NCPA API – Nagios Library https://library.nagios.com Complete Nagios monitoring resources and documentation Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:56:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://library.nagios.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Nagios-Blue-N.svg NCPA API – Nagios Library https://library.nagios.com 32 32 The NCPA Web GUI: A Key Agent Advantage https://library.nagios.com/techtips/the-ncpa-web-gui-an-agent-advantage/ Fri, 16 May 2025 13:45:00 +0000 https://library.nagios.com/?p=56379 NCPA (the Nagios Cross Platform Agent) is an awesome option for monitoring Windows, Linux, and OSX systems. Not only can it run on multiple OSs and architectures and be used for both active and passive checks, but it also includes the NCPA web GUI, a user interface packed with useful capabilities to help you keep your monitored hosts up and running. In this article, we’ll take a quick tour of the sections and features of the GUI.

Getting to the NCPA Web GUI

To access the GUI, simply install NCPA on a system, then navigate to the following in your browser, replacing <NCPA.Host.IP.Address> with the IP address of the host:

https://<NCPA.Host.IP.Address>:5693

You may need to add a security exception in your browser since NCPA is using a self-signed certificate to provide encrypted HTTPS access to the GUI.

Exploring the GUI

Home

The GUI starts out simple enough with the main Dashboard. This page shows NCPA agent information, monitored system information, and an overview of the total checks run by NCPA over the previous 30 days.

Screenshot of the home Dashboard in the NCPA web interface, showing check statistics, agent version, and system information.
The NCPA web interface home Dashboard.

Checks

In this menu, you can review and check results for the last 30 days. This data is stored automatically by NCPA on the host and can be filtered by Status and Type.

Screenshot of the Checks menu in the NCPA web GUI, showing a table of check results.
View 30 days of check results in the Checks section.

Live Data

The Live Data section provides a real-time look a CPU, Memory, Disk, and Interface Graphs on the Stats Graphs page, as well as a Top Processes section.

Stats Graphs

A screenshot of the Live Data section of the NCPA web GUI, showing realtime bandwidth graps of the ens33 interface on the target host.
Real-time bandwidth graphs in the Live Data section.

Top Processes

This section of Live Data provides a way to see process CPU and memory usage in real time. You can choose to highlight the name of a specific process in the results and define Warning and Critical thresholds to color-code those processes that exceed your defined limits.

Screenshot of the Live Data > Top Processes page in the NCPA web GUI, showing the processes using the most CPU and Memory, colored red and yellow based on user-defined thresholds.
See what’s using the most resources with Top Processes.

Check API

One of the most powerful features of NCPA is the check API, which can be explored and tested in the web GUI.

A great aspect of the NCPA API is that it works the same way across platforms, so the way you’ll write check commands to poll API endpoints is uniform whether the host you’re checking is Windows, Linux, or OSX.

In the API section of the NCPA web GUI, you can dig into all of the endpoints and run checks using them to not only review the JSON output but also to run them as Nagios checks. It’s even possible to generate a full check command for the endpoint to use in Nagios XI or Nagios Core by selecting the options highlighted in green here:

Screenshot of the API section of the NCPA web GUI, with the 'run as a Nagios check' and 'as active check using check_ncpa.py' highlighted by green rectangles.
It’s easy to explore the NCPA API in the GUI.
Screenshot of an active check example generated by the NCPA UI, viewed in the API menu of the GUI. It shows the full check command to query the 'cpu/percent' API endpoint.
Core users especially love the ability to generate commands in the GUI.

You can learn more about the NCPA API in this section of the NCPA v3 documentation:

NCPA API Overview

Nagios Log Server Integration

Log Server comes pre-loaded with NCPA, bundled with a couple of great plugins to help you monitor JVM heap and cluster status (you’ll see these in the Plugins section at the bottom of Step 2 of the NCPA Wizard in Nagios XI).

You can access the NCPA web GUI, view and update your NCPA token, and start/stop/restart the service in the Admin > Monitor Backend menu.

A screenshot of the Admin > NCPA menu in Nagios Log Server, showing the options to set your token, open the NCPA Web UI, and Restart/Stop/Start the agent service.
Easy NCPA web interface access and agent management are built right into Log Server.

If you’d like to learn more about monitoring your Log Server cluster with NCPA, take a look at this article:

NCPA: Supercharge Your Log Server Monitoring

Nagios Network Analyzer Integration

Although not specifically an NCPA Web GUI feature, it’s worth noting that Network Analyzer uses NCPA for its Route function, using data collected by NCPA with the check_traceroute.py plugin:

The Route menu in Nagios Network Analyzer, showing the hops between a local server and a third-party vendor site.
View hops easily with the Route tool in Network Analyzer.

You can learn more about setting up route monitoring here:

How to Set Up Route Monitoring in Nagios Network Analyzer

Getting Started with NCPA

If you’re not already using NCPA, you can find details on installation, NCPA wizard usage, and passive check configuration here:

Nagios XI Admin Guide – NCPA

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