High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Shinken is an open source computer system and network monitoring software application compatible with Nagios. It watches hosts and services, gathers performance data and alerts users when things go wrong and again when they get better. The major improvements of Shinken over Nagios are the easy load balanced and highly available architecture. The administrator manages a single configuration, the system automatically "cuts" it into parts and dispatches it to worker nodes. It takes its name from this functionality: a Shinken is a Japanese sword.