IT Monitoring with Nagios

Nagios Howto's

Nagios is a great success story of OpenSource software. A monitoring system build with a core set of features, a fast and responsive web interface and a simple API to create custom plugins in whatever language prefered is blowing away the commercial competition. Already established in small and medium IT organisations, it is also making its inroads to enterprise companies through the IT 'backdoor'. Engineers who need to get the job done fast and reliable could not wait for enterprise IT's slow response to cater their quickly changing and increasing needs for monitoring. This did not go unnoticed, and with commercial support available, even large companies move to Nagios as their main monitoring solution.

Security Patch Monitoring with Nagios - 2009 OSMC Presentation (PDF) [get PDF]

  1. SUSE Linux SLES10 Nagios SNMP patch update monitoring [read article]
  2. OpenSuse 10.3 Nagios SNMP patch update monitoring [read article]
  3. Cisco IOS version compliance monitoring with Nagios [read article]
  4. Windows systems patch update monitoring with Nagios [read article]
  5. IBM AIX systems patch update monitoring with Nagios [read article]

Embedded System Design

Embedded System Howto's

I have been working with embedded systems from Rabbit Semiconductor. Despite the *funny* name, Rabbit systems are easy to develop for due to their C-compiler implementation and outstanding systems documentation. Available at a low price and with networking features up-to-date, Rabbit boards are a joy to work with, inspiring me to write a library for accessing parallel-port LCD displays.

Remote VPN Networks

VPN Network Howto's
VPN Network Howto's

When I managed our suppliers remote network support connections, development of complex VPN, firewall and NAT setups were required. Centralized VPN concentrators plus small site-to-site VPN devices of mixed origins had to be supported and configuration knowledge to be exchanged. The most common VPN devices were Cisco's smallest PIX 501 and Cisco 831 together with Linux.

Database Howto's

Database Howto's

Modern business software applications use a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) as their backend data store. Relational databases are optimized fast transactional operations and they allow to build comprehensive data views by querying organised data (data-warehouse). Below are some tips how to access them.

Apache and related Web Howto's

Apache Web Howto's

There is no way around the world's number one webserver. Although not the fastest, it is a stable and versatile platform. Below are some How-to's I found worth writing down.

OpenSSL Howto's

OpenSSL Howto's

The de-facto standard implementation of SSL is OpenSSL. Matured over the past years, It is the base for security layer implementations in communications software. Handling is non-trivial, and in the earlier days documentation was sparse.

Solaris Howto's

Solaris Howto's

SUN's Solaris operating system had been around since the early 90-ties when it proved to be a very solid OS for running the upcoming Internet services 24x7. It's popularity waned with the success of Linux and the shift from using reliable brand systems to clustered, cheap Intel hardware that could soon match SUN's Sparc CPU performance.

Various Howto's

Various Howto's

Below are how-to's that did not generate a separate category. Many are Linux-related, but there are also the networks subnet cheat sheets, how many files can be in a directory, or how to work with pointers in Perl.

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