How To Easily Transition From Nagios To Opsview

Lack of scalability. Having multiple instances without a single pane of glass. These are just a few of the reasons why sysadmins choose to rid themselves of the stress that is Nagios. There are many Nagios alternatives, however. Many IT pros are apprehensive to move away from Nagios because it has been a part of their infrastructure monitoring long enough to instill fears of a disastrous transition. But when it comes to migrating from Nagios to Opsview, there is no reason to be apprehensive. We've had numerous customers with smooth transitions from Nagios and our customer success team works to make the process as seamless as possible. If you're a dissatisfied Nagios user who is ready to make the switch to Opsview, here is a guide on how to effectively do so and execute a migration that will result in multiple benefits for your business.

Migrating from Nagios Core

There are two methods for migration from Nagios Core to Opsview:

A full migration where all monitoring is moved into an Opsview system and the Nagios Core server can be decommissioned.
A partial migration where the existing Nagios Core server is configured to send all of its results back to an Opsview server. The Nagios Core server remains in use.

Planning Your Full Nagios Migration

We recommend that you provision an Opsview system for the purpose of testing your migration.

Migration checklist:

Check that Opsview is supported on your target platform.
Test existing Nagios plugins and copy to Opsview system.
Configure required Service Checks in Opsview.
Create Host Templates corresponding to required hardware, operating system and application checks.
Create required contacts for Opsview system access and Notifications.
Confirm that the Opsview migration tool imports your Host information correctly.
Test whether your Nagios add-ons work as expected.
Confirm that your existing Nagios agents work correctly.
Confirm that SNMP monitoring continues to work correctly.

Nagios Plugins

Any Nagios plugins used by your existing system should continue to work with Opsview. If you have developed any plugins yourself, we recommend that you review the Nagios Plugins developer guidelines.

Plugin Guidelines:

Use the plugins supplied with Opsview if there are any duplicates
Confirm that your plugins accept the '-h' argument to display help information
Confirm that your plugins return performance data if you require performance graphs
If you are using third-party supplied plugins we recommend that you upgrade to the latest version

Copy any custom plugins into

/usr/local/nagios/libexec

on the Opsview server.

Nagios Agents

You can use your existing Nagios agents with Opsview so there is no need to update software on your existing monitored hosts. We recommend you follow these guidelines:

Opsview has been tested with NRPE, NRPE_NT and NSClient++; you should ask on our Slack Channel if you're using another technology
Configuration of the Service Checks supplied with Opsview may require changing for use with your own agents
Review the Nagios Plugin guidelines above for the Nagios plugins that you are using with your agent.

SNMP

Plugins that use the SNMP protocol should continue to work with Opsview.

Guidelines:

Confirm access control for your SNMP agent allows queries from your Opsview server's network address
Configure SNMP parameters against each Opsview Host and then use macros with your Service Checks

Notifications

Your existing Email, Pager and SMS notification facilities should work with Opsview. If you are using another notification method it may be necessary to modify your configuration and Notification scripts.

Using the Nagios Migration Tool

Compatibility

This tool is compatible with Nagios Core 3

Capabilities

This tool is capable of migrating the following configuration items:

Time periods
Users
Hosts (Parents will be associated. Contact groups will not be imported. Every Host will be given the Network - Base host template)
Host groups
Services (Only active checks will be imported. Service Checks will be put into a service group called “Imported”)

Preparation

Copy your Nagios Core configuration to the Opsview server The migration tool reads the Nagios Core object file which is used by the Nagios Core CGIs. This file is called object.cache, or objects.dat in older versions of Nagios Core. The file is usually located in /usr/local/nagios/var
Transfer this file to your Opsview server.

Running the Nagios Migration Tool

The Nagios migration tool is located within the

/usr/local/nagios/installer

directory on the Opsview orchestrator server. We recommend you take a backup of your existing Opsview configuration database before running the migration tool.

su - nagios /usr/local/nagios/bin/db_opsview db_backup > /tmp/opsview.db /usr/local/nagios/installer/migrate_nagios {path to objects.cache file} This will output information about what changes it has made. Check the output for any warnings.

The tool can be run multiple times without making multiple entries of the same information within Opsview.

Post-migration

Review warnings raised in the output
Review the Hosts that have been imported - check Host Groups as Opsview only allows a Host in a single Host Group
Review the Service Checks that have been imported. You can move the Service Checks into appropriate Service Groups
Review the contacts imported - set permissions based on Host Group and Service Group and the appropriate Notification options
Review contact groups - set permissions based on Host Groups and Service Groups
Do a reload and start monitoring!

If you'd like further assistance in your move from Nagios to Opsview, be sure to check out our Professional Services. Designed to get you up and monitoring as quickly as possible, this five-day engagement will see your Opsview system deployed and optimized for your environment and hardware. We'll then migrate your existing Nagios configuration into Opsview and optimize it to take advantage of our features and capabilities that you will have access to.