ICINGA

Just one year ago this topic would be totally senseless. But different things happened with the Nagios project that it was just a question of time that a fork of Nagios would become reality.

I wrote some words about ICINGA, the Nagios fork, some time ago so I don’t want to repeat these words. But I want to add some background information and thoughts about the current things that happen around.

ICINGA – The benefits

Today it seems to me that the biggest innovation in the ICINGA project is the new webinterface. The webinterface makes use of different PHP and JavaScript frameworks which make the ICINGA GUI look very much like the marriage of the Web 2.0 and the Nagios world. That may be a real benefit for the users which are messed up with the old Nagios frontend.
I also see a benefit in the IDO, which is a fork of the NDO. The DB team of the ICINGA project works on fixing the biggest problems in that database output layer. They also work hard to make the usage of other databases like Oracle for the IDO possible.

A clear statement right from the beginning of ICINGA was not to break up with Nagios and leaving the Core compatible to the Nagios Core. That is a benefit not just for users which want to switch from Nagios to ICINGA it is also a benefit for the users which like to switch back. Switching back from ICINGA may sound strange from the current point of view but I think it may be a valid step in the future.

Should ICINGA really be independent?

Expect the Nagios and ICINGA Core don’t diverge and be nearly the same as they are today a re-merge could be an option. In this case I would take the step and reduce the ICINGA project to a Nagios webinterface with IDO as database backend. Reducing the ICINGA project which is a total Nagios fork today to a webinterface may sound strange since “yet another Nagios interface” does not sound as pretty as the own monitoring solution. From my point of view at the moment ICINGA is exactly that and nothing different.
I might be wrong cause I may see not all details of the current progress of the ICINGA project but thats what I see on the surface.

Nagios inactivity – The boost for ICINGA?

Other things may happen. Ethan Galstad is working on Nagios XI which will be a package which contains Nagios and several addons which are bundled to one package. That solution is an enterprise product so it will need to be paid. It may be that the Nagios core will benefit from this development but in the first instance there is less time to push the development of Nagios. So this may again result in inactivity of the Nagios developer team.
Having this inactivity Nagios will fall behind and there will be hope that there is more activity in the ICINGA Core project. But since the ICINGA project don’t want to break up with Nagios they may shrink from making more complex changes to the ICINGA Core which may result in some incompatibilties. This may result in total inactivity in the Nagios/ICINGA core – but it may also come totally different.

Shinken may shine brigther

Another approach came up several days ago which totally breaks up with Nagios: Shinken. The name Shinken sounds funny in German cause it sounds like the German word for ham: Schinken. Shinken is not another fork of Nagios. It is a totally reworked Nagios which is writtenin Python. It seems not to cause an performance issue. Apart from that, the project has some very interesting ideas which should be a big benefit for many Nagios installations. It seems that this could breath some additional fresh air into the world of Nagios.