Plugin Packs
A Plugin Pack is a downloadable package containing a set of configuration templates that make it fast and easy to monitor your IT infrastructure.
The templates (commands, hosts and services templates) configure a monitoring plugin that actually executes the monitoring commands on a Centreon Poller. Plugins are not packaged with Plugin Packs and must be installed separately: this is explained in the monitoring procedure that comes with each Plugin Pack. Some Plugin Packs also require a Connector (e.g. AS400, VMWare) or an agent (e.g. Windows NRPE).
For each type of equipment, the templates determine which indicators will be monitored and set default warning and critical thresholds. These may be fine-tuned later-on.
Some Plugin Packs also contain discovery rules. Discovery rules instruct the Centreon discovery engine to fetch additional assets to be monitored. Host discovery rules will look for new hosts (e.g. EC2 assets on AWS, virtua machines on VMware) while Service discovery rules will look for new services (e.g. Disk Volumes or Ethernet Interfaces on a server).
Plugin Packs on your Centreon platform are managed by the Plugin Pack Manager user interface, described in this chapter.
To get an up-to-date list of all Plugin Packs with their respective monitoring procedure, please refer to the Pugin Packs chapter in this documentation.
Prerequisites
Centreon Plugin Pack Manager
The Centreon Plugin Pack Manager module, included natively in Centreon, can install, update or remove the Plugin Packs. We recommended that you keep this module regularly updated.
To update Centreon Plugin Pack Manager run the following command:
yum update centreon-pp-manager
The centreon-pp-manager module is installed by default along with the Centreon software.
License
A license is required to access the full Plugin Packs catalog. If your Centreon platform is linked to an online subscription your license will be directly downloaded to your server. Otherwise, contact the Centreon support team to get and install your license key.
Access to Plugin Packs
If your Centreon platform is linked to an online subscription you can download Plugin Packs from the Plugin Pack Manager user interface. Otherwise, you have to install a dedicated RPM repository, you can find it on the support portal.
Overview
The Centreon Plugin Packs are a set of standardized templates that are preconfigured for rapid deployment of monitoring in your IT infrastructure.
These templates (commands, hosts and services templates) are attached to the monitoring plugins, which can either be:
- existing community plugins selected and validated by Centreon as being fully functional and optimized, or
- plugins written by Centreon that are distributed as free software under RPM or available on Centreon Plugins project
The added value of Plugin Packs is the pre-configuration of monitoring in the Centreon software. During installation, the Packs import pre-configured objects into the Centreon software such as commands, host templates, service templates and host or service discovery rules.
After you install the Plugin Packs, the next step is to install the monitoring plugins used by the Plugin Pack commands. Refer to the documentation in the pack in case any features have to be configured or activated, and then create the required hosts and services based on these models.
Inside a Plugin Pack
A Plugin Pack contains:
- a description of the pack contents and the indicators that can be monitored.
- Centreon preset objects (commands, host templates, service templates) packaged and validated.
- documentation for a simple and quick deployment. It is available once the pack is installed.
Connectors
The Centreon Plugin Packs subscription gives you access to specific connectors:
| Connector | Description |
|---|---|
| NRPE | NRPE server, packaged by Centreon, with patches required to comply with Plugins Packs |
| NSClient++ | NSClient++, packaged by Centreon, ready to use with embedded Centreon Plugins |
| VMWare | Perl daemon using VMware SDK to monitor VMware platforms |
| AS400 | Java-based connector allowing you to execute checks on an AS400 |
Plugin Packs management
Installation
Installation is a 3-step process:
- Access to the Plugin Packs catalog
- Pack installtion
- Plugin installation
Access to Plugin Packs catalog
- online platform: if your platform is linked to an online subscription
- offline otherwise
If you benefit from an online subscription, you must first authenticate your Centreon platform.
Go to the Administration > Extension > Subscription menu and log in with your
Centreon username to authenticate your Centreon platform.
Click on install to access the catalog:
You can now proceed to the pack installation.
From your Centreon Central server, install or update the Plugin Packs catalog:
yum install centreon-pack-*
or:
yum update centreon-pack-*
Pack installation
You now have access to the Plugin Packs catalog:
To install a Plugin Pack, hover over the icon with the mouse and click on the +
You can also click on the Plugin Pack to display more details and click on the +
Once the Plugin Pack is installed, a green outline and an arrow icon will indicate successful installation.
| Before installation | After installation |
|---|---|
 |  |
Please read the associated monitoring procedure of each installed pack to understand the content of the pack as well as the prerequisites necessary for its operation, by clicking on the
?icon of each pack or by going to the Integration/Plugin Packs chapter
Managing dependencies
During installation, some objects in the pack may not be installed. These objects are often additional configuration objects and are not required to deploy the configuration templates provided by the pack.
Most of the time, it is necessary to update your Centreon platform and then reinstall your pack.
In the following example, the "autodiscover" object is a discovery rule for the "Centreon Auto Discovery" module, but this one is only available for Centreon in 18.10.x version:
Plugin installation
Next, install the required plugins as indicated in the steps above.
Run the following command for each Centreon poller that will execute the plugins:
yum install centreon-plugin-$PLUGIN-PACK$
Where $PLUGIN-PACK$ is the name displayed by your YUM search.
Update
Plugin Pack update
If an arrow appears on a Plugin Pack it means that an update is available.
Hover over the Plugin Pack and click on the arrow,
or click on the Plugin Pack to display more details, then click on the arrow.
Confirm the update.
Your Plugin Pack is up to date.
Plugin updates
To update the plugins, execute the following command on all pollers.
Update the plugins on all pollers:
yum update centreon-plugins\*
Restart the Centreon Engine on all pollers.
Then check that you do not have new errors while executing new plugins.
It is your choice whether to install all the plugins on every poller, or just the required plugins. Keep in mind that you may encounter errors if you migrate a monitored host to a poller that happens to be missing the necessary plugins. If you update the plugins on the Centreon central server, be sure also to update them on each poller.
Deletion
As with installation, you can remove a pack either by hovering over the desired pack in the UI and clicking on the red cross:
or by clicking first on the pack and then on the red cross:
Confirm the uninstallation.
Your Plugin Pack is now uninstalled.
Managing dependencies
You will not be able remove a pack if host and service templates created by the Plugin Pack are being used by any monitored hosts and services.
To uninstall the pack you will need either to:
- delete the hosts and services linked to the templates provided by the Plugin Pack,
- or unlink the hosts and services from the corresponding templates.
Attempting to uninstall a pack that is a dependency of another pack will cause the uninstallation process to stop if the pack or its dependency is used by any hosts and services. Otherwise, the pack and its dependencies can be removed.