The Definitive Quickstart Beginners Guide to Nagios for Dummies

One of the risks you run is that you get busy with Nagios and figure out how to make it do a few simple checks, then add some more, and some more, and something a little more complex, and before you know it your swamped in a configuration where you don't know what's where and why, even if you put it there yourself. Adding to or modifying your Nagios config then becomes a mjor pain in the you know where.

What we'll do in stead is indeed start small and simple, but in an organized way, so we can effortlessly scale up to more, bigger, more complex, ... without loosing oversight and manageability. This means we put in a little extra work in the beginning, and reap the benefits as we expand.

In the end, you'll have a rather simple yet elaborate nagios configuration, enough insight in how Nagios works and what sort of thing Nagios can do to further tweak it to your needs, and a solid base for scaling up if you'd need or want to.