Date: 2009-10-27
Q: Is the information about the CPU and memory limited to the actual hardware you are watching? For example, do older machines have less information available about CPU and memory than newer machines?
A: Returned monitoring information is a function of the software rather than the hardware. SNMP has been fairly standardized for awhile so old and new hardware will return the same sorts of information. Additional ZenPacks can add additional monitoring functionality.
Q: Is there every going to be more than 4 hops feature added to the network map?
A: It could probably be added, feel free to open a ticket.
Date: 2009-09-29
Q: Do I need to use the root password? Normally we don't leave root user enabled via ssh
A: No, as long as the commands being called for monitoring are available to a less privileged user. You may need to adjust the monitoring user's path or use sudo in some instances.
Q: Do you support public key authentication?
A: Yes: 3.5 5 Modeling Using SSH/COMMAND
Q: Can we also see installed software on linux ?
A: Yes, if you enable monitoring of the hrSWInstalled in your snmpd.conf. Here's a blog post: Tip of the Month: SNMP Software Inventory for Debian and Ubuntu machines
Q: If I can figure out how to add the MIBs for a SAN, then I could monitor the SAN??
A: Zenoss does not use MIBs directly for monitoring, rather they are used for translating traps. The MIB could be used to lookup the specific OIDs you need to add for a custom data source or modeler if one isn't available.
Q: Can I force a re-check of an event/alert on the "event console" ? Or should I always wait for the next scheduled chk?
A: You cannot "force a check" from the event console, but you can auto-respond to events with Event Commands and you can have custom commands available on Locations, Groups and Systems that you could manually call.
Date: 2009-09-16
Q: What about the (largely ignored) zenmail and zenpop?
A: zenmail listens for incoming mail on port 25 like a regular SMTP server, zenpop goes out and polls a POP3 server for new mail. They send events to zenhub based on what does or doesn't come back.
Q: is there a way to archive instead of delete after a set number of days ?
A: Instead of using the tools provided by Zenoss, you could use the MySQL interface to dump the contents out to an OLAP system or other archive format before deletion.
Q: What was that script called again? [for investigating Zenoss' understanding of topology]
A: tracepath.py
Q: Is it possible to pull cisco log files?
A: Zenoss can monitor Cisco devices configured to send syslog messages to the Zenoss server.
Q: How do you decide whether to use SNMP or WMI for Windows monitoring?
A: With Zenoss Core, the /Devices/Server/Windows template works best with both enabled. SNMP-Informant is a free (but not open-source) replacement to the Microsoft-provided SNMP agent that is recommended to provide the complete device model. WMI will add Windows EventLog and Windows Services to the device. There are Community ZenPacks available to replace the need for SNMP-Informant with either SNMP or WMI.
Q: Is there any wmi equivalent to snmp trap? How can I configure zenoss core to subscribe to windows events using wmi?
A: Windows EventLogs are the WMI equivalent of SNMP traps. Configuring WMI is covered in the Administration Guide.
Q: Is there any advantage of snmp over wmi monitoring on windows computers?
A: Out-of-the-box Zenoss Core requires both to monitor everything available. Zenoss Enterprise provides WMI-only monitoring. Performance is nearly identical with recent versions of Zenoss. WMI requires a account on the Windows server, SNMP cannot monitor Windows Services and Windows EventLog.
Q: How can I get more involved and help improve Zenoss?
A: Excellent question! Please visit the new http://zenoss.org and get familiar with the user forums and once you're familiar with Zenoss, there are many options. Tickets, documentation, ZenPacks and patches are all accepted and there are always new users looking for help.
Q: How powerful machine do I need to run zenoss to monitor about 150 boxes?
A: A basic 2ghz/2gigs of RAM machine with a speedy hard drive should be sufficient. Many installs use the VMware image on ESX for an install that (relatively) small. There are several threads in the forums where users have discussed their setups, you're most likely to be I/O bound before CPU and RAM come into play. It's also a function of what you're monitoring and how many datapoints you're generating. There are Zenoss Core installations well into the thousands on a single box. There are no artificial limitations applied to Zenoss Core.
Q: Can I monitor Cisco VOIP?
A: There are several Cisco-related ZenPacks available and many users monitor Cisco devices. If you don't see a suitable ZenPack, you can easily add custom data sources (demonstrated in the webinar) to get particular OIDs. Zenoss Enterprise has Cisco monitoring available as well.
Q: Are we able to export the perf data into csv for reporting and manipulation?
A: Perf data is stored in RRD files and can be accessed via scripting.
Date: 2009-08-31
Q: Does this installation require root access / non-root user can install?
A: The Zenoss installers require root access to install and create a 'zenoss' user and group for running the software.
Q: So in the event a server supports hot swap devices(like memory, hard drives(scsi's RAID) etc, does this auto detect or must we manually add it?
A: By default devices are remodeled every 12 hours, this cycle can be increased, decreased or turned off completely and devices may be locked from remodeling.
Q: What if a device is corrupted, do we delete the device / do we need to unmount it?
A: Deleting a device should be sufficient.
Q: But in the event of a GPO being implemented for account lockouts, can still zenoss monitor it?
A: Assuming zenoss is using an account that still has access or a monitoring technique that does not require a login, yes.
Q: Is it possible to create like a service group or something similar to be able to monitor specific Windows services on multiple Windows Servers and be able to create a report for those services?
A: Reports may be customized to include Groups, Systems or Locations as necessary.
Q: is root access required for the ssh user?
A: No, as long as the ssh user has proper privileges to call the required shell commands and they are in the right path.
Q: does Zenoss support paging through a modem?
A: By default we use the zensnpp command, but this can be replaced with other paging commands and Event Commands may be used for paging as well. There are a variety of techniques discussed in the forums and on the community website. http://search.zenoss.com should help you find them.
Date: 2009-07-28
Q: Can device names be re-learned/registered after discovery and etc/host or DNS source is updated?
A: Yes, you can modify the name and/or the IP address of a device
Q: I have downloaded Zenoss Core to evaluate it and after installing it on an Ubuntu server all I get is a very primitive text interface for the controls and dashboard. After the two initial set up screens. I am not seeing the nice UI.
A: (this was handled via email, the cause was IE7 was set to ‘Medium’ security settings)
Q: can the installation be done with a failover concept using Zenoss Core
A: There is community documentation for how to configure this, as well as forum threads.
Q: I have installed on an Ubuntu server at Amazon and am accessing via a web browser port 8080. I have tried firefox and IE
A: Is port 8080 available via EC2? You may need to change the port in your zope.conf
Q: Can zenmodeler/zendis command be disabled on individual devices?
A: Yes, you can lock a device from further monitoring. From the page menu choose Manage->Lock…
Q: after all devices have been discovered. How granular can you go? Down to the actual packet. Or can you integrate WireShark into this?
A: The total packet traffic on the interfaces is exposed, but you could integrate with Wireshark via a zLink
Q: This is the “freeware” version of Zenoss so far, right? (Not the enterprise version?)
A: yes – this is Zenoss Core – the “freeware” version
Q: Can you please show how to send email alert?
A: Sorry I didn’t get to this in the demo, the Getting Started Guide and the Admin Guide cover this.
Q: How much overhead and network traffic does this data collection create ? How much capacity do you need on the machine running zenoss?
A: Network traffic is minimal with SNMP and WMI, SSH is a bit more heavyweight. Overall the impact is negligible unless you are on a very large or slow network.
Q: Will the discovery include cisco routers, wireless access points, switches ? Do these devices have to be snmp compliant to be discovered?
A: Discovery will attempt SNMP, WMI and SSH. It will pick up anything that responds, including routers, switches, access points, printers, servers, etc.
Q: Does the network map show / discover subnets?
A: The network map will show networks connected to the starting IP address by what is reachable via routing. The number of hops also affects this
Q: Can we configure Zenoss to monitor systemout.log and systemerr.log from Websphere installed on Linux/windows ?
A: Assuming these can get to Zenoss via syslog, Windows event log, JMX logs or a command data source, yes.
Q: any suggestiona in regard to user community for zenoss. I searched all over the internet. The only reason we are planning to go for Nagios over Zenoss due to lack of failover option in Zenoss Core
A: have you reviwed this set-up – http://www.zenoss.com/Members/netdata/create-a-highavailable-zenoss/
Q: Can availabiity of a physcial interface (L2) be tracked?
A: Zenoss is not currently L2 topology aware but that is a frequent request we’re aware of.
Q: Is there any plans to incorporate an easier way to enable SSL , without having to toy with configuration files and Zope?
A: This will probably be handled via better documentation, feel free to open an enhancement request if there isn’t one already at http://dev.zenoss.org user:zenoss pass:zenoss
Q: I understand red = critical, yellow = warning, etc for events. What are the grey ones and how do I view them / clear them. They don’t appear in the server’s event list or event console – only in the numbered bubble.
A: Grey is debug
Q: How can you eliminate the zenmodeler/zendisc /Cmd/Fail events
A: You can change the severity of the events below your view, or you can create a transform to automatically drop them.
Q: thanks this is helpful
A: thanks for joining!
Q: if you have multiple network interfaces on the zenoss machine, will it map and monitor multiple networks?
A: Yes. Zenoss will attempt to discover additional networks found on the interfaces
Q: What is the function of the MIBs option under the Management menu section?
A: MIBs are used by Zenoss to translate the messages received in SNMP Traps to a more user-friendly format. They are not used for monitoring.
Q: How do I tell if the zenjobs daemon is running?
A: If you go to Settings->Daemons you will see a list of the daemons and their status. You can also run ‘zenoss status’ from the command line
Q: why Zenoss send the user name and password in clear text? you can find in the output if test a datasource against a device
A: This is a function of the Command data source not knowing what sort of data it is handling. This shows up with some of the Community WMI ZenPacks, but there is a new WMI Data Source ZenPack that should fix the issue once the old ZenPacks are migrated to it. It will be out soon.
Q: in multiy graph report it could be better if there are start and end date like the availabilty report. can be?
A: You can currently edit the graphs to show a time range, but you could export them with a cron job to control the range that way (ie. the previous week graphed every midnight)
Q: what is the deferent between /device/server/cmd and /device/server/ssh and which of them can i use it to monitor solaris using ssh?
A: There is an OpenSolaris ZenPack that uses /Device/Server/SSH/OpenSolaris http://www.zenoss.com/community/projects/zenpacks/opensolaris
Q: how can i monitor a process running in cluster?
A: I believe there was a forum thread on that, it’s a tricky problem
Q: is zenoss can monitor load balancer? and is there any doc for that
A: If the load balancer has a unique IP in addition to the shared IP you could monitor both
Q: How can I add SNMP monitoring to an already registered device?
A: If SNMP is enabled for the device class, you should be able to monitor the device by turning on the SNMP daemon and remodeling it.
Q: Hi. Can i monitor server temperature with zenoss?
A: Temperature monitoring can easily be added with a custom SNMP datasource (if exposed via SNMP) or SSH if not. Add the OID as a data source, add a graph based on the source and a threshold for the temperature range and you’ll see it on the Perf tab
Date: 2009-07-09
Q: Will Zenoss be able to put sub-metrics, part under main monitors, into downtime?
A: I assume you mean for writing reports? You can write reports that access just about everything in the application with custom reports.
Q: Will you be showcasing Zenoss ability to integrate ticketing systems that auto-fills information, sends out initial email to all parties, sends reminders emails (which can be supressed) until problem is resolved?
A: Zenoss Enterprise has integrations with Remedy and writing and customizing outbound emails is documented, probably won’t cover it explicitly in this demo
Q: In an environment with 250 Cisco routers & switches and about 500 Servers, do you recommend just a single Server for Zenoss? hardware is IBM x3650 with 32GB RAM and quad-processors quad-cores?
A: That sounds like it should be plenty to monitor your network
Q: I use Zenoss to monitor Checkpoint Secureplatform NGx R65 and NGx R70 firewalls. One of many issues I run into is the IO graph under the “Perf” tab. I have no graph for IO plot. Checkpoint Secureplatform is the variant of Redhat Linux. Can somene help?
A: I assume this is under /Devices/Server/Linux
Q: So there’s an snmp daemon in Zenoss? If I have multiple servers should I install Zenoss in each of them or just an snmp daemon on the others?
A: You will need Zenoss installed on 1 server. The devices that you wish to monitor will need to be running an SNMP daemon (or SSH or WMI depending on what they are).
Q: Will we see any overview on how to modify modeling for non-standard devices?
A: Probably not custom modeling, but we could add a custom datasource
Q: What is the purpose of ZenPacks
A: ZenPacks add custom functionality to Zenoss. Usually in the form of pre-configured Device classes for monitoring specific devices (i.e. MySQL, Brocade, etc.)
Q: I rpm the whole Zenpack but I am not sure what to do next?
A: The new ZenPacks will be listed under Settings->ZenPacks
A: They provide additional templates and device classes for monitoring
Q: Is it possible to monitor a KVM (Virtual Machine) host with Zenoss?
A: Yes. If the VM has an IP address, Zenoss can monitor it.
Q: I download the cisco zenpacks and install it. Let say I need to monitor a cisco device, what is the relationship between this and cisco zenpack?
A: So depending on which Cisco ZenPack you’ve added, this probably adds a new device class specific to a certain Cisco model
Q: Would you mind taking a closer look at what monitoring option are available for Linux servers.
A: You can use /Server/Linux to use SNMP or install the Linux Monitor ZenPack to use SSH
A: And there are several Community ZenPacks adding further detail for different Linux distros
Q: Well, I monitor the Checkpoint firewall via SNMP
A: I don’t believe there’s a Community ZenPack for Checkpoint, so you’ll probably need to add a custom template with additional data sources for OIDs of interest.
Q: is it possible to restrict user views?
A: Zenoss Core has fairly simple permissions available, you can use the zenuser account to restrict editing. Zenoss Enterprise has fine-grained ACLs for restricting permissions and would be appropriate for a service provider.
Q: How much memory have you on the demo VM running Zenoss?
A: I can’t speak for Winston, but the VMware appliance uses 1 gig of RAM, and I usually demo with that
Q: In the Event Console, we can remove all the info events and just watch for error and critical events correct?
A: Yes, you can filter by selecting the pull-down “Sev” to leave out lower priorities
Q: Where do I adjust the predefined threshold such as what is indicating as violated for the loaclhost?
A: You can go to the templates for the device, or the device class and edit the Thresholds there
Q: The other question I have is that I tried to monitor a windows 2003 Enterprise server with zenoss. I can only see the cpu graph but not the memory or IO graph. Any ideas?
A: You may need to configure SNMP and WMI to get full coverage for W2k3. Or install snmp-informant
Q: I tried the Performance on my own Zenoss but it only shows CPU. What is the probably cause for this? Would this be down to missing zenpacks?
A: If you’re using the Linux Monitor ZenPack, you’ll probably want to install http://www.zenoss.com/community/projects/zenpacks/linuxmonitoraddon
Q: Will we be creating a cutom datasource?
A: I don’t think we have much time left, I’ll try to give you a quick overview. Go to the templates tab for your device class (or Templates from the individual device)
A: Add a new Template
A: Edit that template
A: You can then add a custom Data Source, whether SNMP or Command (SSH) or something else
A: You can then add Thresholds and Perf Graphs as necessary, the documentation has examples
Q: The new Easy Add GUI permits discovering RANGES of devices – is there an equivalent from the standard GUI or from the zendisc command line?
A: In the UI, go to Add Device and towards the top-right there is an “Easy Add…” choice. This will put you in the Wizard for further devices.
Q: I like zenoss product but it still has a long way to monitor Windows servers… I am using the latest version and it comes back with a bund of missing RRD files
A: Unless you are using the free SNMP-Informant (http://www.snmp-informant.com/), you will need to use WMI in conjunction with the SNMP provided by Microsoft.
Q: Where do I adjust the predefined threshold such as what is indicating as violated for the loaclhost?
A: If you go to the Device class for that device and go to the templates, you can find the templates currently in use. You can alter the original or make a copy of the template. The threshold is set within the template.
Q: does Zenoss work with the same effecincy in windows paltform..??
A: Yes. Monitoring Windows machines is just as efficient as monitoring anything else. SNMP is very lightweight and the WMI monitoring is not much more.
Q: Will Zenoss graph WAN bandwidth Real-Time between routers?
A: Yes. If the bandwidth is exposed for monitoring, you can track the bandwidth. There is a Network Weathermap integration documented by the community (http://www.zenoss.com/Members/may/weathermap) and there is also a Plixer NetFlow ZenPack available in Enterprise (http://www.zenoss.com/product/plixer-scrutinizer) if you want other information.
Q: Will Zenoss report Windows Application & System Event Logs?
A: Yes, if the applications expose their logging in the Windows Event Log. Just configure WMI monitoring and the Windows Events will show up in the Event Console.
Date: 2009-07-02
Q: How can we monitor from our site the connection between a NAS device at customer site and the offsite backup data center?
A: you could add the router at the offsite back up location to the ping class. if the router is not pingable, you will get an alert and you will know connection is down.
Q: How can we monitor a process on a customer’s Windows server which is connected to a monitored NAS ?
A: Windows process monitoring can be accomplished by SNMP. You must enable SNMP in windows. See the admin guide for “How to configure windows devices”.
Q: Does the Zenoss VMAppliance have the zenpack already installed?
A: the Zenoss VMware Appliance is the Zenoss CORE application only. The Zenoss Core-Zenpacks package must be installed separately. The appliance is a good choice if you have only a windows machine available to test out Zenoss. If you have a CentOS, RHEL, or other supported Zenoss Core platform, I recommend you install on that.
Q: in the commercial version, are there any Linux distributions not supported?
A: almost any linux distro can be monitored – if net-snmmp is supported – we can likely monitor it, but each system needs to be tested. Some distributions can present issues due to the lack of a net-snmp binary and/or host resource MIB. If considering Zenoss Enterprise, please ask your sales contact about any specific distributions that you will need to monitor.
Q: Can a particular filesystem for a particular device be ignored for alerst (for example, drives which are naturally full)?
A: yes – there is zProperty called zFileSystemMapIgnoreNames in which you can specify a regex to ignore file systems. see admin guide for more info on zProperties. You can also use alerting rules and event transforms to further customize your alert strategy.
Q: How do you create a default location?
A: click on Locations (in left nav), click on “Down Arrow” beside the “Sub-Locations”, choose “Add New Organizer”
Q: Can I monitor voip on a cisco device?
A: In core, you can monitor syslog and trap events – which will give you some view of your VOIP. Monitoring VOIP may mean different things to different groups. We monitor Cisco IP-SLA in Enterprise, which is a common way to measure VOIP related performance.
Q: Is there any differnce between sorting by “group” and sorting by “system” in regards to Zenoss features?
A: no difference from a feature perspective. These are simply “buckets” in which you can classify your devices. You can then use these “buckets” to help filter your alerting / event rules.
Q: is there a way to add a device manually? Without using the auto-detect feature?
A: Yes. You can choose the “Add Device” link from the left navigation menu. You can also choose add device from the page menu directly within the device class you want to put the device. And lastly, you can add without any modeling by simply setting the “protocol” to “none”.
Q: what is the difference between /Server/Linux and /Server/SSH/Linux?
A: /Server/Linux will perform SNMP based modeling and monitoring, /Server/SSH/Linux will use SSH connectivity to model and monitor your device. SNMP is by far the preferred method but SSH can be used when SNMP is not possible.
Q: Is it possible to add any of the graphs for a device to the portlets?
A: There is a community zenpack that seems to accomplish this task. Please see http://zenpacks.zenoss.org/trac-zenpacks/ and look for “Show Graph Portlet” zenpack.
Q: Under the networks tab in my Zenoss install it auto-discovers many networks that are not actually in my environment that I do not want to monitor. When I remove them they come back the next day. Is there any way to stop that from happening?
A: Add a regex that matches them to zLocalIpAddresses. Any IP that is matched by this regex won’t create an entry in /Networks.
Date: 2009-04-07
Q: if we want to monitoring workstations pc , does some kind of agent of zenoss has to be installed on the workstations? or does the monitoring server needs the admin rights to the workstations?
A: SNMP needs to be running and if you want to get windows events, Zenoss will need admin rights
Q: Can you supply your own map/maps?
A: You can enter any addresses Google maps recognize and use those to generate your maps.
Q: is there known issue running Zenoos on IE 6?
A: IE6's Javascript support is not very robust, we officially support IE7 and Firefox 3.
Q: How to turn on the software?
A: The community version comes fully enable without any keys etc. The Enterprise version is fee based and requires a license agreement beyond GPL
Q: Can we make an automatic discover ??? the full LAN?
A: yes, discovery works by entering the network or networks you wish to monitor and having Zenoss 'discover' your devices. It will ping the networks and attempt to monitor the machines with SNMP or WMI. In the next release (2.4, currently in beta), there will be a setup wizard to make the process even easier.
Q: How easy is it to setup Zenoss to monitor multiple sites from a central location?
A: If the various protocols are open (SNMP, WMI) etc monitoring remote devices is no different then ones that are on the same LAN
Q: Do you recommend RHEL over ubuntu?
A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.
Q: What type of configuration (i'm guessing snmp) to our servers servers is required for zenoss to be able to receive information about the server?
A: The servers will probably need to have either SNMP, SSH or WMI (for Windows) enabled to allow remote monitoring.
Q: How do you tell Zenoss about dependencies so that, for instance a switch goes down, I don't get alerts from the 25 devices connected to the switch that are also in alarm status, because of the switch?
A: Zenoss keeps an internal topology map of the network , so when a router or switch is no longer reachable the devices that connect to it are marked as unavailable as well, suppressing their events based on the more severe event of the router being down.
Q: Is there a good way to monitor a netblock for new devices comming on line using only ping?
Q: or zenping / autodiscovery
A: Once new devices are discovered, you can move them from the /Discovered device class to the /Ping device class so they are only monitored with ping.
Q: Do you recommend Redhat over Ubuntu?
A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.
Q: I was able to add a Device, but does not see details in OS, Hardware and Software. It will be great if you could let us know how this can be setup.
A: You will probably want to review the Getting Started With Zenoss Guide (http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/Getting_Started_with_Zenoss_2.3.pdf) and make sure you have the device in the proper device class and the correct SNMP community string or SSH or WMI credentials are correct.
Q: Can i run my Zenoss on Windows and monitor Linux resources and vice versa?
A: The Zenoss VMware image can be run under VMware Player on Windows or you can run Zenoss natively on Linux. Both platforms can monitor the same devices, Windows, Linux, routers, etc.
Q: Does ZenOSS have an auto-discovery of devices based on IP ranges or Active Directory in Windows?
A: you can specify a subnet range.
Q: I've got one - how does one change the log severity level for a Zenoss daemon, namely Zenactions?
A: You can edit the configuration files for the daemons in $ZENHOME/etc or run the daemons from the commandline with the '-v10' flag to get additional debugging.
Q: Can one do auto-location assignment based on subnet? I.E. can we create a relationship between a subnet and a location group?
A: That is not currently supported. Opened an enhancement request to support it: http://dev.zenoss.org/trac/ticket/4828
Q: What the maximum no. of devices zenoss can monitor
A: The max number hardware dependent. We have both commecial and community install monitoring tens of thousands of device
Q: What is availability in status tab
A: This is the percentage of time that this machine is responding to monitoring.
Q: My network structure seems to be detected automatically, but the hierarchy is all messed up. This essentially breaks the 'Network Map' feature. My heirarchy would look like 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 ... devices in each layer instead of 1
A: There are several tickets related to network discovery of hierarchies, please check out the 2.4 beta and see if this has been resolved and feel free to open a ticket if it has not.
Q: If i add a new device class and then add my device. then add the mibs for that device, how do i correlate the mibs to the device class to collect all the information the device has?
A: The MIBs will be used for translating the descriptions of inbound SNMP traps. MIBs are not required (the messages are just easier to read) and there is no association of MIBs to devices.
Q: Do we need to install any other agent other than genaral SNMP agent to monitor windows 2003 server with all performance data.
A: You will either need SNMP-Informant installed or the standard SNMP and WMI turned on to get full coverage in Core. Enterprise has additional support for only WMI-based monitoring.
Q: The version download from the zenoss site is the community version, right?
A: Correct.
Q: They can show the installation commando again
A: There is a Zenoss Installation Guide available at http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/
Q: I can't seem to get the network map to load on my computer either... on IE or firefox... it's just a white screen how yours looks, even once flash is installed_
A: Please verify that you have entered the proper network address in the "Selected Device or Network" box ('192.168.1.0' is the default).
Q: They can show the installation comman do again
A: There is a Zenoss Installation Guide available at http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/
Q: Can i monitor a specific process running on a linux server from zenoss?
A: Yes. Processes can be monitored via SNMP: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch12s03.html
Q: Does the documentation detail how to set up snmp on the client machines?
A: Yes, the basics are covered. The Getting Started with Zenoss guide and the Administration Guide both have basic information on configuring SNMP. http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/ Depending on the device, you may need to get further documentation from your vendor or distribution.
Q: Is Samba 4 needed for WMI?
A: Zenoss uses code from Samba 4 for WMI monitoring. It is not an installation requirement.
Q: We usually do not admin access to our windows desktops. any way we can still monitor the processes on our desktop?
A: Yes, there is a way to configure your Windows desktops for monitoring without Admin privileges.
Q: How do I stop multiple events from being sent when a device goes down?
A: Duplicate events are already suppressed, events can also be correlated. Please refer to the Admin Guide: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/
Q: It seems most documentation sticks to SNMP v1. Do you recommend putting in the effort needed to move to v2c or v3?
A: Zenoss supports SNMP v2 completely and SNMP v3 OID monitoring but not SNMP v3 traps. SNMP v2 has better performance than v1 and v3 adds additional security features. Most documentation uses SNMP v1 for simplicity.
Q: in my Zenoss installation, networkmap, I can't see nothing probably as I have a class c superneted network like 192.168.200.0/22, is this right? I can see my other networks /24
A: There are several tickets related to issues with non /24 subnets, please check out the 2.4 beta and see if this has been resolved and feel free to open a ticket if it has not.
Q: Matt, What is the name of that open-source snmp agent again? you broke up
A: SNMP-Informant http://www.snmp-informant.com/
Q: Does Zenoss provide CMDB services?
A: Zenoss records all configuration data in an object database that can be accessed through reports, custom reports, the command line, programatically and remotely.
Q: SNMP informant - did you just say it was open source? Pretty sure it's not GPL!
A: That is correct, it is free buy not Open Source or GPL.
Q: The thresholds for the servers parameter like Windows, Linux (free memory, CPU utilization,etc) where is modified ?
A: You can modify these on the device templates under 'Thresholds' or make local copies and modify those.
Q: As should be the snmpd.conf file on the client to see the full information
A: Configuring the snmpd.conf varies from device to device. You may need to get further documentation from your vendor or distribution.
Q: What is the setting to enable collection of software info form linux targets?
A: This varies from distro to distro. Here is a recent blog post for Ubuntu and Debian: http://blog.zenoss.com/2009/02/18/tip-of-the-month-snmp-software-inventory-for-debian-and-ubuntu-machines/
Q: Is there a way to change filesystem tresholds for just one device? i know you can click on specific filesystem and change it there, but imagine you have lot of them
A: You can make a local copy of the template and change it for the device class or create a new device class and make the change there. Devices in the class will use those settings.
Q: How does one change the ping/polling interval for a specific device class? Also, can events from a specific device class be auto-downgraded, e.g. Critical Events --> warnings? (For workstation monitoring)
A: Ping intervals are set for all devices under the Collectors->localhost->Edit.
A: You could add an Event Transform that checks if the device is in a System or Group and downgrade the event accordingly.
Q: How to monitoring application log files?
A: Zenoss supports syslog and Windows event log, but there is not specificly targeted support for logfile monitoring. You could add an SSH call to look for certain strings as an intermediate solution.
Q: For Cisco Routers there are a restriction about the IOS version??
A: None that we're aware of, there are no reports of specific IOS versions not currently working.
Q: Is your product used a lot for workstation monitoring?
A: There are a lot of users using it for monitoring workstations in conjunction with their other monitoring. Since it supports WMI, SSH and SNMP it is easy to monitor workstations.
Q: Here is a long one, is it possible to apply ZenOss to a MSP model where I as a service provider can install a ZenOss collector in my customers site and then have the data forwarded to a central repository in my office.
A: This is a use case for Zenoss Enterprise. Core users will have a lot more manual configuration to support it.
Q: Are there any discovery protocols besides SNMP? Many organizations have become leery about plain-text SNMP, and SNMPv3 is still pretty rare.
A: Discovery in 2.3 can use WMI or SNMP, the 2.4 release is adding SSH as well.
Q: will someone be able to show the installation and use of zenpacks during this seminar?
A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch25s01.html#IntallZenpacks
Q: Can map links be generated between devices in different subnets, e.g. for VPN links?
A: If the interfaces on the devices are aware of the other subnets they will be added. If not there is a HOWTO for manually adding dependencies between devices http://www.zenoss.com/Members/netdata/create-manual-device-dependencys/
Q: In the reports section i do not see any option for doing monthtly reporting and emailing those reports. Is there an option for this
A: There is a command line option that can be run to generate and email the report. Users will put that into cron to be run on a monthly basis
Q: Can reports be auto-emailed on a regular basis?
A: There is a command line option that can be run to generate and email the report. Users will put that into cron to be run on a regular basis.
Q: is there a way to change filesystem util tresholds for just one device ? not for the whole group ?
A: Yes. You can make a local copy of the performance template and edit it.
Q: can you explain a little about eventclasses and eventclasskeys
A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch11.html
Q: What is the best way to troubleshoot WMI connect errors
A: There is a Community HOWTO: http://www.zenoss.com/community/wiki/TroubleshootingCommonErrorsSeenWhenMonitoringWindowsDevices/
Q: Sales type question - for Zenoss Enterprise or Pro is there a recurring annual cost or is this a one time thing with seperate annual maint fee?
A: those products are licensed on a recurring annual subscription
Q: Does Zenoss monitor web transactions as well?
A: that is support in the Commercial versions.
Q: Can the collectors be created on distributed Lan's where they have conflicting IP structure and send the data to the central core over unsecure web through an open port?
A: we support that in the Commercial version
Q: RHEL vs Ubuntu...which is better?
A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.
Q: Can we monitor a device by ping only. For example an exchange edge server where I just want to know if it goes offline.
A: craig, there is a "ping only' class that just does ping availability
Q: If I understand this correctly, then Eventclasskey is used to more quickly map an event to a class otherwise events are compared to all eventclasses?
A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch11s10.html Unknown events will map to /Unknown, but you can create a new mapping for them.
Q: could i talk with you offline in regards to the adding device and mibs quetion
A: feel free to followup with community@zenoss.com
Q: I find the mib adding to be cumbersome. Is there a plan to make an "upload and add MIB files" section similar to a browse and upload screen for a webpage or web-mail application?
A: Feel free to enter an enhancement ticket or post on the threads requesting input for future releases: http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?t=9296
Q: Can auto-discovered devices be automatically assigned to groups based on the device name? For example all discovered routers with a name xxx-edge-yyy could be grouped together?
A: There is not currently support for this out of the box, but there is a Community HOWTO that outlines a way to automate the process: http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/jane/auto_disco_paper.pdf
Q: what the maximum no. of devices zenoss can monitor
A: There are no fixed limits, the max number is hardware dependent. We have both commecial and community installs monitoring tens of thousands of device.
Q:how to monitor os process like a custom java appication with zenoss
A: There is a ZenJMX ZenPack for monitoring Java applications. http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch25s02.html#zenjmx
Q: Does Zenoss monitor the status of services running on a server?
A: Yes. Windows services and IP services may be monitored in addition to process monitoring.
Q:Does the snmp-informant come in a MSI format so I can push it out to all windows devices through active directory?
A: There is an automated process from www.snmp-informant.com: http://www.wtcs.org/informant/kb/2004-003.htm
Q: what is the 'simple setting' to allow software info to be collected for linux box? I couldn't find in docs?
A: Go to zCollectorPlugins and make sure zenoss.snmp.HRSWInstalledMap is enabled
Q: What determines which devices show up on the map? are they only the snmp ones? this is not helpful for me. is it something I can tweak?
A: Devices show up on the map if they are in a location that is on the map. The location will appear on the map if it has an address that is resolvable. SNMP is unrelated to map display
Q: Is there a version that knows about topology (like certain tivoli nms) where I can see the layer 1/2 connectivity such as server connected to switch1, switch1 connected to switch2, switch2 connected to router? I know it can be done, netcool/ibm have shown that...the switch has enough data via snmp to determine topology...
A: We do not currently do Layer 2 mapping. However we do currently have layer 3 mapping
