The purpose of supervision software is to monitor the infrastructure, both hardware and software, in order to check the health and operation of tools and services. It enables regular tests to be carried out to determine whether everything is working properly.
Here are the four possible states of a test:
Unknown The test was unsuccessful, which may be due to a supervision problem, so it could be either ‘ok’ or ‘critical’.
OK : Everything is working properly.
Warning : There is a minor problem. The service is still working, but needs attention.
Review The service is not working or is about to stop working (requires urgent intervention).
Practical example
Let's take the example of a web server. A probe is installed to test a web request, checking whether the server responds correctly every five minutes. In this way, monitoring is continuous to ensure that everything is running smoothly.
Beyond that, Centreon also provides hardware information, such as the status of a machine. We install a driver on a machine, for example a printer, which will be able to give us the state of the machine or the ink level, and Centreon will retrieve and send back this information. For each piece of information that we find relevant, we can install a probe that will interrogate it at regular intervals. There's really no limit to what can be retrieved, as long as the information or data can be retrieved, all you have to do is create a probe (pretty simple, isn't it?).
a probe = a small script that can fetch specific information.
Centreon plays a crucial role in supervision. All production needs to be continuously tested to guarantee its accessibility. The aim is to detect problems before customers become aware of them.
Is it only for companies ?
No, even when hosting data at home, it's important to make sure that everything works properly. For example, an individual may want to monitor a home application. They can be shown how to use Centreon through training, skills transfer and support. However, supervision is generally carried out at the hosting company, by linking the customer's information to their system. This depends on the degree of autonomy desired by the user.
Centreon doesn't just report information, it also has metrics that allow you to track changes over time. For example, if an alert indicates that a memory is being used at 95%, then we can understand where the increase is coming from, whether it has increased over time or whether in one day it has increased suddenly or for two months we've been flirting with the limit and now we've just [and suddenly we've just] exceeded it, we can see where the problem is coming from and solve it easily. This is a significant advantage over other solutions, thanks to the ability to create graphs that can be consulted to diagnose and find solutions.
Why choose Centreon?
Centreon is open source software, aligned with the values of teïcée sovereignty. It is recognised, approved and dynamic in its developments, making it a long-term solution. What's more, it's easy to install and is backed by a French company! All these points make it a very wise choice.
Good to know: Dans le monde du logiciel libre, Nagios est depuis longtemps une solution de référence. De nombreux forks et projets complémentaires ont émergé pour améliorer Nagios. Centreon a initialement été un outil complémentaire ajoutant une interface web plus conviviale et permettant de gérer les fichiers de configuration. Il est maintenant un projet indépendant et concurrent de Nagios.