Nagios is a popular open source monitoring tool that helps you keep tabs on the status of hosts and services on your network. If all of your services are running fine, you are probably satisfied with the default display you are using now. However, if you have a large network, or if your network is prone to occasional, unexpected problems, you might be happier with a visual representation. A graphical rendering of your network offers a quick indication of where the problems in your network might be. In addition, managers often like pretty pictures and the convenience of a visual overview.

NagVis [1] is a helpful Nagios add-on that lets you visualize the systems on your network. The idea is that you create your own background images (called maps) and then embed icons on the images representing hosts and services on your network. Each icon displays the current status of the host or service it represents.

This simple yet flexible design lets you deploy NagVis in a number of useful ways. For example, you could create a geographical map of your server room and embed icons at the physical locations of the various servers. A map could also serve as a schematic view of a single-server computer with icons representing services running on the server.

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