The battle begins again: Pandora FMS Vs Nagios. ¡FIGHT!

NagiosXI is the proprietary heir of one of the best-known tools in IT to monitor systems without a license, that is, as a free product. As a free product, Nagios (without XI) is a product that is almost 20 years old and suffers from many shortcomings, but for many years it has been the standard among “free” products and it fulfilled its role in those cases where the budget was quite short or the features needed were just a few. In recent years, its role as a free tool has been replaced by the more modern Zabbix.

Product features

Nagios XI is not a product as such, but rather it combines several pre-existing independent components. The best example is, for example, Nagios XI WEB management interface, with several elements, each one with its own credential system. Other system components installed on the Nagios XI appliance include:

• Nagios XI UI: “Overlying” interface on the “basic” Nagios interface.
• Nagios Core: Traditional interface.
• NSCA: Agent for passive and plugin tests (not maintained since 2011).
• NSPA: Agent for passive and plugin tests, with remote management.
• NRPE: Agent for running Nagios plugins.
• NRDP: Agent, theoretically a replacement for NSCA, whose development has not been updated since 2012.
• Nagios Plugins: Monitoring scripts. There have been several community “forks”.
• NagiosFusion: System similar to Pandora FMS Metaconsole.
• Netflow Analyzer: Specific component to work with Netflow/SFlow flows.
• Nagios Log Server: Log storage and monitoring system.

Each component with WEB interface has its own “look & feel”, its own user management system and, of course, its own configuration and integration with other elements. And these are elements designed by the company itself, Nagios Enterprise.

Third-party “OpenSource” components

• PNP: Plugin to monitor performance using RRD binary databases.
• Nagvis (maps): User-defined maps.
• NDOUtils: Information export from nagios to SQL.
• NSClient ++: Alternative agent that supports Nagios/Icinga.
• NagiosQL (modified): Administration interface with data storage in MySQL.

None of these elements, which make up the “Nagios XI” solution, are even by Nagios itself, so the compatibility and coherence between them is relative. In many cases, no one can guarantee the quality or maintainability of those pieces of software.

Feature table comparison between Pandora FMS and Nagios

Points against Nagios

Monitoring current technologies

New check creation is based on wizards or plugins. In both cases, you have to be an expert to modify any of them (you have to program at command level, know the specific template definition language and manually debug), which makes it difficult to broaden the variety of checkups or customize one of them easily from the interface itself. In Pandora FMS, any extension can be carried out using the WEB interface, without getting down to the console level, in addition to offering a bigger plugin collection for business software that does not require any kind of coding.

When applying settings, you need to “compile” them so that if something goes wrong, changes cannot be applied until they are corrected. This would be insane in an environment with many hosts. Deleting an agent without first deleting the service it contains prevents you from making the change, but it does not solve it, for example. In Pandora FMS, the entire operation is in real time, or in the case of applying major changes, managed in the background by the system, without interruptions or the need to interact at a low level with the system.

Management automation

In general, monitoring is so manual that it would take a long time to monitor 100 agents, unless low-level scripts are created to automate the whole process, so there is no standard nor tools that allow automation, or good practices, it depends exclusively on the ability of the “nagios expert” to automate these tasks efficiently, which is a completely manual process.

Reports

Although Nagios has “custom” reports, this customization is limited to parameterizing the already available reports, which are only of 20 types. Each report shows a type of information available with a pre-set presentation, for example the SLA:

Filters can be added and saved as favorites, but it is not a report that can be much more customized. To sum up, reports are intended for the technician’s use, never to be used for an internal or external client. Reports do not allow to combine different types of elements or to show generic graphs of specific metrics.

Usability in large environments

Console load for very few agents is extremely high. The usability with a high number of systems is very poor. Although it can be made to monitor many systems, it clearly has not been designed for it. Pandora FMS is currently being used to operate and manage systems with more than 100,000 nodes.

Windows Agents

Nagios “Advanced” Agents for Windows (NSCA) are from 2011 and there have been no updates since then. There are several “Forks” (iCinga, ISCA-NG), but not for Windows. Despite the fact that Nagios has up to four types of agents (NRPE, NSCA), their performance and power is far from being comparable to that of Pandora FMS, especially in Windows environments.

Performance monitoring

Until very recently, Nagios used third-party software to manage performance data and graphics. It has now been integrated, but it remains a tailored third-party component, and not part of its initial architecture. Pandora FMS is a native capacity tool, it can be used to elaborate dashboards, since it works with data and an SQL engine from its first version.

Lack of event management

Nagios does not perform event-based management, it cannot automatically validate events from monitors that have been retrieved, it cannot group them, and it cannot specify event-based alerts. To tell you the truth, there is no “event” concept in Nagios as in other tools (OpenView, Tivoli, Patrol, SCOM, Spectrum, etc). Pandora FMS has evolved based on requirements of former users of these tools, so the level of compliance with industry standards is very high.
For Nagios, the events consist of a text log for a simple visual review, as seen in the following screenshot:

Nagios cannot do a root cause analysis,

Since there is no event correlation. PandoraFMS does have it, and it also has multiple tools (L2 Maps, Services, Alert Escalation, Cascade Protection) that help the user in this regard.

Nagios cannot do BPM (service monitoring)

With Nagios you cannot set a hierarchy based on weights of different elements from different systems. Pandora FMS has a specific component (Service Maps) for this specific point.

Network level deficiencies.

Nagios cannot display a physical network, since it is not capable of detecting or displaying link-level topologies. This limits switch and router monitoring. Furthermore, its network maps are not interactive nor can they be edited or customized unlike Pandora FMS Enterprise.

Its SNMP trap monitoring is not integrated with monitoring and therefore no added graphs, reports or alerts can be displayed. The same applies for its Netflow monitoring interface, which is conceived as an auxiliary tool.

Dashboard and custom visual displays

The closest thing to Pandora FMS visual consoles on Nagios are the third-party NAGVIS plugin that has barely evolved in the last 15 years. Nagvis is an external plugin, which is not even fully integrated with Nagios XI. Even going so far as to have a different look & feel:

Although Nagios also has a Dashboard with a concept similar to that of Pandora FMS, it does not have basic elements, such as showing graphs of each monitored element, or numerical data of the collected values. It happens in a similar way with reports, which have “predefined” elements that provide little or no flexibility when it comes to building your own dashboards.

Permission management and Multi-tenancy

NagiosXI is not intended to work in a complex organization, where different administrators and users with access to different groups of machines can coexist. Its access segregation is very basic:

The scenario where you may have several dozen, with different ACL permissions by user groups is not even contemplated. Although it has an audit log, it is not useful to know what the administrator or users do with the tool, it is more like a server diagnostic tool.

Conclusions

Nagios is a software tool that can be useful in environments where there is already a person with advanced knowledge of Nagios who takes care of everything and adapts it manually according to the needs of the environment. The company does not have a “Nagios”, it has a “person who knows about Nagios”, so the cost of the total solution is really the cost of that person, including a possible replacement. In this case you don’t pay for license nor maintenance, but the hidden costs are of other nature. Tool customization and evolution depends entirely on that person. It is not a standard solution, it is a completely “ad-hoc” solution.

100% of our clients, prospects or consulted companies that use Nagios, actually use the “free” version of Nagios, which has less features than those included in this comparison. There are many Nagios forks, the most popular are Icinga or Centreon. There are commercial alternatives with a higher quality than that of Nagios XI, the best representative would be OP5.

Nagios XI is a tool whose main strength is its license price, which in most cases is free, and which even in the case of paying for the “Enterprise” version is more competitive than Solarwinds or Whatsup Gold just to name a few.

Pandora FMS is a tool that competes – and has already replaced in several cases – tools from IBM, HP, CA and BMC such as Tivoli, OpenView, Spectrum and Patrol. The scope, resources and scope of the projects are clearly different.

Ártica Pandora PFMS launches a new channel program for partners as a key element in its business development strategy.

Ártica Pandora PFMS, within the framework of its global growth strategy, is evolving its channel program with the firm intention of expanding its worldwide network of partners. We will do so together with companies that complement, with their knowledge of the clients’ business, the wide range of monitoring, incident management and remote management services provided byPandora FMS, Pandora FMS Remote Control and Pandora FMS ITSM products.

At Pandora FMS we understand the importance of the benefits provided by a quality service, and, therefore, we want to develop the potential of professional IT companies whose purpose is to improve their clients’ business through knowledge and proper IT infrastructure use.

Since our main objective is the service quality for the users of our solutions, we especially focus on the qualification of our partners. We know for a fact that deep knowledge of our tools increases their productivity, while reducing the time spent by technicians. Effectiveness and efficiency that are achieved through custom training, and that can reproduce the customer environment so that partner-customer integration is fast and efficient.

The new Pandora FMS channel program embraces any size of company, from service providers to MSPs, consultancies, system integrators, distributors, etc. Of course, as long as they understand the value that monitoring and knowledge of the status of the IT infrastructure provides in the positive evolution of their business.

It is a simple program, easy to understand and comply with, without any tricks or hidden conditions. Flexible, with the ability to adapt to the needs of partners and their customers. Consistent, based on many years of experience attending and understanding the particularities of the channel and always aimed at providing the maximum benefit, direct and indirect, to companies that place their trust in us.

Now Pandora FMS partners self-qualify based on their commitment on three levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum. We certify that any of the levels is perfectly qualified to represent, with guarantees, Ártica PFMS products before clients. Our channel program also contemplates complementing the small deficiencies that may arise with our own manufacturer services, of the highest level.

All of our partners will have commercial interlocutors who, listening to customer requirements, understand their needs and are able to propose the appropriate solution. Gold partners will also have a qualified and certified technical team to install and adapt our solution to the client. And, of course, Platinum partners will enjoy higher independence and a higher volume of commercial and technical resources, which will allow them much more agile response times.

For Pandora FMS, the word “partner” means commitment, so the entire company has acquired the responsibility of helping to develop the channel’s business. From our first resource to the last (technical, presale, commercial, marketing, administration…) we are all available to our partners to minimize their own needs and maximize their business generation.

Each of our collaborating partners has their idiosyncrasies and their catalog of solutions, and the success of our channel program lies in the way we adapt Pandora FMS products to said portfolio, seamlessly, so that the organization of our partners, as a whole perceives that your solutions are scaled up without the need for patches or technical or commercial efforts.

We share the path, we work on demand generation, either directly through events and campaigns for predefined clients, or indirectly through social networks, generalist and economic press, press specialized in information technology or presence in sector fairs. We actively collaborate also providing all kinds of commercial information on the product portal.

Once the need is created, we reinforce, with our presence, the work of the salespeople, both in the initial stages of validation of the opportunity, and in the realization of presentations and custom demonstrations to clients, including, depending on the demand, tests of concept or even pilots with real data. We always leave the relational initiative to our partners, to whom in no case do we discuss the ownership of the opportunity, we only stay by their side in the sales cycle, thus guaranteeing avoiding conflicts between partners that may cause image and productivity loss in end customers.

Once the agreement with the clients has been reached, we continue to be by the side of our collaborators, providing them with all those services they need to complement their training and guaranteeing the success in the project’s execution.

And we don’t stop there, because we know that the relationship with a client does not end with an installation, but that it is something alive, constantly evolving, like our products, which include improvements (releases) from three to five weeks. Our direct support, or through the partner, is able to cover, with continuous coverage, the demand of the end companies that trust us.

In short, at Pandora FMS, we take our business very seriously, as much as any company with which we have the pleasure of collaborating, and, therefore, we have chosen a simple, flexible and seasoned channel model, which allows for the money generated by the ecosystem of partners that we are creating to affect and feed it. So the services we offer, together, obtain a productive knowledge of everyone’s information technology infrastructure, and this helps businesses grow in a sustainable way with the minimum operating cost.

If you are already a Pandora FMS partner, ask us more about how to grow together and, if you are not yet, find out all the details of the new partner program and contact us. We are sure to find quick business synergies.