I am using Nagios to monitor critical system services. I get alerts whenever a service stops running or system has gone down. In fact I get notices faster then my users can call to report a problem.
I am using Puppet to enforce system settings and configurations. I inherited a group of servers which were put together by many different System Administrators, so the configuration is different across the different systems. I am in the process of creating a single configuration based on function for each of the systems. The beauty of this is when I need to replace a system with a new one; I can install Puppet and know that everything is set up the way I want it to be. [ Note: RedHat Enterprise Linux version 6 will include a new tool called secstate which will use Puppet to control the system settings.]
I am using Monit to make sure that critical systems are always running. I could use inittab with a respawn but with Monit I get email alerts when there is a change in a service.
To bring this all together, I have Monit watching to make sure that Puppet and Nagios are running. I have Puppet watching Monit and Nagios, and I have Nagios sending out alerts when Monit or Puppet are not running.
I believe that these three complement each other; Nagios is good for monitoring and sending out alerts. Monit is great at making sure that services are always running and Puppet is good at making sure a system stays configured to a defined configuration.
I will try to post some examples of how I each service watching each other and how I wrap a critical system in each package.
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