Icinga Releases Version 1.5

Online, August 24, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Icinga, the open source monitoring solution and Nagios fork, presented version 1.5 for download, kicking off a new release cycle. With a focus on extensibility and quality, the new release delivers an integrated reporting UI module amongst structural changes for simplified addon development.

A special highlight of version 1.5 is the integration of Icinga Reporting as a pre-installed Cronk in the new web interface. Based on the open source Jasper Reports, the module features automated report generation and distribution. The reporting package also includes 20 templates for commonly used reports such as: 'Top 10 problematic hosts or services'; 'Monitoring environment synopsis' and 'Groups, hosts or services availability'. With this new feature, Icinga offers a much sought after functionality in the monitoring community, as Marius Hein, Icinga Web and API Developer noted:

"Many system administrators run two separate systems for alerting and reporting. Before, Icinga was similar with reporting as a standalone component and a separate interface. We've now integrated it to be delivered with Icinga Web so users can keep track of their SLAs and capacity utilization right next to their usual host or service statuses."

Another area of focus in Icinga 1.5 was extensibility, which saw significant changes made to the Web and API architecture. To further facilitate addon and plugin development, the external Icinga API was replaced with an internal database layer, Doctrine, and merged into Icinga Web. For extensions developers, the change makes querying the database easier, while offering the flexibility of using different database back-ends such as Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL.

"However, we wanted to be sure that the new architecture would not affect average Icinga users. So we built in 'legacy layer' to maintain compatibility with addons designed for older Icinga versions", assured Jannis Mosshammer, Icinga Web & API Developer.

Alongside structural changes, a module loader was also added to the new web interface. This allows users to insert integration-ready addons, such as PNP4Nagios, Business Process Addon and LConf into Icinga Web, simply by adding them to a directory. Similar to plugins, users can load new modules via a script, removing the need for separate installations and Phing job imports.

In the Core and Classic Web, extensibility too was enhanced. XML output was added to enable data access direct from the CGIs for reporting addons. Further progress was made in IDOUtils, with optimized Oracle support and simplified administration via an update version schema.

Beyond improving the software, this version marks the beginning of a new release cycle and thereby improved development processes. In preparation for v1.5, the project released a Beta version one week earlier. The feature ready release gave users a chance to test new features in different environments and provide Icinga developers with feedback.

Icinga Co-Founder, Michael Lubben explained the motivation behind the new release cycle: "Quality and stability are key to the success of any software, and as we mature as an open source project we want to build in processes to ensure that every Icinga release is a reliable one. We test each new version internally before release, but to avoid issues in all possible environments, it is best to go to the community. After all, involving users is part of the beauty of open source."

For more information, the Icinga project is found at: www.icinga.org
[Images, logos and photos available. Reprints free of charge. Reference copy requested.]

Your contact at Icinga:
Amanda Mailer
Icinga Marketing and Community
amanda.mailer(at)icinga.org
Tel: +49 911 9288512
www.icinga.org

- NOTES TO THE EDITOR -
About Icinga
Icinga is an enterprise grade open source monitoring system which keeps watch over a network and any conceivable network resource, notifies the user of errors and recoveries, and generates performance data for reporting. Scalable and extensible, Icinga can monitor complex, large environments across dispersed locations. Icinga is a fork of Nagios and is backward compatible.

Though Icinga retains all the existing features of its predecessor, it builds on them to add many long awaited patches and features requested by the user community. This has culminated in standout features such as PostgreSQL and Oracle database support, improved extensibility through robust REST and plugin APIs as well as a user-friendly, dynamic web interface.

Icinga 1.5 Change Log

Core
• Tune icinga.cfg for performance, enable_environment_macros=0, enable_embedded_perl=0 by default
• Fix retain status file over an init script reload
• Add configure option to set log dir and cgi log dir and phpapi log dir
• After daemon stop in init script, retry and then issue a kill -9 on the daemon
• Do not overwrite config in make full install
• Add easy-to-use config examples and scripts for notifications

Classic Web
• Added option to suppress coloring of hosts/services in maintenance; added option to show partial host groups
• Default downtime duration is configurable in cgi.cfg
• Changed tac.cgi to distinct between active, passive and disabled properly
• Add log entries to json output of avail.cgi; add xml output to avail.cgi for direct source of jasper reports
• Add author to comment tool tips in status.cgi
• Authorization for * in cgi.cfg via contact groups (Stephen Gran)
• Add combined view of all unhandled hosts and services including the multiple command dropdowns for each (initial idea by Thruk)
• Add "link to this page" to all cgis; add export icons instead of "export to..." text on cgis supporting it (csv, json, xml, link)

IDOUtils
• Dump multiline mbufs as bulk inserts
• Remove host and service checks from default data_processing_options as they are not used by icinga-web
• Remove leftover socket file in init-script startup, e.g. from a system crash

Web & API
• Reporting integration with JasperServerr
• New integrated API
• New flexible module interfaces (carved in stone for the next years!!)
• Extendable grids, install safe
• Instance overview if the data is healthy

For more details and the full change log see:

Icinga Wiki
Icinga Web Reporting Integration: https://wiki.icinga.org/display/howtos/Icinga+Web+Reporting+Integration
Core Change Log: https://wiki.icinga.org/display/Dev/Icinga+Core+Changelog
Web Change Log: https://wiki.icinga.org/display/Dev/Icinga+Web+Changelog

Icinga Project Roadmap
https://dev.icinga.org/projects/icinga-development/roadmap

Icinga Blog
Icinga API: https://www.icinga.org/2011/08/05/farewell-icinga-api/

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