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48622 Views 5 Replies Latest reply: Dec 15, 2008 11:19 AM by Andreas Trawoeger RSS
shoa Rank: White Belt 41 posts since
Jan 1, 2008
Currently Being Moderated

Dec 11, 2008 12:23 PM

What sort of hardware is needed to run zenoss?

Is anybody out there who is successfully running zenoss against some 700 nodes? 500 of which are windows?

What hardware configuration do you recommend?

I am planing to use CentOS as the zenoss platform.
  • jmp242 ZenossMaster 4,060 posts since
    Mar 7, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    2. Dec 11, 2008 1:46 PM (in response to shoa)
    What sort of hardware is needed to run zenoss?
    Hmmm, did you see
    http://www.zenoss.com/product/case-studies/case-study-rackspace/ ?

    I'm not sure anyone from rackspace can comment or even reads this forum,
    but it seems you can get large device numbers monitored with Zenoss. I
    expect it's a lot to do with tuning, and perhaps multiple data
    collectors (which isn't simple with Core).

    There was a thread about the size of Core installs and the number of
    devices monitored, but I'm darned if I can find it now...

    I think with 500 windows devices using WMI, you're either going to need
    a long cycle time, a really powerful box with 32-64GB RAM and multiple
    local collectors, or you'll need to work out (and this isn't easy, or
    well explained, but there are some pointers on the Wiki) how to get
    distributed collectors working with Core.

    Or I'm totally wrong. I don't monitor that many devices with Zenoss as
    we're very slowly migrating to it. We've got 57 devices, about 30 of
    which are wireless access points.

    Finally, if you want a largish install to go easily, I think you'll need
    to get some professional help. That might be a consultant, or Zenoss
    Enterprise of some flavor.
    --
    James Pulver
    Information Technology Area Supervisor
    LEPP Computer Group
    Cornell University



    shoa wrote, On 12/11/2008 1:30 PM:

     

     

    Sorry for the duplicate subject, it looks like many have dealt with it unsuccessfully in the past...

    I am just getting too frustrated, I have made multiple hardware improvements and applied every new release, including 2.3, but I can't get Zenoss up and running, without daemons crashing and UI coming to an unworkable halt... Never mind having a restful night.

    The Zenoss idea is the best I have seen, but it just doesn't work.







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  • Chris Krough Rank: White Belt 16 posts since
    Apr 22, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    4. Dec 12, 2008 10:24 AM (in response to shoa)
    Re: What sort of hardware is needed to run zenoss?

    "jmp242" wrote:

     


    http://www.zenoss.com/product/case-studies/case-study-rackspace/ ?



    I can provide some general information.

    Depending on the number of OIDs you are collecting for those 700 nodes, you may need to go with a distributed model. The important numbers to consider are the number of OIDs being collected and the frequency of your polling. A collector with 8 cores, 32GB of RAM, and 6 15K rpm drives in RAID10 will support around 50,000 OIDs every 5 minutes and will have an average IOWait of around 20%. Much more load than that and we've found that IOWait spikes dramatically and the system becomes unstable/unresponsive. The Zenoss processes themselves don't really require much RAM, but having RAM available for buffering helps you coast through disk IO spikes.

    There are some storage tweaks you can apply to squeeze more performance out of the system.
    - Monitor the disk usage with an application like IOSTAT or SAR and adjust your RAID controller bias accordingly.
    - Mount your /opt/zenoss/perf directory on it's own RAID10 array, and set "noatime" in fstab for that mount
    - Mount /opt/zenoss/perf with 'data=writeback' if you are using ext3, you'll get a performance boost but you lose some reliabilty


    Hope that helps some. If you can determine the number of OIDs and your polling frequency I may be able to give you a starting point for your hardware.


    Chris
  • Andreas Trawoeger Rank: Green Belt 109 posts since
    Apr 10, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. Dec 15, 2008 11:19 AM (in response to Chris Krough)
    Re: What sort of hardware is needed to run zenoss?

    "shoa" wrote:

     

    You have always been very helpful. I should clarify that most Windows machines are SNMP monitored and only some 30 servers need WMI. And you are right, zenoss needs a lot of tuning, and I have been doing it for the past year, but I am about to give up, I counted on the 2.3 to be the answer to my frustrations, but it appears that the multitude of topics on this forum is a testimony to zenoss' lack of robustness.


    The difficulty with Zenoss is that it can become very I/O bound. We are monitoring 640 devices and about 20.000 data points on an old dual Xeon single core server with 4 GB of RAM. Main reason why we are currently in the process of upgrading to a new dual quad core system with 16 GB for Zenoss isn't that we urgently need more CPU power or more RAM. The reason is that Zenoss currently is roasting the two mirrored 72 GB disk it uses for data storage.

    20.000 data points means updating 20.000 RRD files every 5 minutes and if your storage isn't able to handle that kind of load your Zenoss system will become very sluggish and unresponsive.

    So my advice for anybody who wants to monitor lots of data points in Zenoss is: Get the best storage system you can effort and don't settle with anything less than a RAID 5 with battery buffered write cache. Once you have done that choose the CPU and RAM size that fits the price category of your storage system and you should end up with a decent Zenoss system for you needs.

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