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Zenoss Core 3.x Network and System Monitoring

Chapter 1. Network and System Monitoring with Zenoss Core

Whether it's internal or public-facing technology, businesses of all sizes depend on the availability of their IT assets, which may include servers, routers, networks, switches, and websites. If you're picking up this book, then you already know the value of monitoring and more than likely have an installation of Zenoss Core running.

Zenoss Core is an open source network and system monitoring platform that is sponsored by Zenoss, Inc. Zenoss, Inc, develops two versions of Zenoss: Core and Enterprise. Core belongs to the community and is supported by the community.

Enterprises adds some value-added features on top of the Core version, such as an extended report library, synthetic web transactions, certified monitors (ZenPacks), and a global dashboard for multiple Zenoss installations. The additional features allow Zenoss Inc., to sell the enterprise version as a commercial software product with support. As open source consumers, we're familiar with this business model. Our focus in the book is on Zenoss Core, but the concepts will also apply to Zenoss Enterprise.

Zenoss Core is a monitoring solution that can be as complex as you need it to be. And while just about anyone can install it, turn it on, and monitor "something," Zenoss Core is packed with features in a complicated interface. The interface has been drastically improved over version 2, but it's not the type of software you can intuitively use—in other words, a bit of guidance is in order.

The role of this book is to serve as your Zenoss Core tour guide and save you hours, days, maybe weeks of time. It's designed to quickly acquaint you with the core features so you can customize Zenoss Core to your needs. It's loaded with screenshots and provides a handy reference guide. Zenoss Core provides a monitoring solution that incorporates the following:

Device management
Availability monitoring
Performance graphs
Event management
User and alert management
Plugin architecture
Monitoring reports

To monitor your IT assets (servers, routers, switches, websites, and anything else attached to your network), you install Zenoss Core to a server. Even though Zenoss Core is intended to be installed on a Linux server, virtual appliances are available that allow Macintosh and Windows users to install a working version of Zenoss Core by using VMware.

After installation, you can manage your Zenoss Core installation and your monitoring setup from a web-based interface. The following screenshot shows a dashboard view:

The web portal is the face of the Zenoss Core system and is the place where we spend most of our time. It provides a single access point to the monitoring system and requires no operating-system-specific knowledge to use. The web interface features drag-and-drop dashboard portlets that display a customized view of the network's health at any given time.

Collection layer

The collection layer includes several daemons that gather information about devices, performance, and Events. They feed information to ZenHub to distribute to the appropriate database. The Zenoss Core daemons are easy to identify—they all start with the prefix "zen".

As the following screenshot illustrates, the Daemons page provides us with the complete view of the Zenoss Daemons that includes the process ID (PID) and up/down State. Green is up; red is down. From the interface, we can also view the Log File, edit the Configuration, and start and Stop each daemon.

If we browse the file system, we will find each daemon in $ZENHOME/bin. $ZENHOME is an environment variable, which allows us to talk about the Zenoss installation directory without knowing exactly where it is. For example, I may install to /usr/local/zenoss/zenoss while you install to /home/zenoss.

Twisted is an integral network communication protocol for the daemons. The Twisted Core README file describes Twisted as an "event-based framework for Internet applications"

Device management daemons

Finding the devices on our networks is a prerequisite to managing them, and Zenoss Core not only finds the devices, it models them. Device modeling builds a detailed overview of the network by recording the following types of information: system dependencies, available services, and change history.

The following table describes the daemons responsible for discovering and modeling devices:

Device daemon	Description
`zenmodeler`	Queries the devices via SSH/Telnet, SNMP, and port scans when we model the device. Each time `zenmodeler` runs on a device, it compares its findings with existing configuration and updates it as necessary.
`zendisc`	Runs each time a request is made to discover a network or device.

Zenoss uses SNMP as a primary collection protocol. However, it can also collect information via ICMP pings, port scans, and plugins.

Performance and availability daemons

The Zenoss Core performance and availability daemons help us determine if the devices on our network are available and performing within our established guidelines. If our monitored systems perform in an unexpected way, Zenoss Core generates an event.

The following daemons play an important role in collecting performance and availability data:

Performance daemon	Description
`zenperfsnmp`	Stores the collected performance data in RRD files so that RRDtool can graph device performance over hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly durations.
`zencommand`	Provides a way to run custom scripts and third party plugins including Nagios and Cacti plugins from within Zenoss.
`zenprocess`	Monitors the processes on Linux, Unix, and Windows systems.
`zenping`	Pings a device and reports an up or down status to determine if a device is active or not.
`zenstatus`	Tests the TCP ports and reports an up or down service.

Event daemons

When a device goes down or a service crosses a predetermined threshold, such as available disk space, Zenoss Core generates an event. Events can generate a notification alert or run a custom command (to automatically take remedial action to fix the event, for example).

Not only can Zenoss Core generate its own events, but it can collect events from external sources (for example, custom system administration scripts) and convert the information to a "Zenoss-style" event.

The following table outlines the Zenoss Core event daemons:

Event daemon	Description
`zensyslog`	Creates events from syslog messages.
`zeneventlog`	Creates events from Windows event logs.
`zentrap`	Creates events from SNMP traps. When a problem occurs on a monitored device, it generates an SNMP trap to alert Zenoss of the problem.

Key benefits

Designed to quickly acquaint you with the core feature so you can customize Zenoss Core to your needs

Discover, manage, and monitor IT resources

Build custom event-processing and alerting rules

Write custom device reports to extract, display, and analyze monitoring data

A handy reference guide with loads of screenshots

An update of Zenoss Core Network and System Monitoring rewritten for Zenoss 3.x

Description

For system administrators, network engineers, and security analysts, it is essential to keep a track of network traffic. Zenoss Core is an enterprise-level systems and network monitoring solution that can be as complex as you need it to be. And while just about anyone can install it, turn it on, and monitor "something", Zenoss Core has a complicated interface packed with features. The interface has been drastically improved over version 2, but it's still not the type of software you can use intuitively – in other words, a bit of guidance is in order. The role of this book is to serve as your Zenoss Core tour guide and save you hours, days, maybe weeks of time. This book will show you how to work with Zenoss and effectively adapt Zenoss for System and Network monitoring. Starting with the Zenoss basics, it requires no existing knowledge of systems management, and whether or not you can recite MIB trees and OIDs from memory is irrelevant. Advanced users will be able to identify ways in which they can customize the system to do more, while less advanced users will appreciate the ease of use Zenoss provides. The book contains step-by-step examples to demonstrate Zenoss Core's capabilities. The best approach to using this book is to sit down with Zenoss and apply the examples found in these pages to your system. The book covers the monitoring basics: adding devices, monitoring for availability and performance, processing events, and reviewing reports. It also dives into more advanced customizations, such as custom device reports, external event handling (for example, syslog server, zensendevent, and Windows Event Logs), custom monitoring templates using SNMP data sources, along with Nagios, and Cacti plugins. An example of a Nagios-style plugin is included and the book shows you where to get an example of a Cacti-compatible plugin for use as a command data source in monitoring templates. In Zenoss Core, ZenPacks are modules that add monitoring functionality. Using the Nagios plugin example, you will learn how to create, package, and distribute a ZenPack. You also learn how to explore Zenoss Core's data model using zendmd so that you can more effectively write event transformations and custom device reports.

Who is this book for?

This book is written primarily for network and systems administrators who are monitoring their IT assets with Zenoss Core or who plan to monitor them. In reality, this book will benefit anyone, regardless of job title, who recognizes the importance of proactively monitoring the servers, routers, computers, websites, and devices that connect companies to customers.

What you will learn

Discover devices and prepare your monitoring environment

Set up, model, and configure devices

Monitor availability and performance

Customize monitoring templates using SNMP, Nagios, and Cacti data sources

Process events via the event console and event commands

Collect and process events (including event transformations) from non-Zenoss Core monitoring activities

Administer Zenoss Core s users, alerting rules, data backups, and settings

Review built-in reports and create custom graph and multi-graph reports

Write custom device reports and explore Zenoss Core data model with zendmd

Incorporate device and event attributes using TALES expressions throughout Zenoss Core

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Zenoss Core 3.x Network and System Monitoring

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lfean32 Jul 16, 2011

System monitoring is a hot topic if you are trying to deliver a stable environment for your users or clients. There are many options out there that are capable of letting administrators know when a system is down or at risk for example Solarwinds is one of the popular monitoring applications today. But there are some new names in the ring and this time they come from the open source community so there is a free version for all to use, this is Zenoss Core a robust community driven snmp application. I just finished reading the new technical book on the latest version of Zenoss Core put out by Packetpub to see how well it does to get you running your own Zenoss Core server.To follow along with the book Zenoss offers a downloadable VMware appliance with the application already installed and it comes for Windows, Linux and OS X. I downloaded the OS X appliance so I could have a sandbox to play with while reading the book, I would highly recommend this so you are able to get used to the user interface.If you are thinking about installing Zenoss or already using it, this book is a must have to bridge the gap in documentation. I found the book had all the information I needed to help get my environment up and running and it was easy to follow. There are also more advanced topics covered such as ZenPack add ons. ZenPacks are one of Zenoss's most exciting feature, they are community derived and shared through the Zenoss website. You will find thousands of ZenPacks which are completely customized to monitor very specific devices, a couple of examples would be apache web servers, asterisk voip servers, and pretty much any server-based application or device else you can think of. Users create a ZenPacks then upload to share with the community, this is a great use of the open source community to help us all make sure our servers have the highest uptime.Overall I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a snmp application since Zenoss Core is an open source application and has the best price tag of all, free. Before starting to look at expensive snmp systems do yourself a favor and read this book to see how well Zenoss does with monitoring servers.

Amazon Verified review

Andrea Consadori Jun 01, 2011

I'm using Zenoss for many years and this book is not only a "how to use zenoss" book but it also lead you trought networking world with lots of practical examples and it fills the gaps not covered by Zenoss Admin Guide.What's new in this book?Previous book cover zenoss 2.x, this one zenoss 3.x and it's not only an "estatical" emprove but Zenoss 3.x buit on Zenoss 2.x experience now is the most powerful easy and robust network monitoring system I've ever known.I'm not simply a Zenoss addicted: I'm a Zenoss conviced because I previously tested Nagios, Zabbix, Pandora fms, OpenNMS.This book leads you chapter by chapter on how use all the Zenoss features with lots of examples in order to show you how Zenoss can assist you to monitor your network and you will see that the only limitation is your imagination and coding experience.Reading this book you will learn how to monitor your network even if you've Linux/Windows mixed infrastructure without installing any 3rd part agent on your server, how to correlate Windows event log and syslog event to alerting engine and how to create custom graph using informations taken from device throught snmp, wmic, wbem or linux shell script.[...]

Zenoss Core 3.x Network and System Monitoring: A step-by-step guide to configuring, using, and adapting this free Open Source network monitoring system

What do you get with Print?

Zenoss Core 3.x Network and System Monitoring

Chapter 1. Network and System Monitoring with Zenoss Core

Device management

Availability and performance monitors

Event management

Plugin architecture

System reports

Custom device reports

System architecture

User layer

Data layer

Collection layer

Device management daemons

Performance and availability daemons

Event daemons

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