When Shinken is installed, the discovery script shinken-discovery can help you start your new monitoring tool and integrate a large number of hosts. This does not not replace extracting data from an authoritative CMDB/IT reference for provisioning known hosts. It can be used to supplement the data from the authoritative references.

At this time, two “discovery” modules are available :

• Network based discoverye using nmap
• VMware based discovery, using the check_esx3.pl script communicating with a vcenter installation.

It is suggested to execute both discovery modules in one pass, because one module can use data from the other.

The network discovery scans your network and sets up a basic monitoring configuration for all your hosts and network services. It uses the nmap tool.

Ubuntu :

sudo apt-get install nmap

RedHat/Centos :

yum install nmap

Windows : it's not managed for now, but is planned for a future release.

You need to setup vcenter access in the file /etc/shinken/resource.cfg : For nmap :

$NMAPTARGETS$=localhost www.google.fr 192.168.0.1-254

This will scan the localhost, one of the numerous google server and your lan. Change it with your own lan values of course!

You will need the check_esx3.pl script. You can get it at http://www.op5.org/community/plugin-inventory/op5-projects/op5-plugins and install it in your standard plugin directory (should be /var/lib/plugins/nagios by default).

You need to setup vcenter acces in the file /etc/shinken/resource.cfg : Enter your server and credential (can be an account domain)

$VCENTER$=vcenter.mydomain.com
$VCENTERLOGIN$=someuser
$VCENTERPASSWORD$=somepassowrd

Now, you are ready to run the discovery tool :

This call will create hosts and services for nmap and vmware (vsphere) script in the /etc/shinken/object/discovery directory.

sudo shinken-discovery -o /etc/shinken/objects/discovery -r nmap,vsphere

If you are lazy and did not want to edit the resource file, you can set macros with the -m arguments :

sudo shinken-discovery -o /etc/shinken/objects/discovery -r nmap -m "NMAPTARGETS=192.168.0.1-254 localhost 192.168.0.1-254"

You can set several macros, just put them on the same -m argument, separated by a comma (,).

Once the scan is completed, you can restart Shinken and enjoy your new hosts and services :

sudo /etc/init.d/shinken restart

If you want to know more about the discovery process, like how to create a discovery script or define creation rules, consult the advanced discovery documentation.