Advice for Beginners

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See Also: Quickstart Installation Guide

Need Help Configuring Nagios?

Our tech support team is happy to help you with any questions you might have. Contact us on our online support forum at http://support.nagios.com/forum

Nagios XI Makes Monitoring Easier:

Nagios XI is the easy-to-use, pro edition of Nagios that features:

Web-Based Configuration provides advanced configuration features
Monitoring Wizards make it easy to monitor new devices, applications, and services
Customizable Dashboards allow for per-user customization
Integrated Performance Graphs provide trending and capacity planning information
Advanced Reports provide data export capabilities
Data Visualizations enable powerful analysis of patterns and problems
Nagios Core Import functionality makes it easy to migrate from Nagios Core
...and many others

Download a free 60-day trial or give the online demo a spin.

Congratulations on choosing Nagios! Nagios is quite powerful and flexible, but it can take a lot of work to get it configured just the way you'd like. Once you become familiar with how it works and what it can do for you, you'll never want to be without it. :-) Here are some important things to keep in mind for first-time Nagios users:

Relax - it's going to take some time. Don't expect to be able to get things working exactly the way you want them right off the bat. it's not that easy. Setting up Nagios can involve a bit of work - partly because of the options that Nagios offers, partly because you need to know what to monitor on your network (and how best to do it).
Use the quickstart instructions. The quickstart installation guide is designed to get most new users up and running with a basic Nagios setup fairly quickly. Within 20 minutes you can have Nagios installed and monitoring your local system. Once that's complete, you can move on to learning how to configure Nagios to do more.
Read the documentation. Nagios can be tricky to configure when you've got a good grasp of what's going on, and nearly impossible if you don't. Make sure you read the documentation (particularly the sections on "Configuring Nagios" and "The Basics"). Save the advanced topics for when you've got a good understanding of the basics.
Let us help you! Members of the Nagios community and our technical support staff are happy to help you with your Nagios install. Get the help you need by visiting the Nagios Support Forum at http://support.nagios.com/forum/.
Get trained. Nagios Enterprises offers official self-paces and live, instructor-led training for Nagios. Learn more by visiting http://www.nagios.com/services/training/