Monitoring Performance Counters in Nagios XI is possible using NCPA.

As part of our Server Management Services, we assist our customers with several Nagios queries on a daily basis.

Today, let us focus on NCPA to monitor servers.

Monitoring Performance Counters in Nagios

In this article, our Support Engineers describes how we can monitor Windows Performance Counters in Nagios XI.

To begin with, let us focus on the following performance counter:

“\Memory\Available MBytes”

This is referenced by NCPA in the following format:

‘windowscounters/Memory/Available%20MBytes’

The warning threshold will be set to 500 and critical 256.

We need to install NCPA to be able to monitor performance counters in Nagios XI.

We can download NCPA packages for our operating system (OS) from the URL:

https://www.nagios.org/ncpa/#downloads

To install NCPA On Windows we navigate to the location of the download and double-click the installer. Eventually, the Welcome screen will pop up.

Click Next to continue. Then, we can see the license agreement.

Here we click I Agree

Then, we can see the configuration screen for Passive checks.

The only setting we need is a Token. This is what Nagios server will use to authenticate with NCPA.

The Bind IP of 0.0.0.0 means that NCPA will listen on all Ipv4 addresses on the Windows machine. It uses the default port of 5693.

Click Next to proceed. Then, we can see the configuration screen for Passive checks.

We need to check the Send passive checks over the NRDP box to enable passive checks.

Similarly, we will also need to provide the following NRDP settings:

• URL

This is the URL on Nagios Host that accepts passive check results to submit.

• NRDP Token

This is the token that we use when passing NCPA passive checks to Nagios for NRDP to accept the check.

The URL and NRDP token in Nagios XI is configured via Admin > Check Transfers > Inbound Transfers.

• Hostname

The hostname that the passive checks belong to on the Nagios server.

Click Next to proceed.

Continuing with Passive checks, we will present the default passive service checks that will execute and send to the Nagios server. However, we can change it, as per our requirements.

Then, click Next to proceed.

Now, we will have the install location. Change the destination folder as per requirement.

Then click the Install button to install NCPA. Then, wait for the installation and configuration of NCPA.

Once done,  click Finish

We will also need to monitor the host by Nagios XI. For example, here the host is win7-01 and the host has the token uumrdrd3p704.

Create the Service

• Click the Configure menu
• Then click Core Configuration Manager
• In the left pane under Monitoring click Services
• Then, click the Add New button
• Populate the fields on each tab as follows:

Common Settings:

Config Name: win7-01
Description Memory: Available
Manage Hosts button: Select win7-01
Manage Templates button: Select xiwizard_ncpa_service
Check command: check_xi_ncpa_agent
$ARG1$: -t ‘uumrdrd3p704’ -P 5693 -M ‘windowscounters/Memory/Available%20MBytes’ -w 500: -c 256:

Check Settings:

Check interval: 5
Retry interval: 1
Max check attempts: 5
Check period: xi_timeperiod_24x7

Alert Settings:

Complete any notification options as required.

• Click Save
• Then, click Apply Configuration
• Now, click the magnifying glass on the right of the menu bar.
• Search for Memory Available
• In the search result, click on the new service Memory Available
• We can now see something like the following:
  

[Couldn’t configure NCPA? We’d be happy to assist!]

Conclusion

To conclude, we saw that monitoring Performance Counters in Nagios XI is possible using NCPA. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers configure Nagios XI to monitor performance counters.