Understanding the basics of monitoring

Before starting an infrastructure monitoring project, you need to understand the concepts behind it.

What are the concepts to know in Centreon?

First you need to understand the following elements of a Centreon platform (central server, remote server, poller).

How does monitoring work?

Then you need to understand what Centreon can monitor and what a resource is. Read this page to discover the Monitoring basics.

Scoping phase

This step is essential for defining the needs of your infrastructure and the criteria for setting up your monitoring solution. This section covers the main questions you need to ask yourself to frame your monitoring project properly.

How many assets do I need to monitor?

In other words, how big should your platform be? This will determine the number of resources you will monitor. To give you an idea, you can consider that a typical set up monitors 8 to 10 services per host. But it can be more in case of a distributed architecture.

What type of devices do I need to monitor?

You can monitor any device that has an IP address or an FQDN. It can be for instance, a Linux server, an internet router, a website, a 3D printer, an EC2 instance, a docker host, a cash register, etc. 

Which architecture should I choose?

• Standalone central server: if you are only monitoring a few resources, you will only need a central server.
• Distributed architecture: if you are monitoring a large number of resources, you should consider the distributed architecture option.

How do I size my platform?

Your platform will require a specific amount of disk space: read more about platform sizing.

Before installing Centreon

How do I check the requirements?

Check the installation prerequisites.

Are my browser and operating system compatible with Centreon?

Check the compatibility in this page.

Which protocol should I use?

You need to understand and select the protocols you will use for monitoring (such as SNMP, HTTP, etc.) according to your infrastructure, the monitored components and your corporate security policy.

The Tables of network flows page is useful for integrating the monitoring platform to your infrastructure. It describes the ports you must use depending on your protocol.

How do I download the Centreon package?

You can download Centreon packages from our official page.

Installing Centreon

See the installation procedures for a central server.

Configuring resources to monitor

Now that you have installed Centreon, you can define the scope and deployment of the resources to be monitored with your infrastructure administrator.