I've been a fan of Nagios for a long time, but as anyone who has used it knows, it can be a pain to maintain in it's basic form and is ugly to boot. This is where Opsview comes into play. It is a very well thought out and implemented iteration of Nagios that addresses many complaints that I have with the plain vanilla package.
Opsview comes in two flavors, Community and Enterprise. Being frugal (cheap), I went with community. There are great features in both and even though I don't use enterprise, I can certainly see the value in it. One such feature which used to be in community but is now enterprise only (needless to say I'm staying put on my old version of community for now) is the ability to set up a distributed deployment. I have devices in multiple geographic locations that need to be monitored, so this is a vital feature for me. You can set up a master server along with multiple slave node close to the remote devices to be monitored. Configuration takes place on the master and is pushed out to the slaves. You have the option to have notifications sent from the master only or from each node. This allows each node to act autonomously in case it is isolated.
In addition to distributed deployments, Opsview also makes configuration a snap. Features such as templating and cloning make setting up large number of new hosts incredibly easy. The interface is intuitive and far easier to deal with than countless text files. In addition to the great interface, there are also mobile apps available for both Android and iOS. Yes, I know there are other mobile apps available for Nagios - heck, I posted on a couple of them myself. What is great about these is that the same level of forethought that went into the regular web interface also went into the mobile apps. The mobile apps provide fluid and consistent experience regardless of how you interact with Opsview.
While Nagios may not be that difficult to set up, it can be quite tedious. Opsview clearly solves that issue. Give it a whirl if you haven't already - you'll be pleasantly surprised. Since I set up my Opsview environment, community has been rebranded as Core and there is also an intermediate offering of Pro. Free trials are available if you want to give the paid version a test drive, but for most folks Core has all the features you'll ever need.
www.opsview.com
While Nagios may not be that difficult to set up, it can be quite tedious. Opsview clearly solves that issue. Give it a whirl if you haven't already - you'll be pleasantly surprised. Since I set up my Opsview environment, community has been rebranded as Core and there is also an intermediate offering of Pro. Free trials are available if you want to give the paid version a test drive, but for most folks Core has all the features you'll ever need.
www.opsview.com
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