Good free Linux based monitoring software?

[Red Squirrel]

I'm looking at setting up monitoring software on my Atom box that is currently powering my hvac system. I want it to be easy to setup the agents on various platforms (linux mostly, but Windows too) as well as support custom alarm points such as executing a SQL query or script and checking the value. Mostly the key is ease of setup though.

I have a bit of experience with Pandora as we use it at work. It has a few quircks and is not the easiest to setup an agent for, but it's not too bad.

I heard Nagios is good as well. I'm aiming towards that one just because I heard lot of good things about it. Just wondering what else is out there and what is everyone's recomendations?

Oh and I would be monitoring offsite servers as well, so push agent is prefered so I don't have to open up ports on the remote servers. I rather just open up a port on the monitoring box (which will be at my house) and IP restrict it. More secure that way.

 

[k1pp3r]

Nagios is pretty much the defacto standard for linux host monitoring. Its good once you get it setup

 

[dave99]

nagios + cacti is what I use. I use VPN tunnels to my remote client sites to monitor those.

 

[4saken]

nagios + cacti is what I use. I use VPN tunnels to my remote client sites to monitor those.

^^ this.

nagios then branching out via cacti/cricket/etc.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cool looking at nagios now. Giving me grief with the plugins though. :/. I try to install the nagios-plugins-all package through yum but it's complaining that I need nagios-plugins-dhcp and icmp, if I try to install them, it says "nothing to do". Gotta hate dependency hell. The web interface is also telling me I have no access to anything. (was hoping installing the plugins would magically fix this).

I'll do some more googling and see if I can figure out these issues.

 

[calvinj]

Zenoss... Zenoss... Zenoss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seriously can be as easy as apt-get install zenoss-core

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ohhh I forgot about that one. I may have to give it a try as well.

 

[robvas]

I wish Bitnami made a stack or VM for Nagios

 

[dashpuppy]

Zenoss... Zenoss... Zenoss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seriously can be as easy as apt-get install zenoss-core

on debian or ubuntu ?

Free ?

 

[madrebel]

yes, zenoss is free. its really powerful too. only problem with zenoss is it gets sluggish as you scale but this is being resolved in version 4 which isn't far away.

 

[NeXuS1]

I deployed Zenoss at work to replace an expensive licensed product. So far everyone that uses it likes it a lot.