NagVis

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NagVis

Nagvis-1.3-automap undirected-1.png
Nagios extension for the visualization of status information
Basic data

developer NagVis project
Current  version September 9, 21
( July 15, 2020 )
operating system Linux , Unix derivatives
programming language PHP
category Network monitoring
License GPL
German speaking No
www.nagvis.org

NagVis is a software extension for the Nagios program published under the GNU GPL license , which is used to display the status information of an IT infrastructure . With the help of NagVis, status information that was determined with the help of Nagios can be displayed in such a way that it can also be made understandable to non-specialist viewers.

NagVis has been developed as an open source project since 2004 .

functionality

The basic principle of NagVis is based on easily adaptable views, which are called maps. These maps are based on a static background image. Objects, such as For example, small status icons or lines can be positioned to show the status of Nagios objects.

In this way, room plans, schematic drawings, photos and entire documentation can be provided with current status information from the monitoring system. Detailed information about an object can also be displayed. With a right click on the objects a menu can be called up in which any actions can be stored.

Automatic views

In addition to the manually created maps, there are also so-called automaps. These are created using the parent relationships in Nagios. The free software Graphviz is used for this. With an automap, the relationships between the systems in the monitored network can be easily displayed. The current status information is also displayed here.

Flexible data sources

NagVis was the first Nagios extension that flexibly supports several different types of data sources (called backends). Data from several Nagios servers can be aggregated in one view. The different Nagios servers can be addressed via different types of backends. Nagios installations can currently be connected via MKLivestatus, the NDO and IDO with MySQL, Merlin with MySQL, whereby the connection via MKLivestatus is the recommended way.

history

The NagVis project was launched in 2004 by Jörg Linge. The first public version 0.0.2 of NagVis was released on April 30, 2004 by Jörg Linge in the German Nagios portal.

At first, NagVis was a simple CGI script. This was then rewritten in version 0.1.0 in PHP . Shortly afterwards, the status.cgi file was abolished as a data source and replaced by a CGI parser. However, this CGI parser had massive performance problems with large Nagios installations.

NagVis was the first add-on to support the newly published NDO as a data source and has thus significantly advanced the spread of the NDOUtils. With the release of the NDO data source, the CGI parser was replaced so that the performance problems in large installations no longer had such a strong impact.

The first stable version, NagVis 1.0, was only released on April 30, 2007. At that time NagVis was completely written in PHP5 OOP and supported the aggregation of several data sources in one view.

With version 1.4 there was another change in the architecture. From now on the NagVis views were no longer reloaded at defined intervals. Instead, the status of the individual objects has since been updated using JavaScript and Ajax . This step served the scalability of NagVis views, since less information has to be processed at once.

From version 1.5, NagVis supports the MKLivestatus data source. MKLivestatus is part of Check_MK and provides direct access to the data in the Nagios process. With this approach, information is only processed when it is accessed. Compared to the previous standard data source NDO, this type of access has many advantages, such as: B. better performance and less maintenance. For these reasons, access via MKLivestatus is now the recommended way of integrating Nagios data into NagVis.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release 1.9.21 . July 15, 2020 (accessed July 15, 2020).
  2. ↑ The nagvis Open Source Project on Open Hub: Languages Page . In: Open Hub . (accessed on July 18, 2018).