Zabbix vs Nagios

[bchitambira]

Challenging Zabbix!!!!

can someone tell me how Zabbix can compare with Nagios as far as the folowing are concerned:
- Grouping devices into Host groups and service Groups
- Can it perfom well under purely trap handling mode (No polling)
- Does it have native support popular environment monitoring devices,
if not, howto
- What ldaps can it NOT support (MS-AD? FDS?)
- How can I quickly convert my nagios custom plugins into zabbix?

[jjsmith]

Different development model

Zabbix & Nagios have different dev models.

Zabbix is a centralized development model spearheaded by a corporation.
The same functionality which Zabbix offers is more modular in Nagios. This allows specialization.

While Zabbix boasts that there are installations with some_big_number of hosts, Nagios has that too (probably bigger even), plus they have a MUCH BIGGER install base.

Nagios, Nagios plugins, Nagios add-ons, Cacti, etc. has MANY MORE developers.

Yea Zabbix has a lot of built-in features, graphs, etc. If you're looking for all of that maybe you want an all-in-one HP OpenView or OpenNMS.

Zabbix is great for simplicity and WYSIWYG stuff, but what if you want to do more than what is available in Zabbix? For me, it seems like reinventing the wheel of Nagios.

Oh, what about the fact that the only forums where anyone talks about Zabbix are on servers with a corporate interest in positive PR. This post might get censored.

If you're looking for a WYSIWYG monitoring solution, make sure it has everything you want. OpenNMS, HP OpenView & Zabbix are the top contenders. Zabbix and OpenNMS are open source & have a centralized development model. HP OpenView is commercial. Out of those 3, pick the best for you.

If you want to harness opensource and be able to build (and/or piece together) EXACTLY what you want, go for Nagios. It will probably be less headache and someone has probably already extended Nagios in your desired way. (as opposed for Zabbix or OpenNMS)

[bbrendon]

I'm sorry. I can't understand the premise you are pushing. Nagios and zabbix are modular and both have large deployments. Yes nagios has been around longer thus obviously has a larger install base.

You seem to say you like nagios better yet you think openview is a contender? You left out all of the openview contenders like EMC, BMC, and many others that I would rank above openview.

[jjsmith]

Nagios, zabbix, etc

I am saying make an informed decision. If you choose Zabbix, don't just choose it because it has a pretty interface, it does auto-discovery and it says open-source aka "free". There is way more to monitoring software than those factors.

I personally think that Zabbix is great IF it does everything you want it to.

I do not think it is always the best solution. I do think that other products work well out of the box (openNMS, openview, & I'm sure others) but I believe if you want a product which has more functionality and is easier to configure (aka someone else has written the same thing you want) Nagios wins hands down.

[dongsky]

my question about Zabbix

We all know that nagios had a sms notifications , does.... Zabbix do had also?

[Firm]

We all know that nagios had a sms notifications , does.... Zabbix do had also?

Yes, it does.

[dongsky]

Yes, it does.

aaah ok..can u give me a link of how to do it..?and what particular software will be use?

[Alexei]

aaah ok..can u give me a link of how to do it..?and what particular software will be use?

Zabbix supports it out of the box with USB or Serial GSM modems without need of any additional 3rd part software. It is in Zabbix Manual.

[nelsonab]

I would add that there is one caveat for US customers. Most of the Linux scripts and whatnot that I have come across work well with European GSM phones. I tried a while ago to get some Nokia phones on AT&T to work with Linux for SMS and gave up in dispair. Verizon is pretty much the same. If you can your best bet is to go with a multitech modem, but they are expensive.

Bottom line, if you're in the US, be prepared to either spend money or spend time...

[alj]

Hi,

Does anyone have a comparison between Zabbix and Nagios ? Or just a start of a comparison !

I'm trying to force my company to use zabbix insteed of Nagios....

Help will be appreciated (-:

Thanks,
n0mad

THose are kinda very different and incomparable things.
For my monitoring i needed trends for everything.
I push alot of metrics via trapper to the server (sometimes 200 metrics per server).
You need 3-d party addons for nagios to have trending. (mostly interface to rrdtool) which make management and configuration even harder than it is now.
Also nagios has huge performance issues since it needs fork for nearly everything, and you cannot push alot of metrics into it because of bad design of nsce protocol (it is slow and it cannot scale well).
Just think how often can you fork on nagios server if your goal is to collect 200 metrics from 500 servers every minute......

Bottom line - nagios is very reliable and does its thing but it is way outdated and too hard to configure.

Zabbix in the other hand is still considered to be bleeding edge IMO but functionality benefits worth for me to live with bugs and try to work around them one at the time.

I look forward that with json interface it will play out nicely with new era management tools such as opscode chef, marionette collective and so on.

I wish developers would invest more time into QA, also i wish they would not invent wheel and use road tested protocols and programs such as http://www.rabbitmq.com/ (implementation of AMQP) which will automatically enable API for other languages and programs.

[dongsky]

Zabbix supports it out of the box with USB or Serial GSM modems without need of any additional 3rd part software. It is in Zabbix Manual.

aaah ..hmmm...? and how much cost of that GSM modems?

[nelsonab]

aaah ..hmmm...? and how much cost of that GSM modems?

There are several projects to interface regular GSM phones with Linux. Most of the phones however are for European providers.

[nelsonab]

http://smstools.meinemullemaus.de/

[tchjts1]

You might also consider doing SMS without a modem:

http://www.zabbix.com/wiki/howto/config/alerts/smsapi?s


.

[dongsky]

thnx for the info guyz