my company and as a result, I've purchased all of the available texts on the subject. This one is simply the best work on Nagios available right now. It's clear and succinct where even the online docs from the Nagios project can be confusing. It covers things that the No Starch volume barely touches on (WMI Scripting and Nagios) and honestly, the diagrams and code samples are clear and useful in real-world application.

Really, buy this one. If you need another one, I would be surprised.

The author clearly likes the product on the products own merits. The books is not written by a hack who was filling a void. He writes clearly and methodically explaining in detail why, what, how and when of Nagios. The index is very good and has allowed me to effectively use it as a reference in learning Nagios. I like some humor in my technical books and David does not disappoint me when he explains how to "ssh into his power strip" to do a little environmental monitoring.

Nagios - in my opinion - is a killer-app with such flexibility as to be the "ultimate" monitoring tool. Learning it is a wise investment of anyone's time, and Josephesen's book is invaluable to understanding and exploiting all of Nagios's features... and yes, I am over the age of 13.

--- DISCLAIMER: This is a requested review by PTR, however any opinions expressed within the review are my personal ones. ---

Introduction - 6p
CHAPTER 1 Best Practices - 12p
CHAPTER 2 Theory of Operations - 26p
CHAPTER 3 Installing Nagios - 11p
CHAPTER 4 Configuring Nagios - 23p
CHAPTER 5 Bootstrapping the Configs - 10p
CHAPTER 6 Watching - 46p
CHAPTER 7 Visualization - 42p
CHAPTER 8 Nagios Event Broker Interface - 19p
APPENDIX A Configure Options - 3p
APPENDIX B nagios.cfg and cgi.cfg - 9p
APPENDIX C Command-Line Options - 10p
Index - 14p

The book is with 190 pages (230p. when including appendix and index) very compact. It teaches you Nagios in a way I have never heard / read before. I must assume that the authors clear structured style - which runs through the book like a red line - must be responsible for the excellent outcome.

The book starts in the introduction with the title "Do it right the first time" and that hits it right on the spot. What make out the features of this little portable knowledgebase is the exceptional well thought through contents and its explanations by the author. David is not filling pages by explaining each and every parameter, but rather showing you the big picture, and explaining how to approach new issues or how one technical solution is better over another.

This is the book you should pass to your manager so (s)he understands why and how an open solution like Nagios is the better choice and can be used for achieving surpassing solutions.


The book itself basically is divided in two sections:

Background, setup and configuration - Chapters 1-5
Advanced Topics - Chapters 6-8


I did find any of the chapters to have a nice balance of the amount of information needed but some EXCEPTIONAL good parts of book where:

Chapter 1 Best practices
Chapter 2 - the part about scheduling
Chapters 6-8 as a whole

Chapter 6 has a thorough explanations on monitoring the different OS's (especially the Windows part !!) or other applications.

Chapter 7 for its overall thoroughness of how to visualize your data to reach the next level of a better understanding of the systems / network you are monitoring.

Chapter 8 is describing a filesystem based status interface. The NEB module will write a file with its current status code for each service. I have to admit that some technical details went over my head, but I thought that was pretty cool !!


The featured points above is what I found to be exceptionally good and most likely the strongest sales points for this little portable knowledgebase. That doesnt mean that the other not mentioned parts of the book are weak, mind you.

Funny enough the above mentioned points where EXACTLY the points which I havent seen explained this thorough anywhere before.

So David's book was exactly spot on for me.


Summary:

To sum it all up in very simple words: This is a hell of a book !!

Its the most compact, well structured book on Nagios that I have seen to date. It contains many WOW-factors. While reading each chapter you can virtually "feel" how Davids explanations and tips and tricks already helped you to avoid time consuming pitfalls.

So this book is not about "to buy or not to buy", this is an investment you dont want to miss !!

I was especially impressed by the thoroughness the book is written by from the first page. Also the contents of the first chapter wasnt new to me, the way it was explained already provided many of those A-ha moments.

The main asset of the book is not the description of the tools itself, but rather the tought and considerations the author put into it and the sharing of those thoughts in a way that the reader can actually visualize how and why one solution is better over another, without actually having to go to the "luxury to experience the pitfalls" in a live disaster scenario.


PS: AFTER I finished reading the book I re-read the "Editorial Review" Amazon gave above and found it pretty well describing the actual book and what you should expect.

>> You can find more reviews on Nagios related books including a comparison by deploying my profile. <<

--- DISCLAIMER: This is a requested review by PTR, however any opinions expressed within the review are my personal ones. ---

Introduction - 6p
CHAPTER 1 Best Practices - 12p
CHAPTER 2 Theory of Operations - 26p
CHAPTER 3 Installing Nagios - 11p
CHAPTER 4 Configuring Nagios - 23p
CHAPTER 5 Bootstrapping the Configs - 10p
CHAPTER 6 Watching - 46p
CHAPTER 7 Visualization - 42p
CHAPTER 8 Nagios Event Broker Interface - 19p
APPENDIX A Configure Options - 3p
APPENDIX B nagios.cfg and cgi.cfg - 9p
APPENDIX C Command-Line Options - 10p
Index - 14p

The book is with 190 pages (230p. when including appendix and index) very compact. It teaches you Nagios in a way I have never heard / read before. I must assume that the authors clear structured style - which runs through the book like a red line - must be responsible for the excellent outcome.

The book starts in the introduction with the title "Do it right the first time" and that hits it right on the spot. What make out the features of this little portable knowledgebase is the exceptional well thought through contents and its explanations by the author. David is not filling pages by explaining each and every parameter, but rather showing you the big picture, and explaining how to approach new issues or how one technical solution is better over another.

This is the book you should pass to your manager so (s)he understands why and how an open solution like Nagios is the better choice and can be used for achieving surpassing solutions.


The book itself basically is divided in two sections:

Background, setup and configuration - Chapters 1-5
Advanced Topics - Chapters 6-8


I did find any of the chapters to have a nice balance of the amount of information needed but some EXCEPTIONAL good parts of book where:

Chapter 1 Best practices
Chapter 2 - the part about scheduling
Chapters 6-8 as a whole

Chapter 6 has a thorough explanations on monitoring the different OS's (especially the Windows part !!) or other applications.

Chapter 7 for its overall thoroughness of how to visualize your data to reach the next level of a better understanding of the systems / network you are monitoring.

Chapter 8 is describing a filesystem interface. I have to admit that some technical details went over my head, but I thought that was pretty cool !!


The featured points above is what I found to be exceptionally good and most likely the strongest sales points for this little portable knowledgebase. That doesnt mean that the other not mentioned parts of the book are weak, mind you.

Funny enough the above mentioned points where EXACTLY the points which I havent seen explained this thorough anywhere before.

So David's book was exactly spot on for me.


Summary:

To sum it all up in very simple words: This is a hell of a book !!

Its the most compact, well structured book on Nagios that I have seen to date. It contains many WOW-factors. While reading each chapter you can virtually "feel" how Davids explanations and tips and tricks already helped you to avoid time consuming pitfalls.

So this book is not about "to buy or not to buy", this is an investment you dont want to miss !!

I was especially impressed by the thoroughness the book is written by from the first page. Also the contents of the first chapter wasnt new to me, the way it was explained already provided many of those A-ha moments.

The main asset of the book is not the description of the tools itself, but rather the tought and considerations the author put into it and the sharing of those thoughts in a way that the reader can actually visualize how and why one solution is better over another, without actually having to go to the "luxury to experience the pitfalls" in a live disaster scenario.


PS: AFTER I finished reading the book I re-read the "Editorial Review" Amazon gave above and found it pretty well describing the actual book and what you should expect.

>> You can find more reviews on Nagios related books including a comparison by deploying my profile. <<

If you're a system administrator or college-level library with computer holdings catering to such an audience, then Building a Monitoring Infrastructure with Nagios is the item for you - it tells how to work with Nagios, an open source monitoring tool, and introduces all the basics of Nagios for newcomers. Examples come from real world applications, working code can be easily mixed in, and discussions of data visualization and other advanced topics make for a handy reference.

Nagios is offered here as a free and open source alternative to various (unnamed) commercial network monitoring packages. Josephsen cites the latter as monolithic, often needing large code objects to be installed on every machine being monitored. Plus, any customisation that you might desire for your site could end up having to be written in a proprietary language. Makes it harder for your company to migrate to another vendor's product. (Perhaps a deliberate effect of the former vendor devising its own language.)

You might compare Nagios to the Eclipse platform for Java programming. Both Nagios and Eclipse are frameworks, deliberately structured to let third party plugins be easily added. However, adding a plugin to Nagios seems much simpler than doing so in Eclipse. The Nagios plugin might be a very short unix/linux shell script, for example. Returning an exit code in the set {0, 1, 2, 3}. Each value has a specific meaning to Nagios. Notably, 0 means a normal monitoring result. Readers who have coded C and unix from years ago will immediately recognise this.

The Nagios user interface is also very nice. Straightforward for a sysadmin to quickly grasp a network overview. It seems scalable to quite large networks. And it can indicate at a glance the overall status, while letting you find any outages.

Nagios is offered here as a free and open source alternative to various (unnamed) commercial network monitoring packages. Josephsen cites the latter as monolithic, often needing large code objects to be installed on every machine being monitored. Plus, any customisation that you might desire for your site could end up having to be written in a proprietary language. Makes it harder for your company to migrate to another vendor's product. (Perhaps a deliberate effect of the former vendor devising its own language.)

You might compare Nagios to the Eclipse platform for Java programming. Both Nagios and Eclipse are frameworks, deliberately structured to let third party plugins be easily added. However, adding a plugin to Nagios seems much simpler than doing so in Eclipse. The Nagios plugin might be a very short unix/linux shell script, for example. Returning an exit code in the set {0, 1, 2, 3}. Each value has a specific meaning to Nagios. Notably, 0 means a normal monitoring result. Readers who have coded C and unix from years ago will immediately recognise this.

The Nagios user interface is also very nice. Straightforward for a sysadmin to quickly grasp a network overview. It seems scalable to quite large networks. And it can indicate at a glance the overall status, while letting you find any outages.

Nagios already has extensive online documentation and one of the best and most active communities, so why do you need this book? You need it because it is most assuredly not an attempt to simply rehash existing documentation.

This book does a great job of addressing the challenges involved in deploying Network Monitoring generally, and then providing the reasons why Nagios is the best choice for providing the needed functionality, and how to go about making sure your implementation is a success.

Best of all it is not a dry technical reference tome. Such things have their place, but what seems to be more lacking in a lot of systems administrators is a deeper more cohesive understanding of how it all works together, and why it works that way. This book presents that information in a way that is easy to read. The author's personality quite clearly shines through in most of the book, making it rather easy and even enjoyable reading. Something that sadly is often lacking in many of todays over-edited technical works.

The author punctuates his points where necessary with easily understood examples that drive the point home, and help to communicate the scope of the issue with potential impacts. Most any seasoned Nagios administrator will recognize at least variants on many of the examples he uses as incidents from their own history.

One other point worthy of mentioning is that he is quite clearly not afraid of the manual administration of Nagios. There is a weird trend among some *nix administrators these days that says if you can't click through a few forms and be done then it's too hard. This book not only doesn't shy away from this, it takes the time to explain why this is exactly what we don't want.

If I could recommend improvements for this book, it would be to include a full case study on deploying Nagios in an environment. Mapping the network, examples of the management involvement he describes, the structure and content of the resulting config files and notification schemes, and so on. Perhaps then with a series of changes describing the way Monitoring systems tend to change over time. Responding to needs for an on-call rotation, people whining about the number and types of pages they receive, etc. Perhaps the addition of another network segment or location, or a recurring situation that requires the creation of an event handler to manage. This would round out the end of the book well and help to draw all the presented concepts together for the reader.

Regardless, if you're thinking, are in the middle of, or have already implemented a monitoring system I highly recommend this work. Even seasoned Nagios administrators may benefit from the reading of alternative approaches and more recent features available through Nagios - such as performance metrics and the event broker.