1. What is Nagios monitoring tool in Linux?

GENERAL (Production Support)

• Nagios is a open source powerful monitoring system that enables organizations to identify and
resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes.
• Nagios provides complete monitoring of Linux operating systems and distributions – including
operating system metrics, service state, process state, file system usage, and more. When you
use Nagios to monitor your Linux environment, you’re using one of the most powerful Linux
monitoring tools on the planet.
FOR DEVOPS
• Nagios is a monitoring tool that is used for continuous monitoring of system services,
applications, and business processes. Even in case of any failure, Nagios tool can alert the
technical staff about the problem. As a result, DevOps professionals or technical team members
can begin the required remediation processes before the negative impact of any business
processes, customers, and end-users. Here, in such cases, the team does not have to explain
anyone that why an unseen infrastructure outage affects the bottom line of the organization.

The things that can be achieved by the Nagios tool:

• Automatic problem fixing as and when they occur.
• Infrastructure upgrades planning even before any failure due to an outdated system.
• Technical team response coordination.
• To ensure that SLA of your organization will be met.
• To monitor the business process and the entire infrastructure.
• To respond to issues even as and when they arise.
2. Explain the working of Nagios, how does it work?
On a server, Nagios either runs as a service or daemon. Plugins that resides on the same server are
being run by the Nagios; basically, they contact the hosts or servers of your network or on the
internet. We can check the status by web interface; even notifications can also be received by email
or SMS when something happens.
3. What are port numbers used by Nagios for monitoring purpose?
Usually, the port number 5666, 5667 and 5668 are used for monitoring in Nagios tool.
4. What are the benefits of Operating System (OS) Monitoring with Nagios?

• Increased server, services, and application availability

• Fast detection of network outages and protocol failures
• Fast detection of failed services, processes and batch jobs

5. What are the benefits of website monitoring with Nagios?

Implementing effective website monitoring with Nagios offers the following benefits:
• Increased website and web application availability
• Increased website performance
• Fast detection of outages, website defacement, and website hijacking
• Capacity planning information for future web server and application upgrades
6. What are the benefits of HTTP monitoring with Nagios?
Nagios provides complete monitoring of HTTP and HTTPS servers and protocols.
Benefits – Implementing effective HTTP monitoring with Nagios offers the following benefits:

• Increased server, services, and application availability

• Fast detection of network outages and protocol failures
• User experience monitoring
• Web server performance monitoring
• Web transaction monitoring
• URL monitoring

7. What are the benefits of Database Monitoring with Nagios?

Nagios provides complete monitoring of database servers and databases – including availability,
database and table sizes, cache ratios, and other key metrics.
Benefits – Implementing effective database monitoring with Nagios offers the following benefits:
• Increased application availability
• Increased database performance
• Fast detection of database outages, failures, and table corruption
• Predictive analysis of storage requirements and index performance

8. Explain main configuration file and its location.

Resource File: To store sensitive information like user details that may include username and
passwords it is used. The information is not made available to CGI.
Object Definition File: In this file, you can find and enlist the details of resources that you want
to monitor and how you want the monitoring to be performed? Host services, host groups, contacts,
contact groups, commands, etc. are defined in this file.

CGI Configuration File: Several directives are contained and stored in CGI file that can affect the
CGI o. A reference to the main configuration file is also stored in this file, so that CGI can know the
details of Nagios configuration as and when required and the location of object definition storage.
9. What are state types of Nagios?
Following are the state types of Nagios:
Service or host state type: Some states like OK, WARNING, UP, or DOWN state host or service
Two main state types that are SOFT state or HARD state
10. What are SOFT and HARD states?
We can define soft and hard states as:
SOFT state: the service or host check results are not OK or not up to the mark, even in case if
service check has not been rechecked the number of times that are specified for it moreover the
times that is being specified by the max_check_attempts directive. Recovery of the component from
such Soft error is called Soft Recovery.
 When a host or service check result is not ‘OK’ and it has been checked for the number of times,
specified by the max_check_attempts directive in the host definition, then this error is known as
Hard Error. Recovery of any service from this error is known as Hard Recovery.
11. What is state stalking in Nagios?
State stalking is used for logging purpose in Nagios. When stalking is enabled for any service or host
then Nagios watch it very carefully and store any changes that if found in the check result of that
resource.
Stalking can be helpful in later stages of log file analysis. Here in such scenario, any host or service
check can be performed only if it has been updated for the last time.
12. Why is it being said that Nagios is object oriented?
Nagios has object configuration format where you can create object definitions, that can inherit the
properties from other hostnames or object definitions. In this way, you can specify the component
relationships easily. The components are considered as objects by the Nagios.
13. Which three Nagios variables can affect recursion and inheritance in Nagios?
The three variables that affect recursion and inheritance are: Name, Use, Register
Here, Name is just a placeholder that can be used by the other objects. Use variable can be used to
define parent object, whose properties are to be used. Registers are also used for storing values that
can be either 0 or 1. Register values cannot be inherited.
14. How Does Flap detection work in Nagios?
When a service or host changes their state frequently, then it is called flapping that may cause lots
of problems and generate too many recovery notifications. Flapping is detected in the following
manner:
• Store the results of last 21 checks and then analyze this historical check result to know the
number of transitions that are being taken place by the host or service.
• Know the percent state change value with the help of state transition
• Compare the value of this state change against low and high flapping thresholds
• When this value exceeds then the highest specified threshold then it is called flapping
• When this percent state value goes down the specified value then it is said that flapping has
been stopped.
15. How is distributed monitoring being done in Nagios?
There is a distributed monitoring scheme in Nagios with the help of which you can monitor your
complete enterprise that may include local slave instances. In such environment, Nagios submit the
result of reports of tasks to a single machine. All configuration, reporting, and notification can be
managed at the master machine and here slaves do all the work. Here Nagios uses passive checks
that are basically external applications that can send the results back to Nagios.
16. What is an icinga?
Icinga is an open source computer system and network monitoring application. It was originally
created as a fork of the Nagios system monitoring application in 2009. The name Icinga is a Zulu
word meaning “it looks for”, “it browses” or “it examines” and is pronounced with a click consonant.
17. What is active and passive checks in Nagios?
Active checks can be used to “poll” a device or service for status information every so often. Nagios
also supports a way to monitor hosts and services passively instead of actively. The key features of
passive checks are as follows: Passive checks are initiated and performed by external
applications/processes.

18.What is OID Nagios?

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is a network protocol designed for monitoring
network-attached devices. It uses OIDs (Object IDentifiers) for defining the information, known as
MIBs (Management Information Base), that can be monitored.

19. What does Check_mk do?

Check_MK is an extension to the Nagios monitoring system that allows creating rule-based
configuration using Python and offloading work from the Nagios core to make it scale better,
allowing more systems to be monitored from a single Nagios server.
20. What does Nagios use to monitor?
Nagios is now known as Nagios Core, is a free and open source computer-software application that
monitors systems, networks and infrastructure. Nagios offers monitoring and alerting services for
servers, switches, applications and services.
21. Explain Main Configuration file and its location?
Resource File: It is used to store sensitive information like username, passwords with out making
them available to the CGIs.
Object Definition Files: It is the location were you define all you want to monitor and how you
want to monitor. It is used to Define hosts,services, hostgroups, contacts, contact groups,
commands, etc
CGI Configuration File: The CGI configuration file contains a number of directives that affect
the operation of the CGIs. It also contains a reference the main configuration file, so the CGIs know
how you've configured Nagios and where your object definitions are stored.
22. Explain active and Passive check in Nagios?
Nagios will monitor host and services in tow ways actively and passively.Active checks are the most
common method for monitoring hosts and services. The main features of actives checks as as
follows:Active checks are initiated by the Nagios process

Active checks:

1.Active checks are run on a regularly scheduled basis

2.Active checks are initiated by the check logic in the Nagios daemon.

• Active check are executed At regular intervals, as defined by the check_interval and
retry_interval options in your host and service definitions
• On-demand as needed.Regularly scheduled checks occur at intervals equaling either the
check_interval or the retry_interval in your host or service definitions, depending on what type
of state the host or service is in. If a host or service is in a HARD state, it will be actively checked
 at intervals equal to the check_interval option. If it is in a SOFT state, it will be checked at
intervals equal to the retry_interval option.

Passive checks:

They key features of passive checks are as follows:

1.Passive checks are initiated and performed external applications/processes

2.Passive check results are submitted to Nagios for processing

Here's how passive checks work in more detail...

• An external application checks the status of a host or service.

• The external application writes the results of the check to the external command file.
• The next time Nagios reads the external command file it will place the results of all passive
checks into a queue for later processing. The same queue that is used for storing results from
active checks is also used to store the results from passive checks.
• Nagios will periodically execute a check result reaper event and scan the check result queue.
Each service check result that is found in the queue is processed in the same manner - regardless
of whether the check was active or passive. Nagios may send out notifications, log alerts, etc.
depending on the check result information.

23. What Are Objects?

Objects are all the elements that are involved in the monitoring and notification logic. Types of
objects include:

• Services: are one of the central objects in the monitoring logic. Services are associated
with hosts Attributes of a host (CPU load, disk usage, uptime, etc.)
• Service Groups: are groups of one or more services. Service groups can make it easier to

1. view the status of related services in the Nagios web interface

2. simplify your configuration through the use of object tricks.

• Hosts: are one of the central objects in the monitoring logic. Hosts are usually physical
devices on your network (servers, workstations, routers, switches, printers, etc.).
• Host Groups: are groups of one or more hosts. Host groups can make it easier to (1) view
the status of related hosts in the Nagios web interface and (2) simplify your configuration
through the use of object tricks
• Contacts: Contact information of people involved in the notification process
• Contact Groups: are groups of one or more contacts. Contact groups can make it easier
to define all the people who get notified when certain host or service problems occur.
• Commands: are used to tell Nagios what programs, scripts, etc. it should execute to
perform ,Host and service checks and when Notifications should send etc.
• Time Periods: are used to control, when hosts and services can be monitored
• Notification Escalations: Use for escalating the notification
24. Explain External Commands?
Nagios can process commands from external applications (including the CGIs) and alter various
aspects of its monitoring functions based on the commands it receives. External applications can
submit commands by writing to the command file, which is periodically processed by the Nagios
daemon. External commands can be used to accomplish a variety of things while Nagios is running.
Example of what can be done include temporarily disabling notifications for services and hosts,
temporarily disabling service checks, forcing immediate service checks, adding comments to hosts
and services, etc.

25. What is a plugin in Nagios?

Plugins are compiled executables or scripts (Perl scripts, shell scripts, etc.) that can be run from a
command line to check the status or a host or service. Nagios uses the results from plugins to
determine the current status of hosts and services on your network.

26. Can Nagios monitor Windows machine?

To monitor Windows Machines you will need to follow several steps and they are: Install
NSClient++ addon on the Windows Machine. Configure Nagios Server for monitoring Windows
Machine. Add new host and service definitions for Windows machine monitoring.

27. What is Nrpe in Nagios?

NRPE allows you to remotely execute Nagios plugins on other Linux/Unix machines. This allows you
to monitor remote machine metrics (disk usage, CPU load, etc.). NRPE can also communicate with
some of the Windows agent addons, so you can execute scripts and check metrics on remote
Windows machines as well.

28. What is Nagios XI?

Nagios XI provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components including
applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network
infrastructure. Hundreds of third-party addons provide for monitoring of virtually all in-house and
external applications, services, and systems

29. What are the benefits of using Nagios?

There are many benefits of using Nagios:

• Plan for infrastructure upgrades before outdated systems cause failures

• Respond to issues at the first sign of a problem
• Automatically fix problems when they are detected
• Coordinate technical team responses
• Ensure your organization’s SLAs are being met
• Ensure IT infrastructure outages have a minimal effect on your organization’s bottom line
• Monitor your entire infrastructure and business processes

30. What is Active Check?

A check that is initiated and performed by Nagios Core or Nagios XI – usually on a pre-
determined schedule. Plugins are used to perform active checks.
31. What is Nagios Log Server?
Nagios Log Server greatly simplifies the process of searching your log data. Set up alerts to notify
you when potential threats arise, or simply query your log data to quickly audit any system. With
Nagios Log Server, you get all of your log data in one location, with high availability and fail-over
built right in.
32. What is Nagios Network Analyzer?
Nagios Network Analyzer provides an in-depth look at all network traffic sources and potential
security threats allowing system admins to quickly gather high-level information regarding the
health of the network as well as highly granular data for complete and thorough network analysis
using netflow, sflow, jflow, etc.
33. Explain the process of website Monitoring with Nagios?
Nagios provides complete monitoring of websites, web applications, web transactions, and web
services – including availability, URL monitoring, HTTP status, content monitoring, hijack
detection, and more.
34. What are the benefits of SSL Certificate Monitoring with Nagios?
Nagios provides SSL Certificate monitoring to ensure that expired certificates don’t negatively
impact your organization’s websites, applications, and security.
Benefits – Implementing effective SSL Certificate monitoring with Nagios offers the following
benefits:

• Increased website and application availability

• Increased security

35. Which databases supports Nagios?

Nagios supports following databases for monitoring.

1. MySQL
2. Postgres
3. Oracle
4. DB2 Monitoring
5. Microsoft SQL Server