Your eyes in the network

Transcription

1 Your eyes in the network init.at informationstechnologie GmbH Tannhäuserplatz 2/5.OG 1150 Wien Austria

2 Page 2 of 10 1 Table of contents 2 Why NOCTUA by init.at Your benefits with NOCTUA: NOCTUA features Web interface Device groups Network topology Flexible checks Users and alerts Scalability High availability Personalised enhancement with NOCTUA Technical overview Architecture Distributed monitoring Technical requirements Graphic, NOCTUA overview Graphic, NOCTUA in master/slave set-up for distributed monitoring... 10

3 Page 3 of 10 2 Why NOCTUA by init.at "When it comes to large and complex networks, it's nearly impossible to configure monitoring software by hand. NOCTUA reduces the time you spend on configuration to a minimum so that you can save time and costs effectively in infrastructure monitoring." NOCTUA is entirely configured using a comfortable Web front-end. That means it's much easier for you to create monitoring concepts - even in complex settings. For primary monitoring tasks, NOCTUA uses the proven technologies Icinga/Nagios. Our development team not only extensively enhanced functionality, it also especially simplified installation and management significantly. NOCTUA has the benefit of more than ten years of init.at monitoring experience in complex infrastructures and networks. When you don't want to "monitor" your IT: NOCTUA is also perfect for easy-to-follow documentation and management of your network structure. You can obtain a free version of NOCTUA, including detailed documentation, at:

4 Page 4 of 10 3 Your benefits with NOCTUA: Fast, easy installation Distribution of your monitoring load among as many satellites as you choose, with automated master-slave set-up 220,000 checks per minute A high level of flexibility and scalability via central administration Central monitoring and remote management of all devices via a Web front-end Automatic creation of graphics via RRD Mapping of your network topology directly in the software All Icinga/Nagios configuration options (including active/passive checks, as well as cluster checks) are easy to configure Completely scriptable via REST Connection to existing LDAP and/or AD networks Automatic notifications when predefined thresholds are exceeded and for interruptions that cannot be remediated remotely Safety for the future with ongoing development and updates Training and support provided by NOCTUA developer No license costs

5 Page 5 of 10 4 NOCTUA features 4.1 Web interface "Time-consuming tampering in Nagios configuration is now a part of the past. Even complex infrastructures are registered on your monitoring system in just a short amount of time and automatically monitored." NOCTUA delivers an easy-to-use, intuitive and comprehensive Web interface featuring the globally tried and tested open source monitoring solutions Icinga/Nagios. Their functions have been comprehensively expanded by our development team. Installation and management in particular have been significantly simplified. With the help of filters, you'll find the device you are looking for among the hundreds of devices being monitored. 4.2 Device groups You can structure your devices into device groups right away upon adding them into the system. That means - for a type of check, for example - any number of devices can be activated at once. 4.3 Network topology NOCTUA supports you with flexible visualization of your network so that you can have an overview at all times. Generate network topology so you can define the dependencies between your network devices. 4.4 Flexible checks "NOCTUA makes it easy for you to initialize and comes with the most important checks ready to go" You can define your checks in the standard Icinga/Nagios syntax, and allocate them to devices and groups flexibly. Check templates provide assistance in defining basic configurations as templates, such as monitoring intervals and messaging settings. 4.5 Users and alerts Device monitoring is only one part of a quality monitoring solution. Alarms need to be sent out to the correct users (and user groups) quickly and directly. NOCTUA makes it easier for you to manage users, messaging groups and escalation levels alike.

6 Page 6 of Scalability "When monitoring large networks, it's important to have a high number of checks performed per time unit in order to recognize problems and interruptions quickly." NOCTUA supports distributed monitoring with master/slave architecture, as illustrated in Figure 2 [see Page 10]. The slaves handle the actual monitoring in this case. The master is only used to define passive checks. That means the slaves forward their monitoring information to the master. If the master hasn't received information from a slave within a predefined time interval, then it will trigger an alarm. 4.7 High availability In order to guarantee fail-safe monitoring, the monitoring master can be run with an HA set-up. A master clone stands at the ready to take over the master's function in the event of an error. 4.8 Personalized enhancement with NOCTUA For extremely large, dynamic or special networks, init.at offers various options for enhancement: Automatic configuration via network crawler Personalized assessments with graphics Special importer modules for formats tailored to the specific customer Ongoing configuration import from existing data sources Interested? We're happy to be at your service on , or via to noctua@init.at

7 Page 7 of 10 5 Technical overview 5.1 Architecture From a user perspective, the Web front-end is in the foreground. It can be used to manage all configuration aspects simply and quickly. The Web front-end is generated using Angular. Databases: The configuration itself is stored in an SQL database. The databases supported are PostgreSQL, MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle and SQLite. md_config_server Automatic configuration: Upon user request - via the Web front-end - the components md_config_server will generate information from a database in a new Icinga/Nagios configuration. Monitoring will be run according to the new configuration right from that point in time. Newly added devices and checks are integrated in the next monitoring interval. The infrastructure status can be reviewed in the Icinga/Nagios Web front-end. snmp-relay - status information: The snmp-relay components are used to read out status information from SNMP devices. The snmp-relay is capable of caching read values in order to maintain the load on target systems as low as possible. One typical example consists of switches, which frequently require several minutes to set up a complete SNMP tree. collserver and collrelay the "Data loggers": The component collserver is optional and runs on the Linux servers being monitored. The collserver logs all information via the server (storage utilization, network throughput, I/O throughput). The collrelay is used as a mediator and forwards check instructions and check results between the components involved. 0MQ - reliable and efficient communication: Python provides access to the comprehensive standard library. In order to guarantee reliable and efficient communication in distributed monitoring in particular, NOCTUA uses the library 0MQ. More than 98% of NOCTUA is written in Python. The remaining 2% is implemented in C. Figure 1 [see Page 9] provides an overview of NOCTUA architecture.

8 Page 8 of Distributed monitoring Here, the master is the central instance and defines configuration for the slaves. The slaves run their corresponding checks independently and only send the check results back to the master. Distributed monitoring is sensible, or even necessary, in various scenarios. On extremely large networks, performance aspects may speak in favor of selecting this set-up model. This model becomes necessary when topology impedes the master from establishing a connection to all devices that need to be monitored. In this case, monitoring slaves are used as bridgeheads for these parts of the network. Figure 2 [see Page 10] provides you with an overview of NOCTUA in the master/slave set-up. 5.3 Technical requirements NOCTUA instances (master and slave) can be run on the current versions of the following Linux distributions: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server OpenSUSE Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Fedora CentOS Ubuntu LTS Debian Wheezy / Squeeze An SQL-compatible database is needed for operation. This usually runs on the same server as the master instance. CPU, RAM and disk requirements will depend on the number of devices and checks. An SMTP server is needed for mailing alerts, which is used as a relay. A corresponding solution is needed for sending alerts via SMS, such as a hardware SMS gateway. The configuration (network, database, mail, etc.) of the hosts on which NOCTUA instances will be run is performed by the customer. The most recent version of a browser is recommended for visualization of large networks in the NOCTUA Web front-end due to JavaScript and SVG performance.

9 Page 9 of 10 6 Graphic, NOCTUA overview Figure 1:

10 Page 10 of 10 7 Graphic, NOCTUA in master/slave set-up for distributed monitoring Figure 2: