nagios conference 2011 - dave williams - nagios in the real world - the datacentre

Nagios in the Real WorldDave Williams Technical Architect

2 ©Bull, 2011 Presentation Title

Agenda


Agenda

- Introduction- General Background- System Monitoring Background

- Example Implementations of Nagios- UK Customer Examples

- Datacentre Monitoring with Nagios- What is a Datacentre ?- Software & Hardware combinations- Vision

- Conclusions


Background

- UK based- Mainframe (IBM & Honeywell)- Unix (HP-UX, AIX, Solaris)- Network (CASE, 3COM,

CISCO)

- Working for Bull- French Computer Manufacturer- Mainframes, Unix, HPC,

Security, Managed Services


Background

- System Monitoring- OpenView- Netview- Open Master

- Open Source Monitoring- NetSaint on AIX- Nagios


Example Implementations


Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service

- Responsible for the prosecution of crime in Scotland - Investigation of suspicious deaths- Complaints against the Police

- IT Locations in Glasgow & Edinburgh- Windows at every Courts of Justice in Scotland- AIX / Oracle DB at Glasgow & Edinburgh



- Already used Solarwinds for some network monitoring

- Strategy demanded AIX based monitoring & reporting- In a competitive tender Nagios selected- Main success points were – simplicity, ease of customisation- Fitted within AIX based distance data replication already in use



- 60+ Windows systems monitored for CPU, Disk Space etc

- 2 AIX servers monitored for CPU, Disk Space etc

- Two Oracle Instances monitored for performance and DBspace usage

- All alerts shown on monitor screen and if necessary SMS Text alerts- Installed 2005, still working- Provides ‘backstop’ to Solarwinds for capacity monitoring on

the WAN & LAN.


Rother District Council

- “Working with the community to improve the overall well-being of the District “- Responsible for Waste Collection, Housing, Planning &

Building Control- The District covers some 200 square miles and serves a

population of around 90,000 inhabitants.


Rother District Council

- Monitoring 20+ Windows Servers for CPU, Disk Utilsation etc

- Monitoring numerous disparate Applications- Reporting on Availability- Monitoring Printer status- Unexpected benefits


North Yorkshire County Council

- Internet Access system for 30,000 pupils

- Monitoring e-mail, internet access, IDS, AV, Webservers- Reporting on Availability- Monitoring Service Level Indicators- Mix of application providers (Scalix, Plesk)- Mix of appliance systems – Cisco, Panda, Radware,

NetEnforcer, MyFilter



- System Schematic



- Uses NRPE to perform active checks on hosts

- Multi O/S support- Debian- RedHat

- Uses NSCA to accept check results from Windows- Via NagiosEventLog



- E-mail- Scalix running on Redhat

Cluster. Checking all processes, cluster state etc.

- PLESK Web server- Checking availability of web

sites via test installation- Monitoring disk utilsation

and processor utilisation

- AV systems- Monitoring availability- Checking on AV database

- Myfilter- Monitoring email filters

running- Checking that sufficient

email filters are available



- E-mail- Nagios server runs external

email loopback test every 20 minutes to confirm external reachability.

- PLESK Web server- Straightforward

implementation of check_http

- NetBackup- Monitoring that backups

have run- Checking that enough

backup tapes are available

- Business Availability- Define which services

constitute a business line- 07:00 check – tell support

before the customers come on line


NYCC - Nagiosgraph

- Nagiosgraph- Uses process_performance

_data- Example of Unix load average


NYCC – Nagios Monitoring

- Scalix Email System


NYCC

- Alerts sent via email to customers as well as support

- Backup notifications via SMS Text

- Use Nagios Looking Glass for Customer View

- nagiosgraph used to catch all service performance data- Debian & Redhat perfomance metrics- Network throughput from LAN switches- LDAP response time


Datacentre Monitoring with Nagios


What is a DataCentre ?

- A data center (or datacentre) is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls and security devices.

(Wikipedia)


How good is your DataCentre ?

- The TIA-942:Data Center Standards Overview describes the requirements for the data centre infrastructure. The simplest is a Tier 1 data centre, which is basically a server room, following basic guidelines for the installation of computer systems. The most stringent level is a Tier 4 data centre, which is designed to host mission critical computer systems, with fully redundant subsystems and compartmentalized security zones controlled by biometric access controls methods .

(Wikipedia)

http://www.adc.com/Attachment/1270711929361/102264AE.pdf



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_room

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric


What is a DataCentre ?

- Tier 1 Requirements- Single non-redundant distribution path serving the IT equipment - Non-redundant capacity components - Basic site infrastructure guaranteeing 99.671% availability

- Tier 2 Requirements- Fulfills all Tier 1 requirements - Redundant site infrastructure capacity components guaranteeing 99.741% availability

- Tier 3 Requirements- Fulfills all Tier 1 and Tier 2 requirements - Multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment - All IT equipment must be dual-powered and fully compatible with the topology of a site's architecture Concurrently maintainable

site infrastructure guaranteeing 99.982% availability

- Tier 4 Requirements- Fulfills all Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 requirements - All cooling equipment is independently dual-powered, including chillers and heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC)

systems - Fault-tolerant site infrastructure with electrical power storage and distribution facilities guaranteeing 99.995% availability

- ©Uptime Institute


What is a Green DataCentre ?

- The most commonly used metric to determine the energy efficiency of a data centre is power usage effectiveness, or PUE. This simple ratio is the total power entering the data centre divided by the power used by the IT equipment.

- PUE = Total facility Power / IT Equipment Power

- Power used by support equipment, often referred to as overhead load, mainly consists of cooling systems, power delivery, and other facility infrastructure like lighting. The average data centre in the US has a PUE of 2.0, meaning that the facility uses one Watt of overhead power for every Watt delivered to IT equipment. State-of-the-art data centre energy efficiency is estimated to be roughly 1.2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness


Bull Datacentre BC1 ?

- New datacentre build on an already existing site

- Design criteria PUE 1.6

- Easily expanded on demand

- Tier 3


Bull UK Datacentre BC1

- What do you get for £1.2m ?



- New Mains Incomer- Took feed from 11Kv ring- Had to build own substation

- 1.2Mw Generator- Required 8000 litre fuel

tank- Switchgear to automatically

start generator if mains incomer fails (10-45 seconds)

- 3 x Ambient CRAC Units- Cooling via external

temperature differential- N+1 configuration- Hot Aisle Containment

- In-Line UPS- UPS only required to keep IT

equipment running until generator fires up

- Uses space in Cab rows, easily scalable according to load


Bull UK Datacentre BC1 - Monitoring

- Physical Environment- APC Netbotz Devices

• Translate inputs from sensors• Humidity, Temperature, Dew

Point- SEAL I/O Dry Contact

• Voltage indicators• For CRAC, FM200, Generator,

UPS

- Electrical Efficiency- PowerLogic ION software

reads from power meters- Power meter on every

Distribution Board- Real-time calculation of PUE

- Power Distribution- Every PDU strip (2 per Cab)

monitored for power consumption & problems

- A number of PDU strips also have remote control down to socket level

- Management Network- LAN infrastructure required to

support the Datacentre- Servers required to support the

datacentre- External alert mechanisms



- What does Netbotz look like ?



- What does SeaLevel look like ?



- What does ION look like ?



- What does a metered PDU look like ?



- What does a managed PDU look like ?



- Nagios Map



- Nagios Host Groups



- Do things go wrong - yes



- Do things go wrong - yes & no


Datacentre Monitoring Schematic


Nagios Products in use

- Nagios Core- NRPE- NSCA

- Nagios Looking Glass

- Nagvis

- EventDB

- SNMPTT

- Nagmap

- NDO


Other Open Source Products in use

- Nedi

- Arpwatch

- PSAD

- SMS-Client

- Bacula

- Confluence (Wiki)

- i-doit (ITIL CMDB)

- MRTG

- Routers2cgi


BC1 Datacentre Monitoring Elements

- Nagios Core- Normal install with direct

polling of devices- Only looking at Datacentre

- Nagios Display System- Central reporting Nagios - Absorbs updates from other

Nagios instances

- Information Display- Normal system with 5

heads

- Nagios Customer System- Running on an appliance

connected to Customer network

- Sends data via encrypted secured link to Display System

- Backup System- Use tape library- Hosts CMDB & WiKi


BC1 Datacentre Nagios Core

- Hardware Platform - Intel- O/S Centos 5- Xeon 2.8Ghz , 8Gb memory, 72GB RAID-1 disk

- Nagios 3.2.0- Built from source tarball

- Nagios Plugins 1.4.15-2- Installed from RPM


BC1 Datacentre Nagios Display System

- Hardware Platform - Intel- O/S Fedora Core 9- P4 2.8Ghz , 2.5Gb memory, 76GB RAID-1 disk- Nvidia dual monitor display Card – DVI interfaces

- Nagios 3.0.6- Built from source tarball

- Nagios Plugins 1.4.13-9- Installed from RPM


BC1 Datacentre Normal Display System

- Hardware Platform - AMD- O/S Centos 5- Athlon 1.2Ghz , 1.0 Gb memory, 3GB disk- Matrox G200 Quad Head

- Runs console displays – http/RDP/ssh


BC1 Datacentre Customer System

- Hardware Platform – Motion Tablet- O/S Ubuntu 10.04 LTS- Pentium M 1.5Ghz , 0.5 Gb memory, 30GB disk- Touch Screen tablet system

- Nagios 3.2.3- Built from tarball

- Nagios Plugins 1.4.15- Built from tarball

- Nagios NSCA- Sends status (encrypted) to central reporting system


BC1 Datacentre Backup System

- Hardware Platform – Intel- O/S Centos 5- Xeon 3.06Ghz , 2.0 Gb memory, 108GB disk

- Uses Bacula 5.0.3- Controls SDLT 20 slot tape library- Backs up all Datacentre Infrastructure

• Windows• Centos• Ubuntu


Conclusions


Conclusions

- Strategic Overall Design- Know what you need to

monitor- Know who needs to be told

- Expect to throw the first version away- Only when you have fully

engineered the solution will you understand all of the issues

- Keep a record of design decisions

- You will have to make it pretty for management- Accept that an attractive

display will be required- Reporting will become key

- It must be reliable- Make backups- Consider clustering &

recovery options


& Hints


Hints & Experience

- Separate Display systems from Monitoring systems- If you are tracking 10,000’s of

services you don’t want processor heavy graphics as well

- Escalation & Alerting take time- Firstly to get right with your

organisation- Secondly to actually physically

do !

- Suppliers go out of their way to make it difficult- Don’t give in – there is always

a way to get Nagios involved- Screen scrape, email,

telnet,RS232 are all possible

- SNMP is your friend- When in doubt use SNMP to

help you out- SNMP V3 with AES cypher is

suitably secure for most implementations

nagios conference 2011 - dave williams - nagios in the real world - the datacentre

Technology

capacity monitoring

monitoring reporting

aix nagios

availability tier

availability checking

network monitoring s

windows systems

data centre infrastructure