Nagios Documentation & Guides

➤ We recently revamped all of our documentation, providing you with accurate, easy-to-understand instructions and helpful tips for using Nagios. These Nagios docs will guide you through the basics, help you get started, and support you in learning more about Nagios tools.

Nagios Documentation

A new comprehensive documentation site replacing the legacy Support Knowledgebase. Here, you’ll find guides for commercial solutions and open-source projects with step-by-step tutorials, technical documentation, and best practices.

Nagios Library

Library is a central place for detailed Nagios training docs, how-to guides, articles on the latest industry insights, and real-life stories about using Nagios:

Admin Guides

Looking for step-by-step instructions? These guides walk you through installation, configuration, and advanced setup:

Nagios Support Options

➤ Support options are designed to provide both quick answers and in-depth assistance. Nagios offers these resources with every license.

Nagios Customer Success Managers

If you have a Nagios license, you can contact a Nagios Customer Success Manager (CSM). CSMs can help with a wide variety of Nagios-related information. They can help answer basic questions about Nagios, get you in contact with the right support, as well as help you renew or buy a new license.

To contact a Nagios CSM, email csm@nagios.com.

Nagios Support Plans

Guaranteed one-business-day response from Nagios Technicians for support tickets (up to 10 per year), with the option to purchase additional support plans as needed:

Nagios Answer Hub

Find answers to frequently asked questions and product-specific help:

Nagios Support Website

The Nagios Support makes it easy to find what you need, with quick access to the Knowledge Base, Library, Support Forum, and product-specific resource pages:

Nagios Video Resources

➤ Prefer to learn visually? Our video resources walk through installation, setup, Nagios training, and more.

Nagios YouTube Channel

Explore our video tutorials, product demos, and best practices all in one place:

Nagios Webinars

Want deeper insights? Nagios Webinars offer regular sessions covering best practices, use cases, and expert tips:

Nagios Community Resources

➤ Access years of collective experience, along with support options and answers to common questions.

Nagios Support Forum

The Nagios Support Forum is an ideal place to get quick answers to “how-to” questions. Ask questions, find answers, and contribute to active discussions:

Nagios Exchange

Browse thousands of community-created plugins, add-ons, and integrations, or share your own projects with the Nagios Community.

Where to Go Next

➤ If you’re still looking for more resources, Nagios offers free one-on-one sessions with a Nagios Technician—plus free trials to help you get started.

Personalized Demo

See Nagios in action, explore key features, and discover how Nagios fits your infrastructure:

Download a Free Trial

Get a free, 30-day trial of any Nagios Enterprise Solution to try it out yourself:

Quickstart Session

Get your instance up and running, discuss your environment, and receive tailored configuration help:

There’s no single way to get started with Nagios. Some like to dig into the documentation, while others prefer more hands-on Nagios training, such as a product walkthrough or demo. However you like to learn, there’s a resource to match your style.

Have Questions? Reach Out to Us

Reach out anytime to sales@nagios.com if you have questions or need support. We’re here to help you get the most out of Nagios.

Helpful Extras to Check Out

Nagios’ Social Media

Get the latest updates and stay in the loop:

Nagios consistently proves its value in on-premises infrastructure monitoring software, trusted by IT teams for critical systems where cloud solutions fall short.

It has evolved to stay ahead of modern IT demands, remains flexible and reliable, and continues to make monitoring easier.

Let’s clear up the misconceptions, explore recent upgrades, and see why Nagios is still used today.

Why Some are Asking if Nagios is Obsolete — and Why that’s Not the Full Story

First, let’s clear up a few misconceptions about Nagios.

Misconception #1: “Nagios isn’t extensible.”

Some argue Nagios’s architecture is outdated, claiming plugin management is time-consuming and that configuration effort increases with each update. But Nagios was actually built for extensibility.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: With its plugin-based architecture, you can monitor just about anything, from servers and switches to networks and custom applications, while community-contributed plugins keep it adaptable to evolving technologies.

Misconception #2: “It’s too manual.”

Host administration in Nagios used to sometimes be perceived as too complicated and labor-intensive. While earlier versions of Nagios involved more manual tasks, the platform has evolved significantly. Today’s platform offers streamlined tools and features that make host administration far easier and more efficient.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: With Configuration Wizards, bulk management tools, and integrations, Nagios can be as automated as your team needs. This flexibility lets you streamline monitoring setup and maintenance without sacrificing control of your infrastructure.

Misconception #3: “Nagios is hard to set up and use.”

One reason why some may think Nagios is obsolete is because of the misconception that Nagios is hard to use. While the open-source Nagios Core has a steeper learning curve and requires manual configurations, Nagios also offers four enterprise-level solutions that eliminate much of the complexity of these tasks. The main differences between Nagios Core and XI are that XI is much easier to work with, helps you get things done faster, better meets business requirements, and comes with more features right out of the box.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: Take Nagios XI, for example. XI includes a modern web interface, built-in Configuration Wizards, bulk management tools, and an intuitive layout that makes setup and use faster and far less technical. Even users with more limited IT knowledge can learn to navigate the interface, create checks, and manage alerts.

Misconception #4: “It isn’t scalable.”

Some claim Nagios struggles with scaling due to outdated manual processes, complex plugin management, and command-line reliance. However, this overlooks all the improvements Nagios has made that help simplify administration.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: Nagios XI offers setup Wizards, intuitive GUIs, and bulk management tools that greatly reduce manual effort, making scalability easier. Whether you’re monitoring a few servers or thousands of devices across multiple locations, Nagios can handle the load.

Misconception #5: “It’s hard to train others on Nagios.”

While Nagios Core can be hands-on, tools like Nagios XI simplify onboarding in a few ways:

1. The user interface is straightforward and user-friendly.
2. User roles and permissions help simplify access for different team members.
3. There’s plenty of documentation, support, and video tutorials available to guide users step-by-step.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: The Nagios ecosystem is structured enough that knowledge transfer is straightforward, even across teams.

Misconception #6: “Nagios hasn’t been updated in years.”

Despite the misconception, Nagios has seen consistent updates that stay ahead of evolving infrastructure needs.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: Nagios is actively maintained and regularly updated. Recent releases (like Nagios Network Analyzer 2026R1 and Nagios Log Server 2024R2) show ongoing development aimed at modern infrastructure needs, including security updates, bug fixes, new Configuration Wizards, and more.

What’s New in Network Analyzer: NNA 2026R1 integrates the security tools Wireshark, Suricata, Nmap, for comprehensive network monitoring, including:

• Traffic volume and flow analysis.
• Rules-based threat detection.
• Network mapping and endpoint validation.

Learn More: Check out the changelog or the Network Analyzer product page for more details.

What’s New in Log Server: Enhanced User Interface. Log Server 2024R2 has a completely updated and easier to navigate user interface. Check out the changelog to view all the recent updates.

Learn More: This article covers all of what’s new: Ready to Rock: What’s New in Log Server 2024R2. Or if you’re a more visual learner, check out this Nagios Webinar: Nagios Log Server 2024R2 Showcase.

Misconception #7: “Nagios can’t be customized.”

Some might ask, “Is Nagios obsolete?” partly because they think it lacks customization options. This perception often comes from Nagios Core’s original design, which involves manual configuration that could seem complex. That complexity leads some to believe Nagios isn’t flexible enough for modern IT environments.

Why Nagios Remains Trusted: With Nagios, you can easily set alerts, adjust thresholds, and tailor monitoring to fit your unique environment and needs. Customization is not only possible, but easy. Hear it from Astiostech’s Director Alfred Chong:

“I think the key feature that Nagios XI presented to us is the ability for us to customize it for exactly what was needed.”   

— Alfred Chong, Director at Astiostech 

Related Readings:

Brief Overview

Nagios started in 1999 as an open-source Core focused on reliable monitoring. It’s still going strong today thanks to ongoing innovation and continuous improvements. Today, Nagios fits modern IT needs with:

1. High extensibility 
2. Automation support 
3. Ease of use 
4. Scalability 
5. Simplified onboarding 
6. Continuous updates
7. Flexible customization 

Curious how Nagios can support your infrastructure? Try Nagios XI free for 30 days.

As a leading financial institution with a global presence, Societe Generale operates a vast and intricate IT infrastructure. This infrastructure is the backbone of their operations, supporting a wide array of critical functions that are essential to their success and the services provided to millions of customers worldwide.

The IT department faced a significant challenge: ensuring the always-on availability and optimal performance of critical systems. In the fast-paced world of finance, downtime or slow response times are simply not an option. The potential consequences include:

• Financial losses: Even brief outages can disrupt trading, delay transactions, and impact the ability to serve customers, leading to significant financial repercussions.
• Reputational damage: Service disruptions can erode customer trust, damage a brand, and lead to long-term consequences in a competitive market.
• Operational inefficiencies: System downtime can disrupt internal operations, slow down critical processes, and hinder employee productivity.
• Legal and regulatory implications: Failure to provide timely access to financial data or maintain system integrity can lead to non-compliance with regulations, resulting in fines and legal penalties.

Nagios XI: A Powerful Solution

After a thorough evaluation of several monitoring solutions, Societe Generale’s IT team selected Nagios XI. Nagios XI offered a comprehensive and flexible platform that met stringent requirements and provided a robust foundation for our IT monitoring strategy.

• Comprehensive Infrastructure Monitoring: Nagios XI‘s flexible architecture allowed them to customize monitoring checks for a wide range of IT infrastructure components and metrics, including:
  • Server health: Monitoring CPU utilization, memory usage, disk space, system load, and other critical server metrics to ensure optimal performance and prevent resource exhaustion.
  • Network performance: Tracking bandwidth utilization, latency, packet loss, network device availability, and network traffic patterns to identify bottlenecks and ensure network connectivity.
  • Database performance: Monitoring query times, database connections, resource utilization, and database server health to optimize database performance and prevent data access issues.
  • Application performance: Tracking response times, error rates, transaction success rates, and other application-specific metrics to ensure application availability and responsiveness.
  • Storage systems: Monitoring storage capacity, I/O performance, disk health, and storage system availability to ensure data integrity and prevent storage-related outages.
  • Security systems: Monitoring intrusion detection systems, firewall logs, vulnerability scanners, and security event information to detect and respond to potential security threats.
• Proactive Alerting: Nagios XI’s advanced alerting features enabled us to configure custom thresholds and notifications, ensuring that we were immediately alerted to any potential issues. This allowed us to address problems before they escalated and impacted users, minimizing downtime and service disruptions.
• Scalability and Flexibility: Nagios XI’s scalable architecture could easily accommodate the growing IT infrastructure and the increasing complexity of the digital environment. Its flexible plugin system allowed us to integrate with other IT systems, such as ticketing systems, chat platforms, and automation tools, and customize the monitoring solution to specific needs.
• Reporting and Analytics: Nagios XI provided detailed reports and historical data, giving the IT team valuable insights into the performance of the IT infrastructure. This information helped us identify trends, diagnose recurring issues, optimize performance, and plan for future growth.

Quantifiable Results and Benefits

By implementing Nagios XI, Societe Generale achieved significant improvements in the availability, performance, and management of their IT infrastructure. These improvements translated into tangible benefits for the business and customers.

• Increased uptime: Proactive monitoring and alerting enabled their IT team to identify and resolve issues quickly, minimizing downtime and ensuring that critical systems were always available to users. We have seen a significant reduction in system outages and service disruptions.
• Improved performance: Nagios XI’s detailed performance metrics helped their team identify bottlenecks and optimize the performance of their IT systems, resulting in faster response times, improved user experience, and increased customer satisfaction. We have observed significant improvements in system response times and transaction processing speeds.
• Reduced costs: By preventing downtime and optimizing performance, Nagios XI helped us reduce the costs associated with lost productivity, customer dissatisfaction, and emergency troubleshooting. We have achieved cost savings through proactive problem resolution and reduced downtime.
• Enhanced IT efficiency: Nagios XI’s centralized monitoring and reporting capabilities streamlined IT operations, making it easier for their team to manage the IT infrastructure, respond to incidents, and collaborate effectively. The IT teams are now more efficient and productive.
• Enhanced security: Nagios XI also allows us to monitor for security vulnerabilities, unusual traffic patterns, and potential attacks on their IT systems, adding an extra layer of protection to digital assets and reducing security risk.

Conclusion: Nagios XI Drives IT Success at Societe Generale

Nagios XI has become an indispensable tool for Societe Generale, providing the bank with the real-time visibility, proactive alerting, and comprehensive reporting needed to ensure the always-on availability and optimal performance of critical IT infrastructure. This has resulted in increased uptime, improved performance, reduced costs, and enhanced IT efficiency, ultimately contributing to a better experience for both customers and internal teams. We continue to rely on Nagios XI as a key component of the IT strategy, helping to drive digital transformation and maintain their position as a leader in the financial industry.

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

The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries (CARL) is a consortium of academic, public, and special libraries that collaborate to enhance access to shared information resources and technology. With a strong commitment to providing reliable digital services to its member libraries, CARL needed a robust IT monitoring solution to ensure uninterrupted network operations, minimize downtime, and proactively address system vulnerabilities.

To achieve this, the organization turned to Nagios XI, a powerful IT infrastructure monitoring tool. By implementing Nagios XI, CARL significantly improved its ability to detect, troubleshoot, and prevent IT-related disruptions, ensuring seamless digital resource availability for thousands of researchers, students, and librarians.

Challenges Faced by CARL

Before implementing Nagios XI, CARL faced several IT management challenges:

Limited Visibility into IT Infrastructure

The IT team struggled with monitoring servers, applications, and network devices effectively, leading to inefficiencies in identifying potential issues before they escalated.

Reactive Issue Resolution

Without a centralized monitoring system, the team often learned about outages or performance issues only after users reported them, causing delays in resolution and service interruptions.

Scalability Concerns

As CARL expanded its digital services, managing multiple systems across different libraries became increasingly complex, requiring a solution that could grow with the organization.

Manual Monitoring Processes

The reliance on manual checks led to inefficiencies, increasing the risk of undetected failures and consuming valuable IT staff time that could be better spent on strategic improvements.

Lack of Real-Time Alerts

The absence of an automated alerting system made it difficult to detect issues before they impacted users, resulting in delayed responses and higher downtime.

The Solution: Implementing Nagios XI

CARL’s IT leadership selected Nagios XI due to its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, user-friendly dashboard, and ability to scale alongside the organization’s growing IT needs. The implementation process included:

System Deployment

The IT team installed Nagios XI on a dedicated server, configured network nodes, and integrated key IT assets into the system.

Custom Monitoring Setup

Custom monitoring templates were designed to accommodate CARL’s diverse IT environment, including library databases, web servers, and cloud-based services, ensuring tailored performance tracking.

Automated Alerting and Reporting

Real-time notifications and automated reporting were set up, enabling IT personnel to receive instant alerts on critical system issues and generate reports for better decision-making.

Proactive Performance Monitoring

By establishing performance thresholds and predictive monitoring, CARL could detect and resolve issues before they escalated into major outages.

User Training

IT staff took advantage of plethora of available documentation resources to maximize Nagios XI’s advanced features, ensuring effective utilization of the system’s monitoring and alerting capabilities.

Results Achieved

Since implementing Nagios XI, CARL has experienced significant improvements in IT infrastructure monitoring and performance management. The key benefits include:

Enhanced Visibility and Control

The IT team now has a centralized dashboard offering real-time insights into system health, network performance, and server loads, allowing for better decision-making and faster responses to potential issues.

Proactive Issue Resolution

Nagios XI’s predictive monitoring capabilities allow the IT team to identify and address potential problems before they affect end-users, reducing the number of user-reported incidents.

Reduced Downtime

Unplanned outages have decreased by 40%, ensuring greater reliability of digital resources for researchers, students, and librarians who rely on CARL’s services.

Scalability for Future Growth

With Nagios XI, CARL’s monitoring system can scale effortlessly as new libraries and services are added, ensuring continued support for the organization’s expanding digital infrastructure.

Improved Operational Efficiency

Automated alerts and reporting save IT staff hours of manual monitoring work, allowing them to focus on optimizing system performance and strategic IT planning.

Conclusion

By implementing Nagios XI, the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries has successfully transformed its IT infrastructure management. The adoption of proactive monitoring, real-time alerts, and predictive analytics has ensured reliable digital services for its member libraries and patrons, improving the overall efficiency of its IT operations.

This success story demonstrates how Nagios XI can empower organizations to enhance efficiency, reduce downtime, and maintain a seamless digital experience. By investing in advanced IT monitoring solutions, CARL has positioned itself for continued growth and innovation in supporting research and learning across Colorado and beyond.

The Challenge: Fragmented Monitoring and Reactive Responses

Prior to integrating Nagios into their operations, the Carabinieri’s IT teams grappled with the limitations of a fragmented monitoring system. Manual checks and disconnected tools resulted in a reactive approach, often leading to delayed responses to critical issues. This lack of real-time visibility posed a significant risk, especially in an environment where every second counts. The need for a unified, proactive monitoring solution became paramount.

The Solution: Nagios for Comprehensive Infrastructure Monitoring

After a thorough evaluation, Nagios was selected for its robust capabilities, flexibility, and proven reliability. Its ability to provide comprehensive monitoring of diverse IT environments, coupled with its open-source nature, made it an ideal fit for the Carabinieri’s complex infrastructure. The implementation process was meticulously planned, with a phased rollout to minimize disruption and ensure seamless integration.

Nagios’s versatility allowed the Carabinieri to monitor a wide range of critical systems, including servers, networks, applications, and databases. The platform’s extensive library of plugins enabled them to customize monitoring parameters to meet their specific needs, ensuring complete visibility across their entire IT landscape. Real-time dashboards provided a centralized view of system health, allowing IT teams to quickly identify and address potential issues before they escalated.

Key Benefits: Alerting, Performance Monitoring, and Proactive Responses

One of the key benefits of Nagios was its powerful alerting system. Granular alert configurations and escalation policies ensured that critical issues were promptly addressed by the appropriate personnel, minimizing response times and preventing service disruptions. The ability to receive alerts via multiple channels, including email and SMS, ensured that IT teams were always aware of potential problems, regardless of their location.

Nagios’s performance monitoring tools provided valuable insights into system performance and resource utilization. Real-time graphs and historical data allowed IT teams to identify trends, predict potential bottlenecks, and optimize resource allocation. This proactive approach helped to ensure that critical systems remained responsive and available, even during periods of peak demand.

Transformative Impact: Enhanced Security and Cyber Resilience

The impact of Nagios on the Carabinieri’s IT operations was transformative. Downtime was significantly reduced, service availability improved, and the organization’s overall security posture strengthened. The ability to proactively identify and address potential issues enhanced the Carabinieri’s cyber resilience, ensuring the continuity of critical operations in the face of evolving threats.

The Legacy: An Indispensable Tool for National Security

The success of the Arma dei Carabinieri’s Nagios implementation demonstrates the power of proactive IT monitoring. By investing in a robust and scalable monitoring solution, the Carabinieri have ensured the reliability of their critical systems, enabling them to effectively carry out their mission of safeguarding the nation. Nagios has become an indispensable tool, providing the real-time visibility and control needed to maintain the digital backbone of Italy’s national security. The Carabinieri now have the ability to ensure that their systems are ready, at all times, to respond to any event.

The Carabinieri now have the ability to see trends and predict issues before they cause downtime. This ability to see into the future of their infrastructure is a huge benefit to the organization, and it allows them to be more effective at their mission.

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

What’s Different about the Graviton CPU?

Patrizio’s article provides a few reasons as to why more AWS instances are utilizing the Graviton CPU over the x86 processor. Some of the benefits of using Graviton CPUs are they “cost up to 20% less and use up to 60% less energy than comparable EC2 instances on x86, and they are up to 40% more cost-effective than x86,” according to Patrizio.

As Amazon has released new versions of the Graviton CPU, the company has significantly improved the performance of the processor. From Graviton3 to Graviton4, which Amazon launched in July 2024, the processor gained “30% better computing power, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth,” according to the article. One of the noteworthy technical improvements Patrizio mentioned for the new Graviton4 processor, also called R8g, is that it can handle as much as 8GB of memory for each virtual processor a user has as well as support up to 192 processors.

Another difference stated in the article that makes the Graviton CPU unique is the fact it is made by Amazon, a hyperscaler without any prior experience creating custom silicon. However, other hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Nvidia have also created their own personalized Arm-based CPUs, according to Patrizio, so AWS is not the only hyperscaler offering this type of processor. While the Graviton CPU may not be the only processor out there like it, the article points out that its use is certainly on the rise.

Using and Monitoring AWS with Nagios

The Graviton4 processor from Amazon is new, but it’s not a new practice to use AWS in your IT environment or monitor your AWS assets. Nagios XI not only enables you to utilize AWS for installation, but it also can monitor AWS services as well. XI gives you flexibility when it comes to choosing how you deploy it so it’s able to fit into the requirements of your organization. You can install it with VMware, Hyper-V, Linux, or you can even install it in AWS. To show you how to accomplish the latter, we created a detailed tutorial that walks you through how to install XI in AWS with a RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) 9 virtual machine.

If you are using AWS, though, the greater value comes in for you through XI’s ability to monitor AWS services such as Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) and Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service). XI comes with over 80 built-in Configuration Wizards that allow you to easily configure a wide variety of devices for monitoring, and two of those Wizards are for Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3, respectively.

When you monitor Amazon S3 with XI, you are able measure metrics like bucket size, the number of objects, all/get/put requests, delete requests, head/post/list requests, the amount of bytes downloaded or uploaded, total request latency, first byte latency, 4XX errors, and 5XX errors. Monitoring Amazon EC2 allows you to keep track of CPU credit usage, CPU credit balance, CPU utilization, disk read/write operations, disk read/write bytes, network in/out, as well as network packets in/out. This in-depth insight into both services gives you the ability to more easily keep track of their status to ensure everything is running smoothly.

Conclusion

AWS’ Graviton CPU is making waves as more users begin to utilize it, and there are many benefits to using this processor that can help with increasing efficiency and decreasing costs, as stated in the article. While more people are starting to use this processor, many organizations already use AWS services as a key part of their IT environments. Since these services are highly important, it’s essential to monitor them with an IT monitoring solution like Nagios XI that can provide you with insight into an array of valuable metrics. Armed with this valuable data, you can feel confident that you’re able to quickly jump into action if an issue arises in your AWS services.