How to monitor Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers?

This article describes how to use OP5 Monitor when monitoring Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS target servers. We provide some examples of basic monitoring, so that you can create even more solutions to your needs.

Watch the HOWTO video:

Download NRPE client from our download area and install it on your server. You can follow the installation manual even if it’s not written for the version of NRPE you run.

Adding the server and basic checks

Now are you ready to add your new RHEL server to OP5 Monitor.

1. Login to your OP5 Monitor and go to ‘Configure’ -> ‘Add New hosts’
2. Fill in all information about your server and  in the ‘Service Checks’ section, select ‘Add UNIX Client Services(NRPE)’. Then click on ‘Add services’.  This will scan your server for some basic checks.
   
    
3. In the next window you will get a list of services. Choose ‘Select all’ or individuals depending of your needs. Then click on ‘Finish’.
   
   • Network checks “Net”  example
   • Ping
   • SSH Server
   • HTTP Server
   • HTTPS Server
   • MySQL
   • NRPE agent checks example
   • Current users
   • System load
   • Disk usage
   • Total processes
   • Zombie Processes
   • Rsyslog Process
   • Swap usage

    

4. Press Finish to save your changes.
5. Done

Note: You may need to do minor changes to the services you add, depending on how your server is configured.

Additional checks

There are many checks and plugins from OP5 or Nagios Exchange community that could meet your needs. On op5.com you can find many resources like manuals, FAQ’s, webcasts and how-to’s on how to efficiently monitor a range of various hardware, services or applications in your Red Hat environment.

Inspiration

If you are in need of some inspiration we recommend you to browse our live demo-environment. The live demo reflects an real environment that is currently in production.