What Is Nagios and Why Do IT Leaders Trust It
What started out as an open-source project has grown into a set of enterprise tools that monitor network devices, logs, traffic, and nearly everything connected to your network.
So, what is Nagios? Nagios is a network monitoring solution that detects issues early and alerts you before they cause problems. Nagios includes the open-source Nagios Core and four enterprise solutions: Nagios XI, Nagios Log Server, Nagios Network Analyzer, and Nagios Fusion.
Let’s walk through each Nagios Solution and why IT leaders continue to trust them.
What Monitoring Solutions Does Nagios Offer?
To understand what Nagios is, let’s take a closer look at each solution.
Nagios Core: the original open-source monitoring solution. Nagios Core can monitor and alert on servers, networks, applications, and more. It’s a free, community-supported software that’s been around for over 25 years. With extensive plugin capabilities, Core lets teams customize and extend its features and supports thousands of plugins and add-ons.
| A Quick History: Nagios Core was originally called NetSaint when it was first released in 1999. In 2002, due to trademark concerns, it was renamed “Nagios.” Later in 2009, the open-source solution was renamed a second (and final) time to Nagios Core, distinguishing it from the growing suite of enterprise solutions. |
Nagios XI: Centralized and extensible IT monitoring. Built on Nagios Core, Nagios XI streamlines your whole IT environment. With XI, you can monitor, troubleshoot, and set up alerts to stay ahead of network issues—all within a user-friendly interface. It’s ideal for teams that want to spend more time fixing network problems instead of searching for them.
Nagios Log Server: Log management and real-time log analysis. Monitor networking devices, log data, flow data, and virtually anything network-connected with real-time alerts and customizable dashboards. Advanced filtering and alerting help teams quickly pinpoint performance issues.
Nagios Network Analyzer: Traffic monitoring and bandwidth utilization. It includes a helpful bandwidth utilization calculator to monitor usage and detect early signs of network-based attacks. With NetFlow and sFlow analysis capabilities, Fusion gives you deep visibility into traffic trends and patterns across your network.
Nagios Fusion: A centralized view. Fusion combines data from Nagios Core, XI, Log Server, and Network Analyzer into a single dashboard. It helps simplify complex infrastructures by delivering an at-a-glance view of the entire monitored IT environment.
What’s the difference between Nagios Core and the enterprise versions?
Nagios Core, the open-source foundation of Nagios monitoring, offers powerful capabilities, but with a tradeoff. Setting up Core takes time and effort. You have to configure it manually. Plugins need to be developed. There’s also a technical learning curve.
In contrast, Nagios Enterprise Solutions build on Core’s foundation while eliminating much of its complexity. They offer guided setup wizards, bulk modification tools, and intuitive web interfaces that simplify monitoring. Instead of sifting through lines of data, teams get immediate access to built-in reports and a centralized view of their entire infrastructure. These solutions are also designed for scalability, making it easier to grow your monitoring environment.
Related Reading: Nagios Core vs. Nagios XI: 4 Key Differences
Recent Trends in Network Monitoring — and Why Nagios Stands Out
After exploring what is Nagios and delving into each Nagios Solution, let’s shift our focus to recent news and trend for network monitoring.
Industry Trend: Cybersecurity. With cyber threats growing more complex, IT teams must detect and respond quickly to protect uptime and data. Recent data from Statista shows that board members rank these as the top concerns related to cybersecurity: operational disruptions, impacts on business value, loss of revenue and customers, downtime, and damage to reputation.
What is Nagios’ role in cybersecurity? Nagios helps prevent cybersecurity attacks by making it easier to spot unusual activity and data breaches early, and helping keep compliance in check, all from one easy-to-use platform.
Industry Trend: Automation. With IT teams managing more devices than ever, automation is critical to staying efficient. What is Nagios doing to leverage automation? Nagios lets you automate routine tasks such as sending alerts when CPU usage exceeds certain thresholds, automatically restarting a service, reporting, or scheduling maintenance. This means your team can focus on strategic projects instead of firefighting.
For example, if a web server goes down, Nagios can trigger a script to restart it without human intervention, freeing up your team’s time.
Related Reading: IT Monitoring Automation: 5 Quick Pros and Cons
Why industry leaders trust Nagios: Because Nagios provides clear network visibility, teams can identify and address issues swiftly. By identifying problems early and maintaining system security, this in turn enhances cybersecurity. Automation cuts down on manual work, so IT team can focus on more important tasks.
Nagios is also customizable to fit your specific needs and can grow with your infrastructure without extra hassle—hear it firsthand from Derek Brewer, Technical Program Manager at IBM.
“Nagios has simplified a very large job, allowed us to make the necessary customizations needed and provided us with a community that is a valuable resource when a new requirement comes up.”
— Derek Brewer, Technical Program Manager at IBM
Along with these benefits, Rely IT’s co-founder, Kenneth Hagstrom, highlights how Nagios can save costs for their customers, avoid outages, and maintain control over their IT environment.
“With the level of visibility we get, we’ve saved them money, prevented outages, and helped their IT stay in complete control.”
— Kenneth Hagstrom, co-founder of Rely IT
What are Some Resources for Using Nagios?
Now that we have answered “What is Nagios?” and why it’s trusted by industry leaders, you might want to check out some resources for using Nagios.
Documentation & Guides
We recently revamped all of our documentation, providing you with accurate, easy-to-understand instructions and helpful tips for using Nagios.
| Resource | Description | Link |
| Nagios Library | Central hub for documentation, guides, product tips, industry insights, and customer success stories. | Nagios Library |
| Nagios Admin Guides | Step-by-step installation, configuration, and setup walkthroughs. | XI Log Server Network Analyzer Fusion |
Video Resources
Prefer to learn visually? Our video library walks through installation, setup, and more.
| Resource | Description | Link |
| Nagios YouTube Channel | Video tutorials, demos, and walkthroughs. | Nagios YouTube Channel |
| Nagios Webinars | If you want to learn about Nagios in more depth, Nagios Webinars offer regular sessions covering best practices, use cases, and expert tips. | Nagios Webinars |
Support Resources
Whether you need quick answers or in-depth help, Nagios has resources that come with every license.
| Resource | Description | Link |
| Nagios Support Plans | Guaranteed one-business-day response for support tickets (up to 10 per year), with the option to purchase additional support case plans as needed. | Support Plans |
| Nagios Answer Hub | Answer Hub is a resource that provides FAQs and helpful information. | Answer Hub |
Nagios Community Resources
Use the Nagios community forums to access years of collective experience, along with support options and answers to common questions.
| Resource | Description | Link |
| Nagios Exchange | Community-shared site for plugins and addons. | Nagios Exchange |
| Nagios Support Forum | Join discussions, get advice, and connect with the Nagios Community. | Nagios Support Forum |
Final Takeaway
To circle back: What is Nagios? Simply put, Nagios is a network monitoring solution that gives you clear visibility across your network. Nagios can monitor nearly anything, offers reporting and alerting, securely stores data, and provides custom dashboards that let you focus on what matters most, helping you quickly spot issues and manage your network more efficiently.
Nagios keeps an eye on everything so you can focus on the bigger picture without constantly checking behind the scenes.
Curious about how Nagios works? Reach out to us at [email protected].
