First steps with Icinga Director

Icinga Director
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Hi all, i´ve installed an Icinga2 Server with the Director module and i want to know if someone have any information to use this module and begin to configure several host with Host Templates, Service Templates and monitor customice service, etc.

Thanks in advance for all and king regards.

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Hi,

assuming you have read the docs already, I would start simple and learn about the tool and its possibilities. There’s also more infos and webinars linked here: Director 101

How I am usually starting with a fresh Director setup:

  • Create a host template and add a check_command
  • Create a service template, e.g. ping-checks
  • Navigate into the CheckCommand sections and define a data field for ping imported from the ITL
  • Add your own custom data field server_type as String
  • Create a host object and enable the data field server_type, import the pre-defined host template and set server_type to prod
  • Create a service, import from the template, name it ping4 and set ping4 as check_command. Add the previously defined data field as selectable field and add a certain value to it (a threshold).
  • Assign the service based on the server_type equal to prod

Once that works, inspect how config rendering and deployments work. Play around with more data fields, and get to know further capabilities with service sets for example. Define a basic template structure where your hosts and service can be inherited from, and data lists and fields prepared for later usage.

Peek into automation and import sources from external data before going to production.

Once you’ve mastered the simple monitoring tasks, add agents and distributed setups with zones and endpoints to play.

Cheers,
Michael

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Thank you so much for the information. I’ll work on it and inform you about any doubts that may arise

Thank you again!!!

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One more: Your use of Director will really benefit if you follow this sequence:

  • Play around with it. Set up a testing environment, create some templates and monitor some stuff
  • Play more. Change your setup and try different approaches
  • Think a lot about your setup. What sorts of Hosts do you want to monitor? What are their similarities and what are their differences
  • Setup a template tree that fits to your needs
  • Finally implement your production setup

Keep in mind that Director follows different rules than Icinga. You can rebuild a lot of your Icinga configuration but you’ll make better use of Director if you use it a bit differently. First of all, assign templates to hosts and assign services to templates. Don’t use apply rules unless you really need to.

And think of Director of a great way to delegate tasks to admins who don’t know anything about Director (you build templates, rules and the basics, admins just add their hosts using your templates) or of a great synchronisation tool. It’s not so much an easy-to-use GUI for Icinga 2.

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