Is Icinga completely free?

Icinga 2
1

Hello everyone,

We are currently exploring the possibility of using Icinga. However, I have some questions regarding its pricing and licensing.

I understand that repositories for RHEL require a paid subscription. I am planning to install Icinga on an Ubuntu server. If I do not require support and consulting, can I use Icinga for free indefinitely?
I’m curious if a subscription is mandatory for users who use operate systems other than RHEL SLES exc.

Thank you for your assistance.

2

Hello everyone,

We are currently exploring the possibility of using Icinga. However, I have
some questions regarding its pricing and licensing.

I understand that repositories for RHEL require a paid subscription. I am
planning to install Icinga on an Ubuntu server. If I do not require
support and consulting, can I use Icinga for free indefinitely?

Yes.

I’m curious if a subscription is mandatory for users who use operate systems
other than RHEL SLES exc.

A subscription is only required for “Enterprise” distributions (ie: those
which themselves charge a subscription fee).

Icinga for community distros such as Debian and its derivatives (including of
course Ubuntu) remains free of charge.

Remember also that Icinga is published under an Open Source licence, which
means you can always build it from source code for yourself for any platform
you like.

Antony.

1 Like
3

This is important! You can compile Icinga2 yourself and use it also on enterprise distributions. Just the support and the repository with the ready made packages isn’t gratis but Icinga2 is still beholden to the freedom granted by it’s licence. So it’s free as in freedom is a yes but free as in money is a “it depends” :wink:

4

Hi ,

Thanks for help guys. In order to be more spesific.

We are using Oracle Linux in our servers.If I install Icinga master on an ubuntu server.
Can I monitor my oracle linux servers for free ? or still do I need to pay for the repository ?

Thanks again !

5

You have two choices here:

  1. Install Icinga (there is no difference between ‘master’, ‘satellite’ and
    ‘agent’ - you install the same thing on all) on your Oracle machines so that
    they can perform local service checks

  2. Install the service check plugins on your Oracle machines and then run the
    check commands over SSH from your Ubuntu Master. This means you do not need
    the paid-for repository; the service check plugins are not included in this.

Option 1 is more efficient and reduces the load on the Master, but if you don’t
have too many Agents option 2 may be acceptable for you.

As already stated, for option 1 you can either pay for the supported build or
you can compile yourself from source, which is always free.

Antony.

2 Likes
6

If you want to install the icinga2 agent on the Oracle server via the official repository, then you need to pay the fee. If you only use checks that use SSH, SNMP or the like to access information from a Icinga2 server on the Oracle server then you don’t need to pay for access to the repository.

This works well until your Icinga2 master server can’t handle the load any more. Then you can add satellites and/or install the agent to check locally and only send the results to the master. I think at that size it would make sense to pay for a support contract, independently of the icinga2 packages for enterprise Linux distributions :wink:

2 Likes
7

I appreciate both of you guys .
Thanks for the answers .