Zenoss

Zenoss (Zenoss Core) is an monitoring system with network management bent. It is based on the Zope application server. Released under the GPL2, Zenoss Core provides a web interface that allows system administrators to monitor availability, inventory/configuration, performance and events. Zenoss is agentless.

Erik Dahl began Zenoss development in 2002 and in August 2005 founded Zenoss, Inc., with Bill Karpovich. Zenoss, Inc. sponsors the development of Zenoss Core and sells an enterprise version based on the core version.
Current version is very powerful but it is unclear how stable it is both due to the complexity of Zope and the complexity of Python codebase.

Zenoss Core combines original programming with several open source projects to integrate data storage and data collection processes with a web-based user interface:

• Zope Application server: An object-oriented web server written in Python.
• Python: Extensible programming language.
• Net-SNMP: Monitoring protocol that collects systems status information.
• RRDtool: Graph and log time series data.
• MySQL: A popular open source database.
• Twisted: An event-driven networking engine written in Python.

Zenoss Core provides the following capabilities:

• Monitoring availability of network devices using SNMP
• Monitoring of network services (HTTP,POP3,NNTP,SNMP,FTP)
• Monitoring of host resources (processor, disk usage) on most network operating systems.
• Time-series performance monitoring of devices
• Extended Microsoft Windows monitoring via Windows Management Instrumentation using SAMBA and Zenoss open source extensions
• Event management tools to annotate system alerts
• Automatically discovers network resources and changes in network configuration
• Alerting system provides notifications based on rule sets and on-call calendars
• Supports Nagios plug-in format

Platform

Zenoss Inc. support all major operating systems platforms (HP-UX and AIX can be compiled form source):

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS (4, 5)
• Fedora (9, 10)
• Ubuntu (6.06, 8.04)
• Debian (5)
• SuSE (10.X)
• OpenSUSE (10.3, 11.1)
• Mac OS X (10.5 Intel, PPC from source)
• VMWare Appliance
• FreeBSD (6.x and 7.x from source)
• Solaris (10 from source)
• Gentoo (from source)

Other Linux versions will work with the stack installers as well as source for any other Unix systems.

A web-based portal provides operating system agnostic access to configuration and administration functions. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer are supported.

 ZenPacks

ZenPacks provide a plug-in architecture that allows community members to extend Zenoss's functionality. Mark Hinkle writes in a Zenoss blog entry that anyone can write a Zenpack, and authors are free to choose how they license their individual ZenPacks.

As an incentive to buy the enterprise version, Zenoss, Inc. may develop ZenPacks that are available only to enterprise users.

Zenoss, Inc. chooses to release the Zenpacks included with Zenoss Enterprise as shared source, which means users can modify the code but not distribute the changes.

Enterprise

The enterprise version builds on the core version by providing commercial support and additional features, such as synthetic web transactions and global dashboards. "In the enterprise edition," writes Sean Michael Kerner, "Zenoss is adding something it calls end-user experience monitoring which is intended to more accurately simulate end-user application activity." Kerner continues, "Enterprise users also get certified application monitors specifically geared for Microsoft SQL and Exchange."

Related products

Zenoss competes with other open source and proprietary enterprise systems management products. Open source systems management products are available from GroundWork Open Source [1], Hyperic and openQRM [2]. (See the OpenQRM web site). In an interview with Jack Loftus of SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, Bill Karpovich explains what makes Zenoss different:

"Companies like GroundWork are similar to the Red Hat approach, where a company gathers up the pieces and puts support behind it. Our approach is we have always had the code and we are in control of its roadmap and indemnification. The Hyperic model is where a company comes from a commercial background and makes some of the code open source."^{[citation needed]}

Industry reviews

In a Network Computing review, Jeff Ballard singles out the Zenoss Core 2.0 user interface and event management system as highlights. Of the event management system, Ballard says, "By aggregating all events through a single rules-processing engine, Zenoss Core eliminates duplication, making for a manageable user interface."

In his review, Ballard finds the installation troubling. "Unfortunately, getting started was challenging as Zenoss provided no context-sensitive help to guide us through a truly staggering number of configuration options."

In the "Clear Choice Tests" Network World reviewer Barry Nance offers the following praise for Zenoss Core 2, "Even more impressive than its discovery of our network is its remediation features, which can automatically execute start or stop operations for a Windows service, for example." Nance's review finds that "Zenoss Core doesn't support as many diverse devices as HP OpenView or Argent Extended Technologies, nor does it monitor Microsoft Exchange or SQL Server as closely as a commercial tool does."

SYS-CON Media awards Zenoss Core the 2007 Enterprise Open Source Reader's choice award for best Linux systems management software. Reader choice awards are nominated and voted on by the community of Enterprise Open Source Magazine readers.

NEWS CONTENTS

• 190313 : Neil Lathwood's blog " Nagios alternatives, are there any ( Neil Lathwood's blog " Nagios alternatives, are there any, )
• 190313 : JumpBox Official Blog " Ramp Up #16 Using Zenoss to monitor your network ( JumpBox Official Blog " Ramp Up #16 Using Zenoss to monitor your network, )

Old News ;-)

Neil Lathwood's blog " Nagios alternatives, are there any

Zenoss

Wow! Zenoss appears to have improved quite a bit since the last version that I tested and looks to be highly recommended now. It's features include a comprehensive API to allow integration with existing systems, this would enable the setup of monitoring new devices quite easy. Installation on platforms with supported binaries appears to be straight forward along with the configuration and setup of your first 'Devices' that need to be monitored. Auto-discovery is still an option and is more intelligent than OpenNMS, it provides a handy feature of 'walking' your network via routers to find all devices located on your network, this is quite a powerful feature on it's own.

It supports the ability to expand your single monitoring server to a High Availability solution, whilst this isn't quite out of the box, it really isn't a complex setup for a Linux Sysadmin (Setup Guide). This enables you to grow your monitoring environment as your infrastructure grows or provide a level of redundancy to ensure that you know what is going on 24×7.

The changes and improvements that have been made since my last evaluation of Zenoss means that it's about time that I tested it again – if it became a viable alternative then a lot of work would have to go into the migration from Nagios to Zenoss but it looks like it could be worthwhile.

Comments

I wrote a big paper last summer comparing Nagios, OpenNMS and Zenoss along with a quick look at other things like Cacti and the Dude. Conclusion in September 08 was that Zenoss was just ahead. The paper is available at http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/jane/open_source_mgmt_options.html

At the time, one of my main criticisms was that the code felt a little unstable; I've persevered with it and moved from 2.2 to 2.2.4 and just gone to 2.3.2. Have to say that the stability feels much better now.

As you comment on Zabbix, the documentation is not good though Zenoss do seem to be gradually addressing this and are doing a major re-write. I have also just completed the first draft of a paper that elaborates greatly on the Zenoss Event Management system, which includes lots of screenshots and examples. Comments on this draft would be much appreciated. The paper is available either from the Zenoss Wiki at http://www.zenoss.com/community/wiki/events-documentation-and-examples/ or from our own website at http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/jane/zenoss_event_management_paper.pdf

Cheers,
Jane

JumpBox Official Blog " Ramp Up #16 Using Zenoss to monitor your network

An interesting presentation

Are you already running JumpBoxes and want a way to easily monitor their health? If so read on.

Zenoss enables network administrators to manage the configuration, health, and performance of networks, servers and network applications. Monitor your network availability, inventory, configuration, performance, and more with the Jumpbox for Zenoss. Notable features include:

• Event Monitoring and Management
• Web-based Dashboard
• Alerting and Reporting
• Automatic Remidiation
• Network Visualization
• Integration API's
• Community Reports Library
• Community Monitors Library

In this video we'll tour the interface and show how get Zenoss to scan your network and automatically add all the machines it finds. We'll then set it up to send email alerts as problems (or pre-problem warning signs) arise and demonstrate this by taking down a machine. Lastly we'll configure SNMP-based performance monitoring so it watches another JumpBox on the network and displays graphs on critical metrics like CPU and memory utilization, bandwidth and disk I/O. We'll also touch on other topics like extending Zenoss through Zenpacks and how to assign location and logical groupings to your machines in a way that's meaningful to you. Enjoy!

Recommended Links

• Open Source Management Options by Jane Curry is a major review of the open source network management tools available in 2008.
• Zenoss Event Management is the companion paper for our Zenoss Event Management Workshop. The paper is also available as an 84-page full-colour book.
• Crafting Zenoss Core users for events and zProperties describes how to use the Zenoss Core access control facilities to create users with appropriate permissions to manage events.
• Zenoss Discovery and Classification Zenoss has several possibilities for discovering devices, both manual and automatic. Once discovered, the subsequent monitoring of a device depends very much on the device class that an element is allocated to. This paper focuses particularly on a scenario that automatically discovers devices in networks and then allocates those devices to device classes. The scenario uses a number of Zenoss techniques including Python scripts, event commands and event transforms.
• Methods of monitoring processes with Zenoss This paper discusses three possible methods for performing process monitoring:
  • Using the process monitoring capabilities of the net-snmp agent
  • Using ssh to access a device and run local commands, Nagios-style plugins or Zenoss plugins
  • Using Zenoss's zenprocess daemon
• Creating Zenoss Zenpacks ZenPacks are the extension mechanism provided by Zenoss to build new functionality and also to easily port customisation from one Zenoss server to another. Some documentation is provide in the Zenoss Developer's Guide. This paper is intended to enhance and extend that documentation. Includes a sample ZenPack.
• Managing networks and systems with Zenoss - presentation given at UKUUG conference, London, March 2009.
• Raddle is a network emulation framework. It is particularly useful when testing network management systems or teaching people to use them. We originally developed this to make student exercises in network management classes more realistic, but it has found many applications in test and demo environments as well.
• We manage the NetView Web - a Wiki repository for the accumulated knowledge of the Tivoli NetView community,

Wikipedia references

• Aslett, Matthew (2007-06-13). "Zenoss Updates Open Source Management Offering". Computer Business Review Online. http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=5C9F141F-A7BE-4A97-B672-085A55FAE354. Retrieved 2007-06-22.
• Ballard, Jeff.. "Rollout: Zenoss Core". Network Computing. http://www.networkcomputing.com/channels/netsysmanagement/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199905203. Retrieved 2007-06-25.
• Hinkle, Mark (2007-07-19). "Zenoss Enterprise Edition 2.0 is here". Zenoss Blog: No Node Left Behind. http://blog.zenoss.com/2007/07/19/zenoss-enterprise-edition-20-is-here/. Retrieved 2007-07-31.
• Linux News Desk (2007-07-02). "SYS-Con Annouces 2007 Linux and Enterprise Open Source Reader's Choice Awards". SYS-CON. http://linux.sys-con.com/read/404017.htm. Retrieved 2007-07-31.
• Loftus, Jack (2007-03-30). "Zenoss takes on IBM, HP systems management". SearchEnterpriseLinux.com. http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1249649,00.html. Retrieved 2007-06-21.
• Kerner, Sean Michael (2007-07-19). "Zenoss Aims for the Enterprise". http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3689851. Retrieved 2007-07-31.
• "Open Management Consortium". http://www.open-management.com. Retrieved 2007-06-21.
• "Zenoss". http://www.zenoss.com. Retrieved 2007-06-21.
• Nance, Barry (2007-06-18). "Zenoss Core: Clear Choice Tests". Network World. http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2007/061807-open-source-management-test-zenoss.html. Retrieved 2007-06-25.

See also

• Comparison of network monitoring systems
• JumpBox Official Blog " Ramp Up #16 Using Zenoss to monitor your network

Books

• Zenoss Inc. Home Page
• Zenoss Project Downloads at SourceForge

History

Zenoss maintains an active developer community. Notable project milestones include:

2002

Erik Dahl began development on Zenoss.

August 2005

Erik Dahl and Bill Karpovich form Zenoss Inc.

March 2006

Zenoss made available on SourceForge.net.

November 2006

Zenoss Core Version 1.0 released.

June 2007

Zenoss Core 2.0 released.

July 2007

Zenoss Enterprise 2.0 released.

October 2007

Zenoss Core 2.1 released.

November 2007

Zenoss Enterprise 2.1 released.

May 2008

Zenoss Core 2.2 released.

Nov 2008

Zenoss Core 2.3 released.

May 2009

Zenoss Core 2.4 released.

Etc

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