More and better Monitoring

The new release comes with numerous minor and major changes that enhance and improve the monitoring itself and/or significantly simplify the configuration of the monitoring. We have summarized the most important ones for you here.

With the rewritten HTTP check, the monitoring of web services has been completely revamped and strongly improved. Thanks to the new architecture, the plugin is not only much easier and therefore faster to configure, but it also provides helpful status information and more options for notifications.

The new check now allows you to configure different endpoints in your monitoring with just one rule. This significantly reduces the effort, especially in large environments. At the same time, the monitoring becomes more organized, as you can optionally integrate the monitoring of certificates with that of the corresponding website into one service.

The check not only provides you with details about why a service is CRIT or WARN but also gives you extensive information in the “Summary” of the service in the host overview. This includes:

• website error messages,
• delays in response time,
• use of an outdated TLS certificate,
• missing or incorrect content, or
• the expiration of the website certificate.

With the newly added certificate check, the monitoring of certificates is no longer limited to certificates provided over HTTPS. The new check can monitor any applications that provide a certificate via a TCP port, such as for LDAP or databases. This way, you can check the integrity of your certificates with Checkmk and react if necessary. 

The MS-SQL plugin has also undergone a complete overhaul. Thanks to the completely new architecture of the plugin, it is now not only significantly more performant but also offers much more possibilities for monitoring MS-SQL databases, such as:

• Automatic detection and monitoring of locally operated databases
• In-depth monitoring of remote databases, such as Microsoft Azure SQL
• Support for a wide range of special MS-SQL setups
• Individual handling of long-running queries
• Monitoring of any database that is compatible with MS-SQL queries
• Monitoring of MS-SQL databases on Windows and Linux (Beta)

Monitoring MS-SQL databases with Checkmk has never been as straightforward as it is now.

From now on, Checkmk features additional labels for operating systems, which can be used for customized views or for alerting. Checkmk automatically creates the labels according to the type, platform, name, and version of the respective operating system. For example, for Ubuntu, the labels would be:

• cmk/os_type:linux
• cmk/os_platform:ubuntu
• cmk/os_name:Ubuntu
• cmk/os_version:22.04

Furthermore, the labels can be combined, thus mapping even complex scenarios in your alerting.

From version 2.3 onwards, you can use the labels in AND/OR/NOT combinations. Previously, this was limited to pure AND combinations.

The visualization of Layer-2 connections between hosts and interfaces has been possible through MKP since Checkmk 2.2. With the new version, this feature has now become a part of Checkmk. You can specify which hosts Checkmk should use as the starting point for calculating the mesh. The necessary data comes via a JSON file, based on LLDP data from switches.

In the view, you then have the choice between three different display modes:

• Show only the connections between the hosts.
• Show only hosts and interfaces with problems.
• Show all hosts and interfaces.

With every mouse-hover over a connection, you also receive information about all involved elements. This gives you a starting point for further analysis in case of network issues.

Important: Checkmk only offers the visualization of the data. You must configure the data input yourself. 

With top list, a feature desired by the community is introduced in Checkmk. The dashlet summarizes the top ten hosts or services, providing you with a quick overview of an important aspect of your monitoring.

It offers a quick glance at the top consumers of a specific metric, such as CPU or memory usage, thus allowing you to assess the health of systems and prioritize any necessary actions.

Top list summarizes your biggest trouble spots or hosts with the most problems in your IT infrastructure. This allows you to take early action to keep your systems up and running. The dashlet gives you an overview of the most or least utilized systems. This helps you optimize your systems and environment according to your needs.

Additionally, the top list dashlet is an important part of the out-of-the-box dashboards for Linux and Windows servers from Checkmk.