Nagios XI - Web Interface Architecture

Nagios XI Web Interface Architecture

This document describes at a very high level the feature set found in the Nagios XI user interface.  This by no means is meant to be an exhaustive list, but more of a cursory overview.

With in the Nagios XI Web Interface

Some of the key features of the Nagios XI Web interface are:

• Multi-user and multi-tennant capabilities
• Numerous visualization configurations to see outages as they occur
• User defined Views
• User defined Dashboards
• User customizable Reports
• Easy to use Monitoring Wizards
• Granular configuration control through the Core Configuration Manager (CCM)
• Extendability, and extensibility by adding custom Components, Wizards, Plugins

Multi-user and Multi-tennant capabilities

Nagios XI has full Multi-user and Multi-tennant capabilities.  Individual users and groups have their views automatically restricted so they can only see the items they are a monitoring contact for.  Additionally, administrators have the ability to grant additional privileges to user to allow them to have rights to see all of the objects being monitored.

Visualizations

As the underlying monitoring engine takes care of the actual monitoring of the defined objects, the Nagios XI UI delivers dozes of different ways to filter and visualize the data coming back from the items being monitored.

Several of these visualizations are designed to be viewed full screen on large overhead LCD screens, while others work well for drilling into the detailed specifics of the items being monitored and the graphing of the performance data being returned during the checks.  All of these visualizations update as new data comes into the Nagios XI system.

Views

Users of Nagios XI have the ability to create their own customizable views.  Views in Nagios XI are a collection of URL's that will rotate at a speed defined by the user.  These URL's can either be URL's relative the the Nagios XI system, or can also include externals URL's.  The rotation of the views can be started, stopped, as well as have the rotational speed adjusted to the users specifications.

Dashboards

Nagios XI users can also define customizable dashboards.  Throughout the XI interface numerous elements have what's is called a dashify icon next to them.  This includes overviews of host groups, service groups as well as performance data graphs, etc.  When the dashify icon is clicked, the user has the ability to add the element to a dashboard of their choosing.  Once the element has been added to the dashboard, the "dashlets" can be arranged on the dashboard by the user to layout the dashboard however they like.  Once satisfied with the position of the dashlets they can be locked in to place preserving their location on the dashboard.

Administrators also have the ability to take pre-created dashboards and deploy them to other users.

Reports

With well over a dozen pre-defined reports, Nagios XI lets the users take the creation of custom reports into their own hands, customizing time frames, hosts/host groups, etc and allowing individual users save the reports to their My Reports section for easy retrieval in the future.  May of the reports have built-in capabulities to export data as a PDF, or CSV data.

Additionally, with the Enterprise version of Nagios XI, users can define any report to be delivered via email on the interval of their choosing including an attached version of the PDF.

Monitoring Wizards

Core Configuration Manager (CCM)

The Core configuration Manager gives the granular control to customize the dozens of items that each underlying Nagios configured object has available to it.  While the monitoring wizards are designed to trade off ease of use, selecting the most popular options, the Core Configuration Manager gives the power back to the administrator to be able to "turn the knobs" of each individual configuration options.

• The Nagios CCM (Core Config Manager) is a front-end interface for managing Nagios object configuration files.

• Changes made in the CCM are written to a database, and when configurations are applied, they are written to physical configuration files.

• All configuration changes need to be verified for logic and syntax errors before Nagios can utilize them and restart successfully.

• No changes will take place until the configurations are written to file and Nagios is restarted with a valid configuration.

• Configurations from a Nagios Core install can be imported via the 'Import Config Files' page in the Tools section.

Nagios XI Components, Wizards, Plugins

Extendability and extensibility of the Nagios XI monitoring system is baked in from the beginning.  The monitoring system can be extended by easily uploading Plugins which are used to perform monitoring of new types of devices, as well as components which can be used to extend the capabilities of the UI, by adding new pages such as reports, or even extending backend items such as passing check results or notifications to an external ticketing system.  Configuration wizards can also be added to the system at any time, simplifying the process of combining one or more plugins to performs checks against custom systems.

Final Thoughts

For any support related questions please visit the Nagios Support Forums at:

http://support.nagios.com/forum/