I am looking to pitch a comprehensive monitoring system to my manager, and have been considering OpenNMS. However, I have seen glowing praise of Nagios on here and I was hoping someone with experience could help illustrate the key differences for me. Do their focuses differ, or are they just competitors?
If some background helps, we run 6 on-site servers (File server, PBX, proxy, application, etc.) and two off-site servers (Website / development) along with a couple of switches and a router. The monitoring service we install will be running on a separate converted desktop running freeBSD. All of our stuff runs either Linux or a BSD derivative.
We are looking to spend no money to implement this (sigh).
Thanks for any help.
EDIT
It looks like openNMS offers a more comprehensive solution closer to what I want. However, because it is written in Java and the port is not in the official ports tree yet, it has been vetoed. Now begins my Nagios would be better than just MRTG campaign. Thanks for the fast responses.
-Chance
Best Answer
Wikipedia has a comparative table which helps a lot
I think the key differences are:
language: Nagios is written in C and OpenNMS in Java. It makes nagios a lot faster on older hardware.
Data collection: Nagios performs very little data collection. Other software (like cacti for example) will be required for a more extensive data collection system. OpenNMS includes it out of the box.
host and service discovery: Nagios has to be told what to monitor whereas OpenNMS has discovery features.