What about a monitoring glossary?

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#1

Hi community,

wouldn’t it be helpful to establish a common monitoring glossary as a comprehensive index which includes, defines and explains the most relevant methodologies and its vocabs - in the monitoring discipline in general and in checkmk in specific?

Both here in the community and in real life I often realize simple misunderstandings - worst case resulting in creative solutions displaying the opposite thing of the best-practice- / keep-it-simple-approach; just because technical terms are used with a different understanding behind - just to give a simple example: mixing up candidates like agent, plugin, check, local check, mrpe, special agent, tbc…

In the online guide there are already some entries where terms are defined and explained - but it’s just a start. Right now, you have to keep your eyes open everywhere because those definitions are not to be found in a central basin like a glossary to look them up all at once.

I guess such a glossary might both help newbies, experts and casual users in the same way. What do you think?

#2

I really like this idea.
A glossary would be a good starting point. Taking this idea further, an index could provide access to articles or section anchors where a term/topic is explained or referenced (of course if the context makes sense).
The option to search within the cmk docs is great, but a huge index page would be a dream.

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#3

Thanks simonm - that sounds promising indeed.

But before reinventing the wheel - there here (as a basis or for a start) some online monitoring glossary / wiki already at hand? For introducing myself to the topic I once got some helpful “monitoring 101” readings by Solarwinds… Besides I have no information about any broad, up2date and vivid monitoring portal to get this kind of information like a glossary / index…

#4

I think such an index must exist side by side to the CMK user manual (like an index at the end of a book).
As the documentation is written and maintained by the checkmk team, this means a lot of additional work. Even the printed version of the cmk manual does not have an index, so there is nothing to build upon.