Everything at a Glance: Monitoring & Health-Check

The demands on modern IT infrastructures are increasing, and with them, the importance of reliable monitoring tools. With opsi 4.3, the Open Source client management solution takes a big step forward: An integrated Health-Check and monitoring integration provide administrators with a centralized, clear view of the state of their systems. Thanks to the opsi monitoring integration, you can effortlessly keep track of the status of your clients.

Easy System Diagnosis: The opsi Health-Check

Imagine being able to check the status of your entire opsi environment with a single click – and doing so in a way that avoids unnecessary false alarms caused by planned maintenance or test clients. This is exactly what the new Health-Check in opsi 4.3 enables: A powerful tool for comprehensive system diagnosis, combined with downtime management for clients and depots.

What is checked?

• The status and versions of key components
• Connectivity to the database
• Package availability and updates on depots
• The activity status of clients
• Error messages during installations

A complete list of all available checks can be obtained with the command opsiconfd health-check --list. This also shows whether a check is enabled or disabled.

The check can be triggered automatically or manually in various ways – via opsi-configed, the opsi-WebGUI, the command line, or flexibly via API call.

Individual checks can be selectively enabled or skipped using command line parameters, environment variables, or configuration files. The output format is also customizable. For example, the output can be provided as JSON or adapted for monitoring tools like Checkmk.

Especially practical: The results of individual checks are cached in Redis in the background and remain available for 24 hours. If current results are needed, the cache can be cleared specifically, e.g., via the command line with the parameter --clear-cache.

Downtime for Clients or Depots

During rollouts, nightly updates, or planned reboots, you naturally don’t want your monitoring to constantly trigger alarms. That’s why opsi now supports downtimes for certain health checks related to clients or depots.

The following checks support downtime:

• OPSI failed Clients
  Checks whether product installations on clients have failed.

• OPSI active Clients
  Clients that have not been seen for more than 30 days.

• Products on Depots
  Checks whether opsi packages on depots are up-to-date.

• Products on Clients
  Reports if a client has an older version of a product installed than is available on the depot.

In the client details section, you will find the Health-Check active section with a gear icon. Here, you can conveniently set the downtime parameters.

The following parameters can be adjusted:

Integration into Monitoring Systems (Checkmk / Nagios / Icinga / Zabbix)

Want to keep the Health-Check regularly and centrally in view? No problem – opsi offers direct integration with monitoring systems like Checkmk and Nagios. For both, a suitable script is provided that can be easily integrated as a local check.

Here is an example for Checkmk:

cp /usr/lib/opsiconfd/opsi_checkmk /usr/lib/check_mk_agent/local/7200/opsi_check
chmod +x /usr/lib/check_mk_agent/local/7200/opsi_check

This ensures the check is automatically performed every 2 hours, and the results are transferred to your monitoring system. The time interval can, of course, be adjusted individually.

To the official Checkmk documentation

The Health-Check itself is part of the free opsi core and is available to all users. If you are interested in extended monitoring integration, such as deeper embedding, we are happy to provide an offer.

Request an offer now

Outlook: Dashboard

With the new Health-Check and integration into monitoring systems, opsi already lays the foundation for strong system reporting. But there’s more to come: We are working on expanding opsi with modern dashboard functions that enable more intuitive visualization and interactive evaluation.

Stay tuned! In one of the next blog posts, the current state of the dashboard will be presented in more detail. Don’t want to miss anything? Then subscribe to our newsletter.

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