Monitoring with Nagios XI and the ReChecked Config Wizard

For those who don’t know, Nagios XI is a web interface on top of Nagios Core and other software that provides a monitoring suite. If you’re using Nagios XI, you are likely familiar with Configuration Wizards. These config wizards are an easy way to start monitoring with Nagios XI in just a few clicks.

ReChecked has a Nagios XI Config Wizard available for those of you who would like to use the simplicity of a wizard to configure your hosts and services that are running rcagent.

Install the Wizard

To get started, download the latest wizard below and upload it in the Nagios XI interface. At the top bar, go to Admin > Manage Config Wizards on the left hand side.

Select the downloaded config wizard rcagent.zip file and then hit  Upload & Install.

Running the Wizard

Running the config wizard is the same as you would run any other wizard in Nagios XI. On the top bar, go to Configure > Configuration Wizards > ReChecked Agent.

From here, it should look pretty normal – especially if you’ve used wizards for other agents. We’ll just go over the main steps quickly to explain some small features you can take advantage of.

The first step requires the hostname or address of the agent and the token to authenticate. You can then select to not use https or to verify the SSL certificate. If you’re using ReChecked Manager, and you’ve installed your CA certificate onto your Nagios XI system (recommended) then you can use the verify SSL certificate checkbox to ensure your agent is validated during checks.

Note: You will need to enter a valid token so you can continue to the wizard. If not, you will receive an invalid token message.

That’s it, you can continue on like normal, select the services that you’d like to monitor just like the other agent config wizards and click next, then click finish to apply the configuration.

Update Configuration

If you want to update the configuration of a host that has been configured through the wizard, all you need to do is re-run the wizard and it will override the old configurations for the service checks created. Existing service checks are not removed. This method is a great way to update a host when you need to add more service checks.