Nagios has always made it a priority to collaborate and innovate to meet the needs of an ever-changing IT market. In Fall of 2018, we caught wind of a story written by IT Jungle, Is Nagios The Future of Monitoring for IBM i?, and our team was instantly intrigued. We connected with Wang Yun, Business Architect for IBM i, and learned that his team was developing a new plugin to replace an AS/400 plugin to meet the needs of IBM i users.
Across the World
When we reached out and asked about the project, we learned that half of the IBM team on the Nagios project was based in Beijing but the other half was just 70 miles away from Nagios headquarters in St. Paul Minnesota. When Wang flew in to meet with his Minnesota counterparts, he made a special trip to stop by Nagios HQ. We later had the pleasure of meeting some of the other developers on the team. Tim Rowe, another Business Architect for IBM i, was also able to visit our office where he shared more about their journey and what led them to selecting Nagios as their preferred network monitoring solution for IBM i users.
Evolving Needs of IT Departments
Nagios was built to be the most customizable and scalable solution available, and as technology dramatically evolved, the need for customizable and scalable network monitoring became more apparent. Wang explains it best in the IBM i video. Network monitoring requirements have changed for organizations over the last decade. IBM i could easily provide data for IBM i, but sending the data out to a comprehensive network monitoring solution was the key to having full network awareness.
Enter Nagios
While in our office, our Nagios techs sat down with Wang and Tim to explain some of the best capabilities of Nagios XI to help IBM’s customers unlock the most potential of their network. With POWERUp! 2019 in Anaheim quickly approaching, Tim extended an invitation for us to join him in sharing about the new plugin and how IBM i users can achieve total visibility in their infrastructure now with IBM i data seamlessly importing into Nagios via the new plugin.
We sent our very own YouTube star Aaron to Anaheim, where he got to hear firsthand from IBM i users what their needs, joys, and frustrations were in their current monitoring journey and how a number of users were successfully deploying Nagios XI. We also learned that users were investing vast sums of their IT budget into other monitoring solutions that weren’t capable of scaling or seamlessly integrating into the needs of their company. Luckily, the Nagios approach to monitoring would easily resolve these pain points while saving them a significant amount of budget and time.
Future
IBM isn’t the only company integrating or recommending Nagios, we are preferred across every industry for thousands of customers. As fellow IT professionals, we love working with teams who want to put Nagios to the test so they can achieve peace of mind and everyone can go back to focusing on what they do best: innovating.
If you’re a IBM i user, visit www.nagios.com/ibmi to learn more about monitoring your Power system or reach out to us or your IBM contact with any questions about getting the most out of your deployments.
We’ll let the video above explain more about the journey to this plugin. Happy monitoring!