At AppFirst, we move quickly to incorporate your feedback and deliver, so we release into production every Wednesday.  This week, we’re pushing some very exciting and significant new features into production, and we want to share them with you:

1)     Nagios support – we now integrate with Nagios on Linux!

• If you have Nagios Client scripts running on your servers, the AppFirst collector will automatically pick up the output of the scripts (given you have everything running in the default directory).  Then the collector will send the output message to our backend, so you can visualize messages on the AppFirst Dashboard and alerts on AppFirst Alert Management.
• If you are using the Nagios Server, there is no need to continue doing so.  You now have one consolidated view of your infrastructure that includes your Nagios scripts.
• If your Nagios Client installation is not in the default directory, you can specify the correct location by editing the collector(s) that are affected.   In the future, should you decide to install new Nagios Client scripts, AppFirst will automatically detect them, incorporate the messages on AppFirst Dashboard, and create new alerts.
• In addition, it will no longer be necessary to install the out-of-box Nagios Client scripts on new servers, because AppFirst will collect the information for you.  This new feature in AppFirst will save you the cost of a server and days of time installing and configuring the Nagios Server.

2)     Automatic attachment to running processes

• When you install new collectors, you no longer have to restart processes or reboot your machine in order for the AppFirst collector to start “seeing” your application as it executes.  If you already have collectors installed, you will have to reinstall the new version.  To do so:

Redhat/CentOS
- First remove collector from the host
$ sudo yum remove appfirst
- Download/Install the latest rpm package
$ sudo rpm -ihv http://wwws.appfirst.com/packages/initial/1/appfirst-i386.rpm 32 bit version
$ sudo rpm -ihv http://wwws.appfirst.com/packages/initial/1/appfirst-x86_64.rpm 64 bit version

Ubuntu
- First remove collector from the host
$ sudo apt-get remove appfirst
- Download the latest deb package
$ sudo wget http://wwws.appfirst.com/packages/initial/1/appfirst-x86_64.deb  64 bit version
$ sudo wget http://wwws.appfirst.com/packages/initial/1/appfirst-i386.deb 32 bit version
- Install the newly downloaded package
$ sudo dpkg -i appfirst-x86_64.deb  // 64bit
$ sudo dpkg -i appfirst-i386.deb  // 32bit

Windows
- First remove collector from the host – Control Panel – Add/Remove programs – Uninstall AppFirst program
- From AppFirst console administation -> collectors -> instructions select the appropriate Windows version
- Install the downloaded collector

3)     Renaming Tags

• We’ve heard from you that the term “Tags” is confusing.  We have now renamed Tags to Applications.  Applications are entities you create by logically grouping processes together, whether they run on one or more servers.  These groupings represent the way you think about your infrastructure (ex. your database, job messaging system, shopping cart, etc….)
• To learn more, check out our new Applications page and demo videos on www.appfirst.com!

4)     Significant changes to the Alert Management system

• You can now set alerts on processes, applications and servers.
• We have also added new types of alerts for processes and applications based on incident reports, files, registry and ports accessed.  With these new powerful alerts, you can be alerted when certain strings are identified in incident reports, and user-specified files, registry or ports are accessed.
• If you are using Nagios on Linux, AppFirst now automatically creates alerts for every Nagios script you have enabled.  These are displayed on AppFirst Alert Management where you can edit or delete them.

As always, we very much appreciate your support and feedback.  Please keep it coming!