How the User Management Dashlet works

The User Management Dashlet utilizes the Nagios XI API, specifically interacting with the system tree, to retrieve and manage user information. The API endpoint designed for user data includes several details about each user, such as their user ID, username, full name, email address, and account status (enabled/disabled). However, for the dashlet’s intended functionality, only the username and user ID are required, as these are the primary identifiers necessary for adding or removing users.

Upon initialization, the Dashlet queries the API to fetch a list of all users within the Nagios XI instance. This list is then displayed on the administrator’s dashboard, where the user IDs and usernames are shown in an easily navigable format. With this data in hand, the administrator can efficiently perform actions such as adding new users or removing existing ones directly from the dashboard interface, without needing to navigate through multiple pages or API endpoints.

The user management process is seamless, allowing for immediate updates to the user list in real-time, with all changes being reflected instantly across the Nagios XI environment. The integration with the API ensures that the Dashlet always displays up-to-date information, providing administrators with a reliable and efficient tool to maintain user access.

The other features of this Dashlet allow an administrator to add or delete users in the Nagios XI instance. The buttons won’t do anything immediately, aside from revealing a modal where you can input or select information.

Let’s start with the “Add Users” modal. This modal requests the necessary details for creating a user, including their username, full name, email, and a simple password. The password is considered simple because the new user will be prompted to change it upon logging in. Once all information is entered, pressing the button will send the request to the API, officially adding the user to Nagios XI. The newly created user will have basic privileges. This means their API access will be very limited compared to the administrator account, which is only able to view objects. If you want to make a user an administrator, you will have to change permissions in Admin>Manage Users.

The final feature of this dashlet allows you to delete users. It does this fairly simply, it uses a dropdown that collects users in the same way as our earlier list. This means that the list will update when either of the dashlet functions is run. Simply choose a user from the dropdown and click delete, it will ask you to confirm just to make sure you didn’t select the wrong user, but after you confirm, the user will be deleted.

To try the User Management Dashlet, download it here. If you’d like to read more about the Nagios XI API, please read this article: https://library.nagios.com/training/using-the-nagios-xi-api/.

For the last 10 years, Nagios Log Server has provided users with a powerful log collection, analysis, archiving, and alerting solution. We’re excited to announce the release of Log Server 2024R2, and in this article we’ll discuss the major frontend and backend updates and improvements you’ll discover in the new major release.

User Interface: The Next Generation

When you download the new Log Server 2024R2 release, the first thing you’ll notice is the beautiful new user interface, coded from scratch by the Nagios development team. Check out how easy it is to manage Dashboard panels now!

The new UI is crisp, clean, and fast. This change will provide greater flexibility and agility to our developers, enabling them to quickly incorporate new ideas, respond to customer feedback, and cultivate Log Server’s look and feel in the future. For example, creating the new Dark Theme and Light Theme:

One change that might take a moment to get used to is that the menu bar is now on the left, and icon-based, just like the Nagios XI Neptune theme you may already use. Aside from that, longtime Log Server users will still feel right at home, as we’ve kept the menu structure and location of key functions the same.

Another major enhancement comes in how panels are managed in your Dashboards.

Major Backend Updates

The improvements in Log Server 2024R2 go far beyond the stunning new UI, extending to the core components of the tool. First off, the datastore has been shifted from Elasticsearch to Opensearch 2.14.0. Secondly, Logstash has been updated to v8.13.4. These updates will provide you with improved security and functionality in your Log Server deployment.

The upgrade to Opensearch means that Log Server users will now benefit from the uniform field labeling and hierarchical tree structure of the Elastic Common Schema (ECS). For example, information such as the host name of different types of log sources will be uniformly placed into a common field, in this case host.hostname.

In previous versions of Log Server, this would have been Hostname for Windows sources, and hostname for Linux sources, causing no results to show in the case of simple capitalization mistakes when composing queries. Setting up queries and alerts to find the important log entries you’re after will be quicker and easier going forward, since the fields for common attributes will have the same name and capitalization regardless of the source type.

You’ll also notice that in R2, significantly more fields are parsed in your syslog data, including data such as process.name, service.type, log.syslog.severity.code, and log.syslog.severity.name, further enabling you to quickly narrow down datasets in your queries.

Migration Made Easy

Due to the upgrade from Elasticsearch to OpenSearch an inline upgrade from R1 to R2 isn’t possible, but we have created a GUI-based migration tool to help existing users migrate their data and to a new R2 deployment. The tool makes migrating the following to your new R2 deployment a snap:

• The log data contained in the Elasticsearch engine.
• User accounts
• Configuration
• Queries
• History
• Alerts

More Resources

A great way to dive in and learn all about the changes is this recent webinar:

Nagios Log Server 2024R2 Showcase

Fully-updated documentation for Log Server 2024R2 can be found in the Admin Guide:

Nagios Log Server Administrator Guide

Learn how to monitor your Log Server cluster intelligently with Business Process Intelligence here:

Nagios XI BPI: Actionable Insights for IT Monitoring and Optimization

Learn how Log Server can help empower you with a holistic perspective your your infrastructure’s health here:

Get Holistic with 4 Nagios Solutions

Take Nagios Log Server 2024R2 for a Spin

Discover our powerful log collection, analysis, archiving, and alerting solution with a stunning new UI and major backend improvements.

Beautiful new user interface

Upgraded to OpenSearch 2.14.0

Enhanced log analysis capabilities

Easy migration tool

Explore Log Server 2024R2