Use Nagios to monitor 2 locations

Question

As I am new to Nagios, I would like to ask if anyone knows how to monitor 2 physical locations using Nagios.

So for example, we are having 2 datacenters which are interconnected. I have set-up a Nagios server which will monitor the services on both datacenters.

However, let's say for example Datacenter 1 the connectivity is down, therefore you wouldn't be able to see the other Datacenter.

What I am trying to do is that I would like to monitor both datacenters individually, how should I go about that? Having 2 Nagios server installations or?

Thank you very much for your help.

Regards, Cip

Answer 1

If you only monitor datacenter A from datacenter B you introduce a possibly unwanted component into your measurement namely the health of the internet.

My strategy is to monitor A from A and B from B. This gives you the most accurate sense of how your data center functions internally.

There is still value in monitoring the health of your datacenters from the internet as that is likely how your customers reach your site. Here you can use a free or paid SaaS solution, or set up your own monitoring from the public cloud.

The combination of all three bits of your monitoring will give you:

• accurate internal monitoring at the host and internal service level
• low false alarms
• accurate information on how the internet sees your external service
• ability to coalesce all these things into a global picture

Answer 2

I think the best solution is to have a nagios instance on each DC and monitor both DC from every instance. With this solution you can still monitor each DC separately if the connectivity is lost and if one nagios machine break

In our company we have 2 Nagios server for this purpose.

Answer 3

You should take a look at following:

• Distributed Monitoring
• Distributed Monitoring Solutions For Nagios - Nagios Library
• distributed monitoring | Nagios Library - Nagios Library