Today I’d like to share a peculiar request I received during one of my recent Consulting Sessions. It’s just a highly specific Business Case, but it led me to wonder: what if I could find a way to generalize it? For now, that’s just a fantasy, but let me tell you the whole story so…
Read MoreWe all know that NetEye Upgrades are boring activities. Upgrading is important and useful because it brings you bug fixes and new features, but nonetheless it’s extremely expensive in terms of time. The most boring, tiring and lengthy part is when you restart NetEye Services; if you have the SIEM Module installed, the time spent…
Read MoreHi all, it’s been a while. I’m deeply sorry not to have sent out some blog posts lately, so now I’ll try to get back your trust by providing some useful information. Not only that, I’ll even go out of my comfort zone: instead of NetEye Core and monitoring strategies, I’ll talk about NetEye SIEM…
Read MoreI don’t really know the reason behind it, maybe because the typical scenario for notifications is just “send all events to this mailing list”, or as we say: set it and forget it. But we shouldn’t use this as an excuse: monitoring projects now consist of tens of thousands of objects (hosts plus services), and…
Read MoreAfter a first semester full of great opportunities (many colleagues like to say so), the wheels have started turning again for NetEye Extension Packs. Now, a big evolution is beginning: in the near future, NEP will encompass the entire NetEye infrastructure, meaning it will also configure and manage NetEye Satellites. To do so, the current…
Read MoreRules and standards are important. In a world based on collaboration, following a well defined behavior is key for avoiding errors based on some sort of misunderstanding. This is also true for the world of information technology: someone releases software that is incomplete by design, and then leaves the completion of it to the people…
Read MoreIn my previous blog post, we had a long discussion about how Icinga 2 manages its configuration in a Distributed Monitoring environment and how this can lead to unwanted disclosure of sensitive data, be it Secrets or Personal Data. The post ended with a set of recommendations/best practices that can be summarized in the statement…
Read MoreToday I want to talk about a topic that, although it is (and always has to be) in the spotlight, is seeing its popularity skyrocket even more in recent months: how to handle Secrets and Personal Data with NetEye. And I’m not talking about the right way to use Director’s Data Fields, how to hide…
Read MoreDuring my experience as a Würth Phoenix consultant, I’ve seen a pretty long list of broken Icinga 2 configurations. Several times, customers have begun a scheduled meeting with something like “Hey mister consultant, ever since the last deploy some objects have stopped being monitored, but I don’t see any errors!”. After some troubleshooting, everything always…
Read MoreOne of the strongest points of NetEye is the extremely high level of customization that you can reach. It allows any customer to set up their environment for an almost perfect fit to their own needs or desires. This is typically achieved with the work of our Consultant Team in understanding each customer’s needs, and…
Read More(Or, Who’s Monitoring the Monitor?) Everyone uses a monitoring system to understand what’s going on in their own environment and how it performs, but what about the monitoring system itself? The monitoring system also has its own tasks to perform, and obviously its own needs. Therefore even NetEye itself, while performing its duties, can be…
Read MoreWhenever a new monitoring project gets underway, a consultant discusses with the customer about almost any related topic: what needs to be monitored, how to monitor it, when to implement it, how to represent performance data, etc. Based on customer needs and desires, any sort of implementation strategy can be planned, but almost all of…
Read MoreNow, if you’ve followed my previous blogs about the x509 Module, you should have in place your x509 Certificates Asset with (or without) a minimum of cleanup routines. Now it’s time to look at what Icinga was made for: monitoring. Making an asset out of all of your SSL Certificates is only half the job….
Read MoreSome of my customers make use of short-expiration SSL Certificates signed by Let’s Encrypt or similar services. Our company also makes extensive use of this kind of certificate, and in the near future most (if not all) of your SSL Certificates will in any event become like them as their expiration date approaches. Maybe some…
Read MoreIn the last 10-or-so years, the complexity of enterprise IT applications has greatly increased: each of them can span vertically with multiple (and complex) layers, and each layer can serve applications other than the one that it’s part of. And, obviously, each layer spans across several servers to increase performance and availability. This inevitably leads…
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