WATO - Check_MK's Web Administration Tool

WATO is Check_MK's new graphical administration tool. It is a web based user interface for managing hosts and services to be monitored with Check_MK. However, WATO is no tool for configuring all aspects of Check_MK and Nagios. Why?

The basic idea behind WATO is that - when it comes to monitoring - usually one or few persons are responsible for setting up and maintaining the actual monitoring server. They spend a lot of time with the system and its internals and usually have no difficulties with editing text based configuration files - or even prefer them over a GUI.

The "users" of the monitoring, however, just need their systems to be monitored but do not have the time to learn how to write valid configuration files. Nor is it their job. So whenever they need any modification in the monitoring - for example if a new server has been set up, a switch configuration has changed or a database instance has been removed - they ask the monitoring team to adapt their configuration accordingly. Those changes make up a substantial part of the daily workload of the monitoring team.

WATO allows you to move these daily tasks to the users by providing them a GUI for managing their hosts and services themselves. The monitoring team can spend their time with their actual work - tuning the system, implementing new checks, configuring general rules, and so on.

The first simple reason is: They do not support Check_MK and probably never will. Another reason is: WATO directly supports Check_MK's inventory mechanism and thus an auto-detection of services. And last but not least, WATO takes into account that the different needs of monitorings admins and users should be reflected in the GUI.

• Setup - How to setup and configure WATO
• Using - Using WATO
• Configuration Variables - A reference of WATO settings in multisite.mk