nagios conference 2013 - david stern - the nagios light bar
DESCRIPTION
David Stern's presentation on The Nagios Light Bar. The presentation was given during the Nagios World Conference North America held Sept 20-Oct 2nd, 2013 in Saint Paul, MN. For more information on the conference (including photos and videos), visit: http://go.nagios.com/nwcnaTRANSCRIPT
The Nagios light-bar
David [email protected]
What is it?
Why do we need it?
DoD work requires air-gapped networks
How would you know if a service is down if you’re not on the network?
The Hardware
An unobstructed View
Backside of base unit: connection to light-bar
Equipment network discovery program
Initial connection requires crossover cable
Base unit generates a webpage
The Settings tab allows you to configure the device
You need to identify the type of device
Security settings
Optional settings
The network MUST be active before you power-on the unit
It might be a smart idea to set the light-bar for DHCP address
It would be a smart idea to monitor that the light-bar is available
If I can control the light-bar from the web, why not use WGET
The Secret Sauce; undocumented
http://light-bar/cmd.cgi\?action=ST\&t=A2\&a=1 makes the light-bar go beep
http://light-bar/cmd.cgi\?action=ST\&t=A2\&a=0 turns off the noise
http://light-bar/cmd.cgi\?action=ST\&t=GR\&a=1 makes the green light go on
http://light-bar/cmd.cgi\?action=ST\&t=GR\&a=0 turns off the green light
Substitute OR for GR to affect the orange(yellow) light
Substitute RE for GR to affect the red light
Getting nagios status
We can get the nagios status from the Service page:
http://nagios-server/nagios/cgi-bin/status\?host=all
Just search it for “serviceTotalsPROBLEMS”
N.B. You may need to insert authentication information in URL
http://nagiosadmin:nag-password@nagios-server/nagios/cgi-bin/status\?host=all
You can use the same format for the light-bar authentication
Mission Creep
How about if we get the light-bar to beep the first time a new alert occurs?
And since we don’t use nagios WARNING conditions, let’s use the yellow light to indicate unacknowledged alerts
Let’s put it all together…
This is NOT a plugin
Other cool things you can do with WGET
Hierarchical Nagios:A core nagios aware of other installs
What’s different on this nagios page?
Configuring “hierarchical” nagios
• Backup nagios before and after these changes• Install a Nagios server in each lab/sub-site• Edit side.{html,php}, Add stanza for each sub-
site and set refresh=300,• Tag each nagios sub-site: Main.{html,php} and
status.c status.cgi• Modify light-bar cron job to check each sub-
site, swap red,green dots as needed
One way to present the pages
Another way to present the data
The Results
Faster response time/higher uptime
Better awareness of our networks
Questions?