Setting up Nagios and import checks

Reflecting back to the first principle mentioned previously concerning monitoring, keep it simple. It felt like we could not keep it any simpler than going with one of the leading open source monitoring platforms, Nagios Core. If you are unfamiliar with Nagios, take a moment to read up on it by visiting http://www.nagios.com/products.

Yes, yes, while it may not be the flashiest dashboard visually, it is one of the most powerful and lightweight monitoring applications I have used. With Nagios, you have ultimate control on many aspects of your monitoring ecosystem. It ranges from being able to create custom plugins, all the way to explicitly defining execution windows for that host. Administration can be handled directly from the flat files, or you can use many of the third-party tools, such as NConf at http://exchange.nagios.org/directory/Addons/Configuration/NConf/details. With the launch of the new version, XI, more and more of the features only found...