# About

## What is NagVis?

NagVis is a visualization addon for the well known network management system Nagios® (and Icinga which is a fork of Nagios).

NagVis can be used to visualize Nagios data, e.g. to display IT processes like a mail system or a network infrastructure. Using data supplied by a backend it will update objects placed on maps in certain intervals to reflect the current state. These maps allow to arrange the objects to display them in different layouts:

- physical (e.g. all hosts in a rack/room/department)
- logical (e.g. all application servers)
- geographical (e.g. all hosts in a country)
- business processes (e.g. all hosts/services involved in a process)

## How does NagVis work?

In general NagVis is a presentation tool for the information which is gathered by Nagios and transferred using backends.

The supported backends are:

- mklivestatus (default since NagVis 1.5)
- NDOUtils / IDOUtils (requires MySQL)
- merlin (requires MySQL)

The backend gets the information from the Nagios process (mklivestatus) or from a database (NDOUtils/IDOUtils, merlin).

You can place all objects from Nagios (Host, Services, Hostgroups, Servicegroups) on so called maps. Each map can be configured through its own configuration file. You can edit the configuration files directly by using your favourite text editor or the web configuration mechanisms. Furthermore you can add some special NagVis objects to the maps. These objects are shapes, textboxes and reference objects for other maps.

Each of the objects on your maps can be configured to fit your needs. For example there are links to the Nagios frontend on each object which represents a Nagios object. You can easily customize these links.
There is a hover menu which is enabled by default. The hover menu displays detailed information for each object. Hover menus can easily be modified by changing the templates for them. You can also disable the hover menu.
By default the state of the objects is displayed using icons on the map. You can change these icons by adding iconsets from the NagVis homepage or create your own. The state of the objects can also be displayed as lines or as gadgets.

Apart from the normal maps there is an automap. The objects are places automatically starting from the root host you specified. Depending on the value of the directice "filter_by_state" it will show all objects or only the ones in a non-OK state (including the way from the root object).
To be able to use the automap you have to define the parents directives in your Nagios host objects.
Starting with NagVis 1.5 you can define more than one automap.

## Licensing

NagVis is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

NagVis is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.