a good network monitoring solution, and how this mess happened.

ok... so as you know, i do a lot of tech based stuff. i set up servers for the net admin at my school, i configure a lot of computers, and most of the time it all goes swell and dandy. but sometimes stuff breaks, and when it breaks... it's usually is something big. for example, a server going down that controls your DNS / Wins server... or a switch going bad and 1/2 of a building looses all connectivity.

how to prevent all this? enter Nagios!

if your in the field, or hang around... you know that network failure is a bad thing. when things go bad, trouble shooting can take a long time, which means long down times... this equates to loss of sales, wasted time, and over all loss of resources (time, money, data, ext..).

hardware failure is inevitable... but by having network monitoring in place, you can identify problems before they happen, and minimize down time when they do occur.

we had a big problem at my school. and i have learned a lot from it.... being in an it classroom all day with no internet is not good. but we fixed that problem and its behind us.... however, me and the net admin sat down and worked out a way to prevent things like this form happening.
we implemented a network monitoring program called Nagios, its an open source program that can monitor hardware... like router, switches, work stations, and servers.  the network monitoring program can also manage services, like ftp's, apache, and mySQL. there are some neat things like google map integration and port monitoring. over all, if you can connect it to a network, nagios can monitor it remotely.

As you can see (you might need to enlarge the image), Nagios gives you a clean interface that lets you see what is running smooth, what could be a possible problem in the future, and what is not working correctly.

This tool can also show the network topology, which makes it easy to trouble shoot and keep a high uptime. for example, if 'red', 'Iinbox', 'Ioiubox' and 'Ivmail' showed up as being unreachable...you would know that there is a problem with the linux machine named 'red' you wouldn't go to each box hosting your mail server and test them.

you can also configure nagios to be accessible from other computers. this means you can use it as a remote network monitoring solution. most IT guys know that you cant always be sitting behind one computer all day... your going around fixing issues, sometimes going in between multiple offices. this makes a remote option VERY favorable.

ill probably install nagios on my linux box and show you how it can monitor all sorts of goodies, as well as the remote monitoring. expect more to come! (tutorials, not problems with my schools network)