Oraone

A tool that is often used to monitor servers and services is Nagios. With Nagios both out-of-the-box services and custom services can be monitored. When a server or service enters a fault-situation, Nagios can send an alert to an administrator.

For critical services it is of great importance that alerts are delivered as soon as possible to administrators. Simply letting Nagios send an email is not the best thing to do, better solutions can be created with beepers and sms-services. An alternative is to make use of the Apple iPhone in combination with Apple's new push-service: MobileMe.

At OraOne we got the opportunity to test the combination of Nagios and iPhone, this is the procedure we used:

1. A problem is created on a server that is monitored by Nagios, Nagios is triggered to send an email to the MobileMe email-account
2. One minute after the problem started the email is pushed by the MobileMe-server to the iPhone, the iPhone notifies the administrator with a sound- and vibration-signal.
3. In the main menu of the iPhone the administrator can see why the iPhone gave a signal: new mail has arrived:
   
   
    
4. In the mail-client the Nagios alert-email can be viewed:
   
   
   
   
5. The iPhone web-browser (Safari) makes it possible to check the Nagios web-interface on the iPhone:
   
   
   
   
6. By clicking on the red-marked link, details about the alert become visible immediately:
   
   
   
   
7. The above picture explains why the alert was send out: 10 users where logged in simultaniously on a UNIX-server. Now the administrator can acces the server with a SSH-client on the iPhone, and solve the problem. Because the server cannot be reached over the internet, first a VPN-connection has te be established on the iPhone to the corporate LAN. The iPhone supports L2TP, PPTP and IPSec VPN. After configuring it's only a matter of flipping a switch:
   
      
    
8. Next the SSH-client can be started to log-in on the server:
   
     
   
   
9. The cause of the alert is found (>10 online users) and on the iPhone the administrator can correct the issue.

After testing this solution within OraOne for a few days, we have to conclude that the iPhone is not only a pretty consumer-gadget, but certainly also provides possibilities for professional IT-solutions.

Hans van Hoogstraten
hans@oraone.nl