Icinga Reviews

We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in a multi-tenancy environment to monitor our customers' infrastructures.

It's supported by the community. 

We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. 

Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter.

The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated.

The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.

There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructure of customer environments should be improved.

Moreover, monitoring products today should include the ability to save, store, and compare device configurations. 

And, from a graphical perspective, Icinga is a bit old-fashioned. Some improvements could be made in that direction.

I have been using it for ten months. 

It is not 100% stable. There are some issues related to the cluster. We have different machines collecting data. We are currently investigating some issues related to the freezing of the infrastructure for a few seconds or minutes, during which we are unable to access the product. 

We have a redundant architecture with different machines collecting data, but we still haven't determined the cause of these issues.

It is scalable. We monitor dozens of customers and can add more simply by increasing resources.

We have a local provider who offers similar support. I don't have any experience with Icinga's support.

I have used LogicMonitor in the past. 

Compared to other product, the cost is a pro. 

In terms of cons, Icinga isn't plug and play. It's something you have to work on to make it work for your customers.

The initial setup is not so easy. I've worked with other monitoring products that are truly plug-and-play. 

Icinga is a bit more tricky to set up, and you need some knowledge of coding the product to make it work for your needs. Maybe it's because we are an MSP with specific needs, but it's not plug-and-play.

Deployment model:

The deployment model is both on the cloud and on-premises. We are not really happy with the cloud version. We have only one customer using it. 99.9% of our experience is with the on-premises solution.

Deployment strategy:

There isn't any specific deployment strategy. We have the main collection infrastructure in our data center and add customers using a satellite on their premises. We monitor our resources to ensure we can connect to all customers. It's essentially install, monitor, upgrade if needed, and so on.

Deployment time:

The deployment process takes one month, but this isn't dependent on the platform itself. It depends on our work with customers, and they might cause delays. If we were doing it for ourselves, it would take maybe two days.

Considering our number of customers, we did not need a lot of resources for deployment.

Some things are easy to maintain, but others could be improved. Importing and exporting backup data could be better. So, there is a medium level of difficulty.

It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on investment can be very high.

I would recommend Icinga to others for IT infrastructure monitoring. 

My advice is to allocate internal resources to manage the solution with adequate teams, and once that's done, adopt the product.

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We are a managed services provider, so we use Icinga to monitor our customers' Windows and Linux systems. Furthermore, we are performing basic checks on their applications (like Databases, Web servers, mail servers, or other applications). 

We use Icinga to measure the services our customers are available. In addition, we measure the KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to comply with the SLAs (Service Level Agreements).

Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. There are Ansible Collections available to manage services and hosts. Therefore, we were able to automate the installation of a new Icinga satellite for new customers.

To manage Hosts, Icinga provides the Icinga Director. This software talks to a CMDB in the background and imports new hosts or edit hosts that already exist.

Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do. 

I started using Icinga in 2015. 

I rate Icinga eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Icinga eight out of 10 for scalability. 

It's an open-source solution, so we don't have support. However, there is an excellent Icinga user community forum. People respond fast when you ask a question. 

The initial setup is easy, but it can be complex if you want to configure a high-availability cluster. A standard installation with everything on one host is straightforward. If you automate the installation, you can complete it in 10 minutes, but it takes about an hour to do it manually. 

Icinga is a free open-source solution, but you can pay for support. We don't need support because my colleague and I are skilled and experienced with the solution. We also have a consultant who knows more than us. We call him if there are any problems. 

If you need professional support, you can buy support from the vendor.

I rate Icinga seven out of 10. It's hard to monitor containers using Icinga, but the company will soon release a new version that can monitor containers. 

Our company used the tool to monitor the solutions and infrastructure in our environment which included it for our monitoring solutions, to monitor the infrastructure in all our environments such as networking, storage, and all the physical and virtual servers. We used it daily to check for both checking alerts and monitor monitoring the infrastructure, as well as configurations to ensure thresholds were correct.

I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually.

I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks.

Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.

I don’t use Icinga too much in my current role, but in my previous role I used it for a year and a half, and I have used Icinga within the past year.

I would rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten, it was really stable, we didn’t have problems with it either crashing or going down. It was lightweight. 

I would rate Icinga an eight out of ten, I think it is really scalable. You can just add or remove servers, and copy all the baselines to a new environment, so it scales up really well. At our company, there were about 30-40 people at our company were using Icinga.

We weighed Icinga against a SolarWinds license and found Icinga to be cheaper since it’s open source.

It is fairly easy to do the initial setup, but getting things exactly the way you want them could be finicky. Full-scale deployment was on-premises and took over a year since there were several different environments and we had to get contracts agreed, but the initial rollout only took a couple of months.

Deployment was done in-house.

The solution is cheap.

I would give the solution an overall score of seven out of ten. You should take your time to set it up perfectly because once it is set up initially, it is scalable and can be transferred to any environment.

I use the product for server and network device monitoring. A team of five people is managing the solution, and around 50 people are using the solution in the organization.

Pro-active monitoring and alerting helped us to decrease downtimes of services.

The apply rules feature saves a lot of time. For example, if you have 15 web servers, you can create one service and apply it to all 15 machines.

The user interface should be improved. Classic UI had more possibilities and detailed analytics. The newer one doesn’t have many functionalities. 

The clustering setup could be made easier.

I have been using Icinga 2 since it was released in 2014.

I rate the stability a nine out of ten. In the last few years, the solution broke down only twice and required a restart to fix it.

I rate the product’s scalability a seven out of ten. You can put work into satellite servers. However it is not a perfect cluster solution.

Nagios was used in the past. Icinga 2 with the applicable rules and other new features (such as time series database writer) made us switch.

The product has a learning curve. It is not the easiest software to work with. People can get overwhelmed at the beginning. With proper documentation, you can find your way quickly.

I take one day to deploy the solution. A person unfamiliar with the software might take three to four days to deploy and fully understand the configuration.

The solution is free to use. Commercial support is however available on icinga.com.

I am using the latest version of the product. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

I use Icinga in my company for monitoring and analysis to see what happens in my organization's servers, especially regarding CPU utilization, RAM space, and so on.

The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first.

I didn't have a problem with Icinga since I just use it for monitoring purposes. I haven't faced any issues with Icinga to date, and I think that it is a good solution. Right now, in my company, Icinga is a tool that falls under the testing phase.

The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users. In the future, I want the tool to provide notifications via mail, SMS, or some other medium once an action occurs in the product, especially when something major happens or when one of Icinga's services gets stopped.

I have been using Icinga for six months. I am a customer of the product.

Stability-wise, I haven't faced any problems with the solution. In general, I would give good feedback about Icinga.

Only one or two people from my team use Icinga.

Maybe in the future, I will have to contact Icinga's support team to discuss something, but to date, I haven't needed to contact Icinga's technical team.

I switched to Icinga from another monitoring tool called Webex, and I need to pick a solution that I will depend upon or rely on for my business.

In the past, my company used a tool called Webex for a while, along with another tool named Grafana. Mainly, the aforementioned products were used during the test phases in my company.

The product's initial setup phase is easy, especially when I use Linux OS. I haven't faced any problems with Icinga till now, especially when I use it with an open-source operating system.

The product's installation deployment phase

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

I wasn't involved with the finance side of the product. I just tested the product and gave feedback to the IT team in our company.

My company chose Icinga over other products as a part of a business decision. Right now, I am the decision-maker in my company. I need to consider many products in the market and give feedback to my IT manager, who decides which product will be used in our company.

I recommend Icinga to those who plan to use it. To be honest, till now, I haven't found any issues with Icinga. In my company, we consider Icinga to be a tool that will be used for a long time as it is a fine product. In the IT field, if a product functions and runs fine for a long time, you pay for it and continue to use it until you face big problems with the solution and you have no way to fix them.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

Icinga is used for monitoring infrastructure devices like network devices, firewalls, and lots of servers. Linux, Windows, and many services are running on them using plugins, which are being distributed together with Icinga. We have developed some software in-house, so we use that as well.

The solution is deployed on-premises. I'm using version 2.9.

There are about 40 people using this solution.

The installations we have done were pretty complete, but we're always looking for other opportunities to install Icinga in our customers' networks. We're actively promoting Icinga to our customers.

There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us.

Regarding the experience, we are pretty excited about Icinga. 

We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive. When they are responsive, they tell us that they don't know how to solve the problem. I understand that can happen when you're using an open source product and not paying for support, so you can't get an SLA.

I have used Icinga for 18 months.

It's rock stable. We haven't had any crashes.

I would rate the stability as 10 out of 10.

The scalability was one of the advantages that we were really excited about. Using the satellite node is a big help. It's a well-thought-out feature. The scalability is one of the greatest advantages of Icinga.

I would rate the scalability as eight out of ten.

Technical support is welcoming, and they are trying to help, but it's apparent that there aren't many resources available. There aren't enough people to solve problems, which is understandable. Perhaps if we paid for premium support, the situation might be better. Right now, we aren't thinking about buying any support. We feel that we are technically savvy enough to use the product with our own support people.

We previously used Nagios. Icinga has many advantages in comparison.

We switched because Nagios is pretty old and the user interface is substandard from today's point of view. The most important reason was that you have to configure Nagios using text configuration files, which our customers aren't able to do.

With Icinga Director, this task is much easier. The configuration is easier with Icinga, once you get the hang of it. The learning curve is pretty steep, but it's much better than Nagios.

Initial setup was overwhelming. It was complex, and the learning curve was steep. During the first couple of weeks, it was hard to configure the basics. After following some instructions, you end up with an empty solution. It's basically a lot of software that's doing nothing. For us, it was pretty difficult, despite that we've already had a lot of experience with other monitoring solutions.

It took eight to ten weeks to set up everything correctly in the first installation. We migrated a pretty large installation, so we had to convert lots of configurations from Nagios to Icinga.

Before deployment, there was some analysis of the current situation because the old monitoring solution was pretty customized. We quickly learned that we would have to write some additional software, which we started doing around the time that we installed the solution. It was pretty straightforward.

Two people were involved in deployment.

For the first couple of months, we had to provide some support and maintenance to customers, but we taught them how to use the product effectively. In about six months, they were able to use the product on their own with minimal support from us.

Compared to other solutions, I would rate the setup as eight out of ten. 

We were the integrator, so everything was done in-house.

We're using the free version of Icinga.

I would rate this solution as seven out of ten.

I would like to see documentation written in English. There are some books that are written in German, but I don't read German. I would advise people to be prepared to allocate a lot of time for research during the initial configuration. Once they've managed to configure everything, then the day-to-day operations are pretty easy. The initial installation and configuration are pretty complex and difficult.

We primarily use the solution in order to monitor our systems, including the resources. 

We use it for monitoring our network devices and the systems for the server.

The monitoring has been good. 

It's a very interesting tool in general. 

We have found the solution to be stable. 

The solution can scale if necessary.

The installation and configuration are very complex.

I'd like the product to add notification features into the offering.

It would be ideal if they could work to simplify the product a bit.

I've been using the solution for about two to three years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

While we can scale a bit, currently, our network is fixed. That said, in general, if we wanted to, we could scale the product. 

Currently, only the ICT guys or ICT admins use it. It is not used by the whole company.

We do have plans to increase usage in the future. 

I've never worked with technical support. I've never had discussions with them and, therefore, cannot say if they are either helpful or responsive. 

I also currently use Zabbix.

Zabbix is the newest version. That means it is currently in the development stage. For simplicity at this point, it looks like Zabbix is simpler. Also, Zabbix's dashboard is very easy to customize for resource management. For example, for CPU, memory, disk space for storage, and specs like that, you can customize everything.

Both solutions are free to use.

The solution is difficult to set up and the configuration is also rather complex. It's not an easy process. We find the solution very tedious and difficult to troubleshoot.

The solution is free to use. 

We're not a partner. We are just a customer and end-user. 

We use the desktop version of the solution. 

Overall, it is a good product. I would rate it nine out of ten overall. 

The main use case for Icinga is mostly for monitoring Linux servers and AIX servers. While Microsoft provides numerous tools for Windows, there are limited options for monitoring Linux directly and getting a dashboard to extend its capabilities. 

Therefore, Icinga serves as a tool for monitoring Linux and AIX-related health checks, different services and processes running in and out of the system, and overall system health. 

Additionally, it facilitates automated ticket incident generation and alerting, making it an indispensable tool for efficiently managing and maintaining our systems.

First of all, what I like about Icinga is the capacity and the extent to which we can use it. Although we have a library built-in where we can find hundreds and thousands of plugins for our use case, there are times when we are stuck on a block where we don't find any plugin that matches our taste or our requirements. In that case, it is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine.

One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself. I've worked with various infrastructure monitoring, APM monitoring, and network monitoring tools, and I find that Icinga's built-in dashboard feature is not as robust and visually appealing as those found in different APM tools. To achieve eye-catching and flashy graphs for management or summary purposes, we often need to rely on external tools like Kibana or Tableau and integrate them with Icinga. Improving the dashboard functionality within Icinga would be a significant advantage. However, it may not seem like a major concern, but having an internal solution for dashboards would be beneficial.

The second aspect I'd like to address is that Icinga is relatively new in the market. As a result, there are instances where we encounter situations that act as blockers, and we struggle to find a solution. In such cases, seeking help from professional experts or the support system becomes necessary, as comprehensive troubleshooting documentation is still lacking. While I believe this will improve over time as Icinga becomes more established, currently, it's not as robust as other tools in this regard.

So, these two areas could be improved. The first one, regarding dashboards, could be considered a crucial aspect to understand and enhance, while the second one is something that should naturally improve as Icinga gains more traction in the market.

I have been using Icinga for slightly more than two years since I have been using Icinga to provide professional services online and in-house.

Currently, I use the web version 2.11.

Generally, I haven't encountered any major issues because Icinga is an open-source software. In case a bug does exist, it is highly likely that the open-source community will provide remediation within a few weeks or so. Most problems get addressed promptly. Even if you encounter something that doesn't seem to work as expected, you have the option to modify the plugin or make changes to the code according to your specific needs in order to fix it. This flexibility contributes to its stability and robustness.

In terms of scalability, Icinga is indeed a very scalable product for us. We went through a phase of experimenting with five to seven different tools before finally adopting Icinga, and it has proven to be stable and reliable for our needs. We are quite happy with our decision to use Icinga.

In my company, almost everyone utilizes Icinga in some way or another. Even if they are not directly involved, all our in-house Linux servers are monitored using Icinga. Additionally, most of our major clients also utilize Icinga for their monitoring needs. Icinga has widespread adoption within our company.

There are around 75% of the total workforce in our organization is using Icinga. Therefore, around 200 people are using this solution.

Since Icinga is still relatively new, there were a few instances where I had to reach out to the Icinga support team. However, such cases were mainly related to very specific and unique topics that were relevant to our complex environment. In these situations, we needed to get in touch with them to find the best suitable approach to address our organization's specific needs.

Even their support team is still learning alongside the users. While they have been helpful, there are occasional instances where improvements could be made.

Neutral

One of the major reasons we chose Icinga was that it is an open-source tool, which allows us greater flexibility and customization. Unlike many other tools that come with predefined limitations, Icinga allows us to create our own customized codes and plugins to suit our specific needs. It acts as a one-stop solution for monitoring diverse environments without the need for multiple tools. 

Additionally, it has demonstrated its effectiveness in handling complex environments, which is another crucial factor that influenced our decision.

The initial setup is fairly easy. In fact, it is a lot easier than setting up your typical on-premises infrastructure. Additionally, the setup is highly adaptable to your organization's specific needs. 

If you prefer a simple setup, that's achievable. However, in complex environments with multiple clusters, hybrid models, and numerous endpoints, it can become a bit more intricate. Nonetheless, I would still categorize the setup as easy.

If you are using Icinga for personal use, you can install it without any additional fees. However, for organizational purposes, there are licensing considerations based on the number of users and the features required. So while the core Icinga software remains open-source, additional features and user support might have associated costs.

Using Icinga depends on the types of servers you are using. If you have a mix of VMs, Linux, RHEL, and Windows, I would say you can confidently proceed with Icinga. However, if your setup is specifically focused on Microsoft technologies, there might be other tools that could be more suitable. For complex environments with different data sources and the need for centralized monitoring and alerting, Icinga would be a strong recommendation.

I would rate Icinga an eight out of ten. It excels in its vast scope and ability to cater to diverse teams and complex environments while still being useful in simpler setups. The flexibility to integrate various components and extend its capabilities is a major advantage. However, there is room for improvement in terms of support response time and certain features, such as dashboards, which could make it even better.

We use Icinga for the user portal.

Icinga does the job and is fairly stable.

Icinga’s automation could be improved.

I have been using Icinga for three years.

I rate Icinga an eight out of ten for stability.

I rate Icinga a six out of ten for scalability.

Icinga's initial setup, which takes a few months, requires the assistance of technical people.

Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it. You need to maintain it and develop some probes while its deployment is manual. When you want to make modifications, such as adding new assets to be monitored or modifying the config file, it must be done manually without any automation or detection.

Using Icinga doesn't require a financial investment, but it does require an investment in people and time to support it. You'll need technical staff and some time to get it up and running. However, once established, Icinga can easily detect and deploy issues quickly. In a couple of days, you can establish a certain base before moving on to fine-tuning. If you don't have a budget for a monitoring tool, Icinga can be a good option, but it will require some time and effort to set up and maintain.

Icinga does the job and is fairly stable. We didn't have any issues with it. However, it requires human resources for maintenance and upkeep, which is a drawback compared to using SaaS solutions.

Overall, I rate Icinga a six out of ten.

The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything. The huge spectrum of plugins enables users to monitor different technologies. That is Icinga's advantage. It is also open source.

The user experience – in terms of the usability of the application – could be improved. Another important thing is to work on a better tactical overview. 

Icinga should also be updated with the latest cloud capabilities. I don't know whether it does the monitoring of containers, but that would definitely be something important to hone in on. 

In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI.

I have been using Icinga in multiple companies for at least seven years.

This is a stable product. We have seen no problems with stability. 

I have never had any problems with Icinga, so I will assume that it is scalable. 

I do not have any experience with Icinga's technical support. Our people have been able to use it without technical support so far. 

The initial setup was easy. 

We do not have any licensing costs. 

I do remember that we evaluated multiple products but I do not recall their names. 

I would recommend this product.