Setting Up Nagios Plug-in for IBM i

The following matrix has been supported:

Before you start to use IBM i plug-in for Nagios, you need to make sure you have Nagios Core or Nagios XI installed already. You may want to visit the official web site of Nagios(www.nagios.org or www.nagios.com) to get more information. The IBM i plug-in for Nagios package also provides a document of how to install Nagios Core on your Linux system (ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/pase/nagios/beta_2.0/Nagios-Core-Install-and-Configure-Guidelines.txt). Please note that this support is to have IBM i system as monitored resource and you need to install Nagios on the non IBM i system such as Linux.

After your Nagios environment is ready to use, you can start to download IBM i plug-in via the below link:

ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/software/ibmi/products/pase/nagios/release/

You can follow below steps to install the IBM i plug-in for Nagios which you've downloaded from above link:


    1. Extract the Nagios for i plugin (The file nagios-plugin-for-IBM-i.tar.gz you've downloaded from above link) to the directory /usr/local/nagios/ by issuing the below command:
        # tar -xvf nagios-plugin-for-ibm-i.tar.gz /usr/local/nagios/

    2. Initialize the IBM i related commands, services and templates into the Nagios Core configuration files. This will add all the supported matrix for IBM i into the Nagios Core configuration files. For Naigos XI, you need to skip this step and leverage the Nagios XI's CCM(Core Config Manager) GUI to initialize the commands manually.
        # /bin/bash /usr/local/nagios/libexec/ibmi_init.sh

    3. You need to configure which IBM i system you want to monitor by issuing below command. It will prompt to ask you to provide IP/host name, user name and password of the monitored IBM i system.
        # /bin/bash /usr/local/nagios/libexec/host_config.sh -i host

    4. Some of the matrix needs SST user name and password of your IBM i system (Eg. Some disk related matrix). You need to provide such information by issuing the below command:
        # /bin/bash /usr/local/nagios/libexec/host_config.sh -i sst

          Please be noted that, in order to get this work, you need to make sure to set the password level of the Dedicated Service Tools (DST) to level 2 in SST of your monitored system. You could change this password level by: STRSST -> Option 8: Work with Service Tools Server Security and Devices -> Option 4: Change service tools password level. And after this change, you need to change the password of SST user again in order to get the new password level to take effect.

    5. Start the server of plugin for i
        # /bin/bash /usr/local/nagios/libexec/server_start.sh

    6. Restart Nagios server
        # service nagios restart

After you successfully install the IBM i plug-in for Nagios, you’ll be able to monitor the configured matrix via Nagios web page.

Some of the experienced customers want to do some testings after this plug-in is installed. You could find the detail commands list from the below link:

https://github.com/IBM/nagios-for-i/blob/master/README

In the section of COMMANDS, you could find all the commands for your testing. For example, the below information means that the command is used for checking IBM i CPU utilization. And you could use '/bin/bash $USER1$/check_ibmi_status.sh -M CPU -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -W $ARG1$ -C $ARG2$' to test this command via your Linux command line, where $HOSTADDRESS$ is the IP or host name of the system you want to monitor, and $ARG1$ and $ARG2$ are the criteria for warning and critical notifications.

command_name    check-ibmi-cpu-utilization
command_line    /bin/bash $USER1$/check_ibmi_status.sh -M CPU -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -W $ARG1$ -C $ARG2$