Centralized User Management

Fusion has always provided a lot of value by enabling users to visualize status data from across their distributed Nagios deployments. It’s already a must-have for distributed environments and users who employ multiple Nagios Monitoring Solutions. Namely, Fusion’s ability to aggregate data from Nagios XI, Nagios Core, Nagios Log Server, and Nagios Network Analyzer systems and display it in custom dashboards and tactical displays. But one area of untapped potential has always been in serving as a platform for centralized management of other Nagios systems.

No longer is that the case! New in 2026R1 is the ability to copy users from one fused Nagios XI system to others with a few clicks, using the new Centralized Management menu. Although a humble first step, this new feature lays the foundation that will be used going forward to enable many more management capabilities in the future.

Learn more about using the Centralized User Management function:

Managing Nagios XI Users with Nagios Fusion

As an added bonus, this addition also necessitated adding a new update users’ endpoint (PUT/system/user) to the Nagios XI API, so both solutions were enhanced in the process.

System Profile

You’ll also notice a new System Profile menu, which can be used to generate and download a profile with a single click. The System Profile zip contains a wealth of data about your setup and serves as an invaluable resource for troubleshooting and support.

Fixes

Several issues were also resolved in this release to make Fusion more stable and reliable:

• Server polling interval is now being updated properly.
• The Administrator and User Guides are now being displayed correctly.
• The ssl_hostname_verify parameter is now being passed when adding a server via the API.
• Users located in AD groups will now show up in the “Add User from AD/LDAP” page.

Learn More

This article is a great resource for learning more about all of the capabilities:

If you’re not currently using Nagios Fusion and would like to take it for a spin, you can find the free, fully functional trial options:

The Admin Guide is another excellent resource for learning how to manage and get the most out of all of the capabilities:

This is especially important if you have an extensive environment or large team where different users and groups manage specific segments. You may wish to have everything from read-only viewers to full access superadmins accessing the Nagios user interfaces (UIs), with varying degrees in-between.

In this article we’ll take a look at the multi-tenancy options available in each Nagios solution.

Nagios XI Multi-tenancy

XI provides the most robust multi-tenancy capabilities of the entire Nagios suite. What each user you create can see and do in the user interface is deeply customizable. By default, the visibility and object control granted to regular users will be limited to those hosts and services they are a Contact on, but you can also check a box in the Security Settings section to allow them to see all hosts and services. You also decide which Users have access to the REST API, auto-deployment, and the Core Config Manager, and can click a single box to make any User read-only.

To create and edit Users in Nagios XI, navigate to Admin > Manage Users.

Nagios XI Dashboards

Dashboards in XI can be deployed to other users easily in the Dashboards > Deploy Dashboards menu. You can even either let the users you deploy to update their copy of the Dashboard as they see fit or choose to keep it synced with changes you make.

Nagios Core

Nagios Core is the open source monitoring engine used by Nagios XI. Although all configuration is done from the Linux command line, it does provide a basic web display which shows status information and a includes a few options for interacting with the monitoring engine. Object visibility in the Core interface can be limited based on what hosts and services users are contacts on, as can their ability to send commands to the Core daemon.

Nagios Fusion Multi-tenancy

In Nagios Fusion, users you create can either be a User or an Administrator. If you check the Administrator box in General Settings for a user, they will be able to see and access the Admin menu and all of its functions:

Fusion also provides the ability to determine which of the fused servers you’re collecting data from each user should be able to see in the Server User Mapping section of their user settings. In the case of fused Nagios XI servers, you can also map your Fusion users to XI users so that within the Fusion UI, and when they click through to the XI UIs, the objects they can see will be tied to their XI user.

Your favorite Dashboards in Fusion can also be deployed to other users just like in Nagios XI.

To manage Fusion users, navigate to Admin Admin > Manage Users.

Nagios Log Server Multi-tenancy

In Nagios Log Server, you have the ability to control both which log sources users can see data from, and which menus and functions they can access. Admin level users can modify and delete across all components and settings, while User level users are limited to editing only their account and personal dashboards, unless other User Permissions are granted using the checkboxes in the Admin > User Management > Create/Edit User menu, in the Permissions tab.

You can also restrict visibility of source log data to Host Lists (groups of sources you create), or individual sources, as well as determining whether API access is available.

On the Dashboards front, each Dashboard users create can be saved as a personal Dashboard visible only to them, or as a Global Dashboard visible to all Log Server users.

Finally, query-based Log Server alerts can be easily integrated with Nagios XI for additional control of user visibility.

Nagios Network Analyzer Multi-tenancy

In Network Analyzer, all users have full visibility of the entirety of Source data, but you determine whether they are a full access Admin, or a regular User which hides the configuration options and limits what they can edit. You also determine whether each regular user has API access:

You can also integrate Network Analyzer alerts with Nagios XI if you’re using both solutions, and limit access in the XI UI to only certain source alerts to control visibility.

Navigate to the Administration > User Management menu to create and edit Network Analyzer users.

Resources

• Understanding User Rights in Nagios XI

• Authentication and Authorization in the Nagios Core CGIs

• Managing Nagios Fusion Users

• Managing Nagios Log Server Users

• Managing Network Analyzer Users

If you’d like to take any or all of the Nagios tools for a spin, you can find free trial download links here:

Nagios Solutions

Also feel free to contact us at sales@nagios.com if there are any questions we can assist you with, or if you’d like a custom Demo or Quickstart remote session to help you explore Nagios further.

The Challenge: Ensuring Uninterrupted IT Monitoring for Airport Operations

The sheer scale and complexity of ADR’s IT environment presented a significant monitoring challenge. Numerous interconnected systems, diverse network devices, and a constant influx of real-time data demanded a solution capable of providing comprehensive visibility and proactive alerting. Traditional monitoring methods proved inadequate in keeping pace with the dynamic nature of the airport’s operations. Identifying and resolving issues before they impacted critical services was a constant struggle, leading to reactive troubleshooting and occasional service interruptions. ADR needed a proactive sentinel, a unified platform capable of not only detecting anomalies but also predicting potential disruptions before they impacted the seamless flow of airport activities and passenger journeys.

The Solution: A Trifecta of Proactive Monitoring Power

ADR strategically deployed a suite of Nagios solutions to establish a comprehensive monitoring framework:

Nagios XI: The Central Command: Nagios XI became the cornerstone of ADR’s monitoring strategy, providing a single, powerful interface to oversee the health and performance of its entire IT landscape. From critical servers and essential applications to intricate databases and diverse network infrastructure, Nagios XI allowed ADR to customize monitoring checks and configure intelligent alerts, ensuring that the right people were notified of potential issues in real-time. This ensured that ADR’s IT teams were immediately aware of any deviations from normal operational parameters.

Nagios Network Analyzer: Illuminating Network Pathways: Understanding that the network formed the backbone of all digital airport operations, ADR deployed Nagios Network Analyzer. This tool provided deep insights into network traffic, identifying potential bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, and unusual communication patterns. By capturing and analyzing network flow data, ADR gained the ability to optimize network performance proactively and swiftly diagnose any network-related impediments.

Nagios Fusion: The Unified View: To achieve complete situational awareness across its potentially distributed IT assets, ADR implemented Nagios Fusion. This centralized dashboard consolidated data and alerts from various Nagios XI instances, offering a holistic, real-time overview of the entire IT infrastructure’s health. This unified perspective streamlined incident response, facilitated seamless collaboration among different IT teams, and empowered leadership with a clear understanding of operational status.

Strategic Implementation and Seamless Integration

ADR adopted a carefully planned, phased approach to integrate the Nagios suite into its existing IT infrastructure. Nagios’s inherent flexibility and open architecture facilitated smooth interoperability with ADR’s diverse systems and applications. The intuitive user interfaces and comprehensive documentation provided by Nagios enabled ADR’s technical teams to rapidly adopt and tailor the solutions to their specific and evolving needs. Ongoing support and collaboration with Nagios experts ensured a seamless and successful deployment process.

Tangible Results: Enhanced Resilience and Operational Excellence

The strategic deployment of Nagios XI, Network Analyzer, and Fusion had a transformative impact on ADR’s IT operations:

Proactive Disruption Prevention: Real-time monitoring and intelligent alerting empowered ADR to identify and resolve potential issues in their nascent stages, preventing them from escalating into full-blown service disruptions. This proactive stance dramatically improved the stability and reliability of all critical airport systems.

Accelerated Incident Response and Resolution: The detailed diagnostic information provided by Nagios XI and the granular network insights from Nagios Network Analyzer equipped ADR’s IT teams to pinpoint and resolve incidents with unprecedented speed and efficiency, minimizing downtime. Network Analyzer’s deep packet inspection capabilities, in particular, significantly reduced the time required to troubleshoot network-related problems.

Optimized Network Efficiency: Nagios Network Analyzer provided the visibility needed to identify and eliminate network bottlenecks, optimize traffic flow, and ensure sufficient bandwidth for mission-critical applications, leading to enhanced overall network performance.

Enhanced Visibility and Control: Nagios Fusion provided a centralized and comprehensive view of the entire IT infrastructure, enabling better situational awareness and facilitating informed decision-making. This unified view streamlined incident management and cross-team collaboration.

Resource Optimization: By automating monitoring tasks and providing actionable intelligence, the Nagios suite freed up valuable IT resources, allowing personnel to focus on strategic initiatives and innovation rather than constant reactive firefighting.

Elevated Passenger Experience: The increased stability and reliability of airport systems directly translated into a smoother, more predictable, and ultimately more satisfying experience for travelers passing through Rome’s airports.

Looking Ahead To The Future: Continued Optimization and Innovation

Building on the success achieved with Nagios, Aeroporti di Roma ADR remains committed to continuous improvement and innovation in its IT operations. They plan to further leverage the capabilities of Nagios XI, Network Analyzer, and Fusion to enhance predictive analytics, automate remediation processes, and explore new ways to optimize their IT infrastructure for future growth and evolving passenger needs. The strategic partnership with Nagios has proven to be a cornerstone in ADR’s journey towards operational excellence and ensuring a world-class airport experience.

To learn about more ways Nagios can solve real life problems, check out our other Nagios Success Stories.

Getting to the Source

Setting up your network devices and Linux systems to send their flow data upstream to Network Analyzer tends to be quick and easy. It may also be possible to integrate Windows systems, but this requires loading a commercial application on them. You can find the setup guides for the above linked in the Admin Guide.

What’s in a Flow?

Flow data provides you with insight into where traffic came from and where it went, based on hostnames/IP addresses and ports, combined with volume. This enables you to quickly access details like Top Talkers by Source and Destination IP and Port, as seen here in the Source overview of a CentOS 9 server running fprobe:

If you’d like to resolve hostnames and display those instead of IP addresses in Reports, Queries, and Graphs, simply navigate to the Administration > Global Settings menu and use the checkboxes in the Resolve Hostnames in: section.

Queries and Reports

Queries enable you to pare down the results in Source overviews and alerts to focus only on the types of traffic that are most important to you. You’ll notice two queries are built-in to get you started in the Queries menu: Common Botnets and P2P Traffic.

Reports provide a way to view the top results based on custom criteria, to be viewed in the web interface or exported as a PDF.

Abnormal Behavior

Network Analyzer also automatically compares current Source behavior with past data and indicates major deviations via the Abnormal Behavior function. Not only will these results be clearly indicated in red on the home Dashboard, but you can also set up alerts to be automatically notified when it is discovered.

The Best Route

The Route feature is another great tool, enabling you to view all of the hops between nodes. In this example we’re viewing the hops between a local server and a third-party vendor site:

The function uses the check_traceroute plugin, executed by the NCPA agent, and is simple to set up. Here’s a link to the guide: Route Monitoring Guide.

Easy Integration with Nagios XI and Nagios Fusion

Network Analyzer is also easy to integrate with Nagios XI for centralized visibility, reporting, and alerting on the data it collects. Nagios XI includes a Network Report that you can use to report on Top Talkers, a Network Query report that provides access to your queries, and a wizard you can use to roll alerts based on flow data into XI. After you link the two using the Nagios Network Analyzer Integration component found in the Admin > System Extensions > Manage Components menu of XI, you’ll also notice a new Network Traffic Analysis tab in your Host Detail pages.

You’ll also be able to integrate Network Analyzer alerts and bandwidth graphs with Nagios Fusion quickly and easily.

As you can see, Network Analyzer adds valuable depth to your network monitoring by shedding light on flow data. It’s a powerful standalone tool, and even stronger when combined with Nagios XI. If you’d like to take Network Analyzer for a spin, the free 30-day trial is a great way to get started.

Nagios Fusion is a powerful tool designed to bring together the monitoring of multiple Nagios instances into a single, unified dashboard. Whether you’re managing a small network or a complex infrastructure, Nagios Fusion provides an easy way to gain visibility and control over all your systems. In this article, we’ll walk you through setting up your first server in Nagios Fusion, step-by-step. By the end, you’ll have a centralized monitoring solution that streamlines operations and helps you quickly identify and respond to issues. For more information on how you can utilize Nagios Fusion, click here!

Note: This article specifically demonstrates the process of fusing Nagios XI with Nagios Fusion, using XI for all examples.

Prerequisites

• A running Nagios Fusion server (You can install it here.)
• A Nagios XI server to fuse with Fusion.
• Administrative access to both servers.

Fusing a Server in Nagios Fusion

Navigate to the Servers tab at the top of your Nagios Fusion dashboard. (If this is your first time adding a server on Nagios Fusion you will add a server from the Admin tab instead)

Click the blue Fuse Server button.

You will need to provide the following details for the Nagios XI server you’re fusing:

• Server Name: Choose a recognizable nickname for your Nagios XI instance.
• Server Type: Select Nagios XI (or another Nagios version you’re fusing).
• URL: Enter the URL of your Nagios XI instance.

Get the Fuse Key from Nagios XI

Next, you will get your Fuse key from Nagios XI. On your Nagios XI server, navigate to Admin.

Then Settings > System Config > Integration. Copy the Fuse Key provided.

Paste the Fuse Key into the Fuse Key field in Nagios Fusion.

Enter Server Information

Enter your Nagios XI username and password. Press Test Fusion Settings. If everything is correct, a green checkmark will appear, indicating that the connection is successful.

Click the Fuse Server button to complete the fusion process. Your Nagios XI server is now successfully fused with Nagios Fusion!

Conclusion

By fusing Nagios XI with Nagios Fusion, you’ve set up a powerful monitoring system that provides real-time insights into your entire infrastructure from a single dashboard. This centralization simplifies monitoring and alerting, making it easier to manage and respond to issues as they arise. With multiple Nagios servers fused into Fusion, your workflow becomes more streamlined, and your team can focus on maintaining system performance rather than managing individual servers.

Ready to scale your monitoring setup even further? Keep experimenting with additional Nagios instances and customize your dashboards to suit your needs. With Nagios Fusion, you’ll be able to manage your IT infrastructure with confidence!

Fusion can also be of great value in geographically dispersed infrastructures. You can deploy a local Nagios XI server at each location, then use Fusion for consolidated insight into important events. Fusion’s design makes it one of the easiest possible methods for achieving distributed monitoring in both cases of large scale and geographic separation. And now, starting in version 2026R1, Fusion also provides centralized management of the connected Nagios XI systems.

Distributed Monitoring Made Easy

Nagios Fusion reaches out to your Nagios XI servers on a customizable interval (by default every 5 minutes) to collect status data from them. The connection is via HTTP/HTTPS, saving you the trouble of setting up dedicated links or firewall rules, and simplifying setup. Fusion can also poll data on Nagios Log Server and Nagios Network Analyzer servers, providing a single pane of glass where you can view data collected by the whole Nagios Suite. Fusion also works with Nagios Core servers running version 4.0.7+.

Adding Nagios servers to your Fusion install is a quick and easy process, and once added the data from your fused servers can be viewed in custom Dashboards, rotating Views, and several built-in tactical displays.

Built-in Tactical Displays

One of many great things about Nagios Fusion is it provides value the moment you begin to fuse your Nagios servers, thanks to the built-in tactical displays. Let’s take a look at a couple of those options:

The Network Operations Center display provides an overview of open (aka unhandled) host and service problems which have not yet been acknowledged by an admin:

The Tactical Overview shows consolidated tables reflecting how many items are in various states overall and individually on each fused Nagios server:

As is the case with many of the dashlets we’ll discuss next, the above tactical displays aren’t just a visual aid; with a single click you’ll be viewing status detail pages and pre-filtered lists of objects in certain states directly in the web UI of your individual Nagios XI servers.

Customizable Insight with Fusion Dashboards

Nagios Fusion makes creating custom Dashboards quick and easy, and includes 30 unique dashlets displaying many types of data in a variety of ways, such as:

• Hostgroup and Servicegroup Status
• Open Host and Service Problems
• Recent Alerts
• Tactical Summary
• Nagios XI BPI Status
• Log Server Alerts
• Log Server Cluster Status
• Network Analyzer Alerts
• Network Analyzer Bandwidth Graphs

Dashlets can be colored and sized however you wish, and Dashboards you create can be deployed to other users who might find them useful to save time and maximize impact.

Let’s take a quick look at a couple of custom dashboards:

This example shows performance graphs for memory and drivespace on Windows and Linux servers, along with Tactical Summary and Open Problems dashlets:

In our second Dashboard, we have data on the health of our Fusion server itself, Host Health and Service Health summary dashlets, a Network Analyzer bandwidth graph, a Top alerts dashlet, and a Nagios XI BPI (Business Process Intelligence) group status dashlet:

Your handcrafted dashboards can also be added to your Views, enabling you to rotate through them (along with various built-in tactical displays and even custom URLs) at a configurable speed. Views are an excellent option for creating dynamic NOC screens.

Multi-Tenancy Made Easy

Another great aspect of Fusion is the robust multi-tenancy, which enables you to fine-tune what each of your Fusion users has visibility of and access to. You can determine which fused servers are visible, and map your Fusion users to existing Nagios XI users on a per-server basis:

Once mapped, the Fusion user’s visibility and click-through access will be limited to the hosts and services you’ve already given them permission to view in Nagios XI, saving you time and ensuring a consistent user experience and access control across your deployment.

Centralized Management

Nagios Fusion 2026R1 marks an important first step in an exciting new direction for Fusion: centralized management of fused Nagios XI systems. The ability to copy users from one Nagios XI system to others with a few clicks has now been added in the new Centralized Management menu. You can learn more about the capability here:

Nagios Fusion 2026R1: Discover The Dawn of Centralized Management

If you have a large environment, or an infrastructure spanning multiple locations or regions, Fusion will prove to be a valuable asset. The free 30 day trial is a great way to get started and see everything Fusion has to offer.

There may be various reasons why you need to migrate from one Linux version or platform to another. These may include the current platform/version reaching EOL, the need to overcome certain security/functionality issues, upgrading components to major versions (PHP 7.x -> 8.x), internal standards, and so on. This document contains information and links to allow you to plan and perform migrations from one OS version to another.

Importance of Backups and Testing

Since Nagios Fusion is a flexible product and all systems/environments are different we strongly recommend making a backup and testing all migration steps on your Test server before making any changes in production. If you don’t have a test server setup already please see our notes below on how to set one up.    

Upgrade OS: Setting Up a Test Server

First, our software does not support an in-place OS upgrade. This will cause problems with dependencies and will result in a number of issues including Fusion components failing to function correctly. The reason is that when you initially install Fusion, the installation scripts identify the OS and other components (PHP version, etc) and adjust the scripts/code accordingly. If you upgrade in place, Fusion will still try to use what it learned during its initial installation and may break due to upgraded OS components.

Recommendations for OS Migrations

The recommendations below are based on CentOS7 upgrades to CentOS Stream/RHEL 8/9. However, they do apply to any Linux distribution where Nagios Commercial software is supported, including inter-distribution upgrades/migrations such as CentOS7 to Ubuntu 22.04 TLS or Ubuntu 18.04 TLS to Debian 11.

Since each Fusion license comes with the ability to install on three instances (see License Information document, below), we recommend setting up a new Linux system/image with CentOS Stream/RHEL 8/9 (if you decide to stay with CentOS/RHEL) as a test server. Then install the same version of Fusion that you are running on the current production system. Once installed, you should be able to replicate your configuration through the backup and restore process (document below) by backing up your current Fusion configuration and restoring it to the new system.

Migrating Between Distributions

Depending upon the version of Fusion you currently have installed you may need to “step” into the migration and upgrade your version of Fusion as you go. For example, if you are running Fusion version 4.1.9 on CentOS 7, you will need to set up a RHEL 8 server with XI version 4.1.9. Then backup your XI from the CentOS7 machine and return to the RHEL8 machine. You can choose to stay with the RHEL8 machine, or you can continue migrating to CentOS Stream/RHEL 9. You can use the compatibility matrix in the documents below for assistance. Make sure you perform the upgrades on a test instance so that you do not disrupt your production environment. Contact your Customer Success Manager (csm@nagios.com) for a temporary trial key and a temporary increase in allowed activations.

Finalizing the Migration

Once everything is working as expected on your new/test system, you can re-IP this machine IP and replace your existing production system.  Also, to ensure your license is updated properly, reach back out to your Customer Success Manager (csm@nagios.com) to activate your new IP and retire your old production IP.

Supporting Documentation

Check out some of the relevant documents that will assist you through the process below:

• Nagios Software / Operating System (OS) compatibility matrix
• Nagios Fusion License Information
• Backing Up And Restoring Nagios Fusion
• Fusion Upgrade Instructions

Please note: Nagios will be able to assist you with problems and functionality directly related to the Nagios software itself.  Since there are many variables within our customers’ environments, Nagios will not be able to offer implementation (including upgrades) or design solutions, other than the documents and steps we have supplied above.

Support and Additional Assistance

If you do need assistance upgrading your OS, design, or implementation, Nagios has a network of global partners who offer their services to assist with your effort.  Please contact your Customer Success Manager (csm@nagios.com) and they will be able to assist you with finding a partner aligned with your needs.

Additional information about Nagios Fusion can be found here.

As a private US-based company with a global presence, we recognize the many time zone differences amongst the community mean we aren’t always awake and online to field your questions. Enter: The Nagios Chat Bot or “NagBot” – an AI driven tool designed to make it easier for you to get your questions answered.

The ability for our users to communicate effectively with each other and with us at Nagios has always been an integral part of our mission. From our community driven Nagios Support Forum to the Nagios Exchange, we want to ensure you can workshop ideas, ask questions, or show off an awesome new plug in you created to the world. The NagBot is another way for you to communicate with us.

How to use The Nagios Chat Bot

We have trained our AI bot to answer a plethora of common questions and provide you with any associated technical documentation you may need. It is our goal to make sure you have access to answers and resources as quickly as possible so you can get back to focusing on what matters most: monitoring. To utilize our chat bot, follow the steps below.

• Navigate to one of our sites (listed in the “Where can I find The Nagios Chat Bot” section below), and click on the message icon in the bottom right portion of the page.

• Click into the “Start a conversation” field.

• Ask your question. For example, “How can I monitor my switch with XI?”
• If the AI powered answer is not exactly what you are looking for, you can click the “Get more help” button.
• Select “Sales and Account” or “Technical help,” and a member of the appropriate Nagios team will join the conversation to further assist you as soon as possible.

Members of the Nagios Support and Sales teams monitor the NagBot during our normal hours of operation, so if you click the “Get more help” button within the chat, you can expect to interact with one of our team within a few minutes. If you request more help outside of our business hours, a member of the appropriate team will contact you within the chat session as soon as possible once we return to the office. We appreciate your patience during these times, but are hopeful the AI powered bot will be able to assist you with some of the immediate questions you may have!

Where can I find The Nagios Chat Bot?

You can now find the chat bot on our websites below:

• Nagios.com – Our commercial facing website
• Nagios.org – Our open-source website
• Support.nagios.com – Our support website

Plans for the future

Introducing this tool to our websites is just the first step in in our implementation plans. Nagios is constantly evolving how we provide support and work with our customers and userbase. We are working on and intend to further implement this chat bot functionality into our full suite of commercial products. To stay up to date on new things happening at Nagios, please make sure to follow and subscribe to our YouTube, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Facebook pages! We will also be posting articles pertaining to the greater Nagios Community here at the Nagios Library Community page.

Business Process Intelligence can be leveraged for a wide variety of group monitoring use cases and is especially useful when monitoring clusters and complex applications, where some members can fail without compromising the application functionality, while others may be essential.

Not only will unlocking the capabilities of this feature enable you to alert more intelligently, but it will also enhance your ability to troubleshoot issues and provide rapid root cause analysis when set up properly.

Nagios BPI Group Example

Let’s look at the group for a Nagios Log Server testing and development Cluster, running on a VMWare vWorker, as an excellent example of the power of BPI (note each Nagios license includes a free test/lab install, so you can test new configurations and upgrades before rolling them into production). In this example, we have assigned the group a low priority since it isn’t a production setup. We’ve also made the Windows Host on which VMWare is running an essential member (indicated by the dotted circle to its left), because if the VM Host stopped working, so would all of the Log Server Instances running as VM guests.

Nesting Groups for Holistic Monitoring

BPI includes the ability to nest groups within groups, so the status of multiple BPI groups impacts the status of the larger overarching group. This technique allows you to utilize multiple layers of group logic to determine the status of your ultimate top-level BPI group’s status. The Nagios Log Server Lab Environment group, as depicted above, consists of three additional groups, each reflecting the state of a Log Server Instance, and a fourth group, which represents the vWorker they operate on.

These smaller groups include a ping check for the Host, key performance checks like CPU and memory usage, and Service status checks for opensearch and logstash. We’ve marked the Host ping check and the opensearch/logstash Service checks as essential members since their failure would render this Instance non-functional:

Troubleshooting with Nagios BPI

If any of these essential members enter a problem state, the NLSR1-Test-A/B/C group they are in will show as critical.

Once this happens, the larger ‘Nagios Log Server Lab Environment’ group will go into a Warning state based on the group health thresholds we’ve defined:

With a quick look at the group members, we can immediately see the problem is with the opensearch Service on the third Instance, and can expand the group to see if there are any other problems:

All is Well Again

Since the stopped opensearch Service is the sole problem on Instance C, we SSH into the machine and restart it. After doing so, we schedule an immediate check for the Service on its Status Detail page and revisit the BPI group. We see both the instance-specific group and the larger group are once again in an OK state:

Intelligent Alerting

As we’ve shown above, Business Process Intelligence not only provides handy visual insight into group status but also directly alerts you when a group enters a Warning or Critical state. You can quickly and easily configure monitoring and alerting for the entire group as an individual service using Nagios XI’s built-in BPI Wizard. Take a look at our Log Server Cluster through the lens of a Service that was created with the Wizard:

The “Using BPI in Nagios XI” guide is an excellent resource to help you learn how to manage your groups, including details on initial setup, group alert logic, and using the Wizard.

Centralized Monitoring with Nagios Fusion Dashlet

Another great feature is the BPI Dashlet in Nagios Fusion, which provides you with centralized visibility of the status of all your BPI groups across multiple Nagios XI servers, and empowers you with single-click access to the BPI page on each:

You can learn more about the role Nagios Fusion and each of the other Nagios solutions play in providing a holistic monitoring perspective here.

An Enterprise Edition Extra

The Enterprise Edition of Nagios XI also automatically enables you to leverage the Host groups and Service groups you define as BPI groups. To learn more about setting up your groups, and about this great Enterprise Feature, the following video will be an excellent resource:

As you can see from the example, Business Process Intelligence is a powerful feature. Careful cultivation of meaningful BPI groups will empower you to more quickly identify individual issues preventing complex processes from carrying out their critical tasks and get your IT infrastructure back online faster.

This document is intended for use by Administrators who need to configure their Nagios Fusion server to use a proxy server.

Fusion 4.x

Using A Proxy Server

Fusion 2024

Using-a-Proxy-Server-in-Fusion-2024.pdf