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Nagios: System and Network Monitoring Review by Richard Bejtlich
Best for Nagios admins who want specific details on plug-ins
I recently received review copies of Pro Nagios 2.0 (PN2) by James Turnbull and Nagios: System and Network Monitoring (NSANM) by Wolfgang Barth. I read PN2 first, then NSANM. Both are excellent books, but I expect potential readers want to know which is best for them. The following is a radical simplification, and I could honestly recommend readers buy either (or both) books. If you are completely new to Nagios and want a very well-organized introduction, I recommend PN2. If you are somewhat familiar with Nagios and want detailed descriptions of a wide variety of Nagios plug-ins, I recommend NSANM.
NSANM strengths lie in the depth of coverage of certain elements when compared to PN2. PN2 devotes 7 pages to host checks, while NSANM's Ch 7 offers 21 pages. PN2 supplies 8 pages on service checks, but NSANM's Ch 6 gives 46 pages. This level of detail can be very useful. For example, NSANM's explanation of check_squid also shows to to configure Sguid to allow access to its cache manager.
NSANM shares more information on certain background protocols like SNMP. PN2's SNMP section is about 7 pages, whereas NSANM's Ch 11 is 36 pages. NSANM demonstrates more aspects of Nagios' Web interface and the CGI programs generating pages. I thought author Wolfgang Barth made very effective use of diagrams, like the network topology explanation in Ch 4, the service checks in Ch 5, and notification in Ch 12.
NSANM includes some material not mentioned in PN2, like using Nagios with Cygwin. Sometimes the books are very complementary, as shown by PN2's discussion of NSClient++ and NSANM's overview of NSClient and NC_Net.
NSANM is lacking coverage of security, redundancy, and failover, however. PN2 does address these critical issues. Beware the some of the "chapters" in NSANM are very short -- like Ch 8 (2 pages!) and Ch 19 (barely 6 pages). I think short sections like those should have been integrated into longer chapters or moved into the appendices.
Overall, NSANM is a very good book. I believe new Nagios readers should read PN2, and strongly consider NSANM as a complementary reference volume.