We've added a new check, "backup agent" to the "windows-hosted" servers.

This check tests to see if either the NetBackup OR Avamar agents is loaded.  If one is, then it return green, if neither are found or on any errors, a yellow alert is generated.

We'll be deploying this on other Windows machines shortly.

So, things are pretty wierd with 2/3 different DNS servers (NCSU,NCSU_LEGACY, and the Windows DCs) all offering "authoritative" results for the acsad.ncsu.edu DNS zone.

This document describes the on-call responses for NCSU OIT ISO servers.

It is organized from the telltales provided by Nagios, and leads to a small set of likely actions.

For each Nagios test (eg "ping" or "ldap" or "domain controller") a page  should be created under "Nagios Actions" detailing what steps should be performed on a host should Nagios indicate an issue on that host.

We had a couple of Windows hosts give the error "Could not get value" when checking uptime, and the extra mysterous "ERROR: Could not get data for 1 perhaps we don't collect data this far back?" while checking load.

Turns out the Windows performance counters had gotten sidewise, and need to be rebuilt.  With some help from the event log and http://eventid.net, we discovered

Checks that can be done on our Nagios Systems, including information about what tests ("commands") are available, and how to configure them.

This plugin alows you to monitor a Microsoft SQL Server by checking more than 20 metrics.

Nagios Server Side config

In the old Microsys repo there is a RHEL5 package for the Nagios server side of this plugin. Note that this plugin uses the perl module DBD::Sybase.

Install the package check_mssql_health and/or put it in the kickstart file for the Nagios server for automatic installation.

We've run into several machines that can't upgrade to the latest NSClient++ plugin (the software that implements NRPE, the Nagios Remote Plugin Executor "protocol") because the installed version doesn't appear in Add/Remove programs.

Bizzare!

To uninstall it manually, assuming it's located in "C:\Program Files\NC State University\NSClientPP" issue the folllowing commands from a cmd prompt:

"C:\Program Files\NC State University\NSClientPP\nsclient++.exe" /uninstall
rd /q "C:\Program Files\NC State University\NSClientPP"

The following table lists the attributes that are set on Active Directory user accounts in the "People" OU:

I'm excited about the chance to use SAR for our account creation and other management, but I've got a nagging fear that all of ISO may not be on the same page about what strategies we're using these days.

The CAB has requested  more information about the impact of turing off dynamic DNS.  I'm making a blog entry, so we can all chime in to flush out details.

The proposal is that we turn off dynamic DNS in the acsad.ncsu.edu DNS zone, which currently allows a Windows comptuer to publish it's name (as typed in by the person installing Windows) into DNS. After turning it off, DNS names would have to be entered into the QIP system.