Hi,
On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 12:50:32PM -0500, McGraw, Robert P wrote:
Has anyone else looked at nagios and why did you prefer hobbit over nagios?
I've used Nagios as well as Big Brother (BB) on the job. Wasn't very happy with either. Both have about the same amount of advantages and disadvantages. Hobbit has less disadvantages than BB and there are only a few Nagios features I would like to have which neither BB nor Hobbit have, so I stick with Hobbit and we're currently replacing our BB on the job with hobbit. For our Linux User Group I will replace a Nagios with Hobbit soon.
So here's my short comparision chart:
What I like with Nagios which is neither in BB nor Hobbit
Service Dependencies (if MySQL is down, the Website is broken, too, so report MySQL as the source of the problem)
Host Dependencies (if the router is down, it's clear that all hosts behind must be down, too).
Event Hooks (good for connecting IRC Bots :-)
What I like with Hobbit which isn't in Nagios
Pushing the reports by default. This enables two further advantages:
Having a "no reports recently" state.
Possibility to mark hosts as "dialup", so you can monitor hosts with changing IPs or not permanently running hosts (desktops, workstations). This is the killer feature for me, on the job as well as at home.
2-dimensional (host x service) tables, which give IMHO a better overview (YMMV)
More flexible in generating own pages for groups of machines.
Configuration easier to overview, needs less lines of code per host. (YMMV)
(If anyone knows that features I mentioned as not available are though available, please correct me. :-)
P.S.: I also had a short look at Pandora FMS (http://pandora.sf.net/), but it seemed to be overkill for my purposes.
Kind regards, Axel Beckert
-- Axel Beckert <beckert at phys.ethz.ch> support: +41 44 633 2668 IT Support Group, HPR E 86.1 voice: +41 44 633 4189 Departement Physik, ETH Zurich fax: +41 44 633 1239 CH-8093 Zurich, Switzerland http://nic.phys.ethz.ch/