Nagios is an Open Source network, hardware, and application monitoring program. It is designed to inform system administrators of problems on their networks before their clients, end-users or managers do. Nagios is a SysAdmin's best friend. Nagios is installed on over 300,000 machines worldwide, and truly is a global product: approximately 25.6% of users are in the U.S., and 30% in EMEA. Nagios can monitor everything from network bandwidth to the temperature and humidity in a server room. SysAdmins are able to use Nagios for such a variety of purposes through custom software "plug ins" and third party hardware. SysAdmins customize these plug ins instructing Nagios to monitor the servers, applications, or devices that are most critical to their network infrastructure. These plug ins also allow SysAdmins to integrate Nagios with other monitoring devices and applications like Snort and Wireshark. Nagios can also be fully integrated with third party environmental monitoring devices and remote power supplies. When Nagios detects a problem, it can notify the SysAdmin in a variety of different ways (email, instant message, SMS, etc.). Current status information, historical logs, and reports can all be accessed via a web browser. Nagios could send a text message to a SysAdmin sitting on his couch at home that the temperature in the server room is too hot and could potentially damage the equipment. The SysAdmin can then check the status of the server from home using his Nagios Web interface, and then coordinate with the appropriate facility management personnel to check the air conditioning in the server room. This is merely one example of Nagios? capabilities. The same scenario could be applied to an overloaded Exchange server, a router being pounded by a Denial of Service Attack, or a user accessing or downloading unauthorized materials.

* Contains complete case study on deploying Nagios in an enterprise environment.
* Companion Web site offers 100 working Scripts for customizing Nagios plug-ins.
* Helps organizations adhere to federally mandated compliance regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, or HIPAA.
* Details how to integrate Nagios with third-party hardware.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 7 Ratings

If you want an E-book copy of this book, move on - 2008-10-17
Reviewer Rating:
I purchased this book under the impression that it came with a free digital version of the book. WRONG! You have to register on Elsevier and download a proprietary reader that is only compatible with Windows and Mac OS X. So, if you read the cover as I did: "Free E-book download" and assumed you would be able to have a book to read on your phone or Linux OS, move along.

As for the content of the book itself, I haven't even opened it past Pg.3 due to this issue and plan on returning it for a more user-friendly publication.

Horribly written and no support - 2009-03-13
Reviewer Rating:
This is one of the worst technical books I have ever read. I still have not managed to get my "free ebook", the zip file on the web site for the VM was corrupted. (Downloaded it on 2 different machines, with the same result). I sent the publisher an email, and got an automated response back.
I have extracted a minimal amount of information from the drivel that is inside, but I recommend anything but this book.

Enterprise Grade Nagios Reference - 2008-11-11
Reviewer Rating:
This book is just what I've been looking for to better understand Nagios v.3.0+ from an Enterprise perspective and it does an excellent job of explaining the new techniques.

This book is full of examples for every sized organization with lots of good ideas and general practices to follow. I found chapters 5 & 6 especially helpful in covering topics that can't be found anywhere else (let's face it, not too many other Nagios books out there to choose from).

This is an advanced enterprise geared book, so if you're looking for the basics like "retry_check_interval is blah" or "what does SNMP stand for?", then look no further than the Nagios website, it's all thoroughly documented there.

Finally, there is a electronic copy of this book included and even the Linux users out there should be able to access it via a Windows VM guest with a minimal amount of effort.

I have used Nagios 24x7x365 for a few years now, so I keep a copy of this book on my desk for reference, tips, techniques and guidance for the future.

E-books from Syngress - 2009-03-16
Reviewer Rating:
Soooo....this is how you get those pesky e-book downloads from Syngress. You have to go to [..], click on the Info on Syngress button, and get the info there. That link takes you here: [..]. So you can just paste that in.

You have to download some proprietary stuff but the e-book works fine once you get it.

How to Contact Authors, Get E-Book and Unzip _vm-nagios-download.zip - 2009-04-22
Reviewer Rating:
What is going on here? What does it take to contact the authors or publisher and get some assistance? I want to download the E-Book but I can't find the instructions. When I try to and unzip _vm-nagios-download.zip using Microsoft Vista or Sun's "jar -xf" they fail and say that the zip file is corrupted. Why should I have to get a SYNGRESS Solutions membership to download updates to the print book?

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