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stldave Newbie 4 posts since
Jun 26, 2007
Currently Being Moderated

Jun 26, 2007 12:12 PM

Device/Service Dependencies

Hi,
I've been looking at Zenoss recently and like what I see. It could be a good fit to replace our existing Nagios system.

However, the lack of layer2 network dependencies is pretty much a show-stopper for us. I understand that it is being worked on and I understand that it is a tricky problem to solve as there are so many variables and different situations you have to detect and model.

I have two suggestions :-

[*] Allow setting of dependencies manually. Yes, it's not as sexy as automated discovery, but it is easy to implement, it doesn't have to be mandatory (i.e. manual 'parent' settings can override or augment auto-discovery data for a device). For those who Zenoss works well for now, they don't have to set any overrides. Even when you get automated Layer 2 discovery working, is it likely to work in all situations? Discovering which devices are behind a switch is probably very different to determining which physical host a virtual machine resides on for instance.

[*] Expose the dependency information to the administrator. While graphical maps would be a 'nice to have', they are not necessary. It is reassuring for an administrator simply to be told textually that host 'x' has been detected as being behind router 'y'.

Am I missing something fundamental to the way Zenoss works as to why these can't be done? Or is there a way of doing so outside of the GUI?
  • edahl Rank: Green Belt 402 posts since
    Feb 14, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. Jun 26, 2007 6:06 PM (in response to stldave)
    Device/Service Dependencies
    Dave,

    Layer-2 is tricky and we want to do it only a question of resources,
    time, thinking, etc. Does Nagios have a way to deal with this?
    (maybe manually?). We have a general dependents dependencies
    relation on every managed object in the system. There is no way to
    edit this from the UI and it won't effect the way zenping works for
    instance.

    Of course you could configure the relationship i describe outside of
    the UI using zendmd or the zope ZMI and then modify zenping to
    respect the information. Not an easy task in itself.

    -EAD

    On Jun 26, 2007, at 12:12 PM, stldave wrote:

     

     

    Hi,
    I've been looking at Zenoss recently and like what I see. It could
    be a good fit to replace our existing Nagios system.

    However, the lack of layer2 network dependencies is pretty much a
    show-stopper for us. I understand that it is being worked on and I
    understand that it is a tricky problem to solve as there are so
    many variables and different situations you have to detect and model.

    I have two suggestions :-

    [*] Allow setting of dependencies manually. Yes, it's not as sexy
    as automated discovery, but it is easy to implement, it doesn't
    have to be mandatory (i.e. manual 'parent' settings can override or
    augment auto-discovery data for a device). For those who Zenoss
    works well for now, they don't have to set any overrides. Even when
    you get automated Layer 2 discovery working, is it likely to work
    in all situations? Discovering which devices are behind a switch is
    probably very different to determining which physical host a
    virtual machine resides on for instance.

    [*] Expose the dependency information to the administrator. While
    graphical maps would be a 'nice to have', they are not necessary.
    It is reassuring for an administrator simply to be told textually
    that host 'x' has been detected as being behind router 'y'.

    Am I missing something fundamental to the way Zenoss works as to
    why these can't be done? Or is there a way of doing so outside of
    the GUI?

    ------------------------
    Dave Sexton







    _______________________________________________
    zenoss-dev mailing list
    zenoss-dev@zenoss.org
    http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-dev


    _______________________________________________
    zenoss-dev mailing list
    zenoss-dev@zenoss.org
    http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-dev
  • edahl Rank: Green Belt 402 posts since
    Feb 14, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    3. Jun 27, 2007 4:26 PM (in response to stldave)
    Device/Service Dependencies
    Got it. Is manually configuring the dependency structure like this
    doable? Seems like at any level of scale this would get totally out
    of hand. Zenoss has lots of different daemons doing different things
    so they need to be coordinated as to what the dependency structure
    is. Most likely we will do this though event analysis and
    correlation. Maybe there is a simpler way though. Clearly with a
    big network you can't manually build a map of the network! :)

    -EAD

    On Jun 27, 2007, at 4:14 AM, stldave wrote:

     

     

    Thanks for the response,

    Nagios takes the exact opposite approach from Zenoss in this
    regard. All such dependencies are manual. They are built up as a
    tree with the Nagios server as the root. Each monitored host
    becomes a node on the tree and you explicitly state what each
    host's parent nodes are.

    For example, we have a server that is plugged into a monitored
    switch, so I set the switch as the parent of the server (and other
    hosts), then a router as the perent of the switch (and other hosts/
    switches) and finally the nagios server is the parent of the router.

    If we lose total connectivity to the switch, we know not to flood
    the server admins with alerts about their server (though we may
    just drop them a single one as a notification).

    ------------------------
    Dave Sexton







    _______________________________________________
    zenoss-dev mailing list
    zenoss-dev@zenoss.org
    http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-dev


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  • edahl Rank: Green Belt 402 posts since
    Feb 14, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. Jul 2, 2007 1:46 PM (in response to stldave)
    Device/Service Dependencies
    Got it. Automated + manual model population is a big part of 2.0.
    Check out the locking stuff. It let's you mix the two.

    -EAD

    On Jun 28, 2007, at 4:41 AM, stldave wrote:

     

     


    edahl wrote:

     

     

    Clearly with a
    big network you can't manually build a map of the network! :)



    I beg to differ, there are many really large Nagios installations
    out there that either do not use dependencies or must have done it
    manually. The way it's implemented is just as an additional field
    in the host definition. If your network is adequately documented,
    the information is easy to find at the time you add the node into
    the monitoring system.

    Admittedly, Nagios does not cope well with dependency 'loops', as
    I believe that Zenoss does. I think a good work-around would be to
    do automated discovery as best as possible but allow the
    administrator the ability to manually override this on a host-by-
    host basis.

    ------------------------
    Dave Sexton







    _______________________________________________
    zenoss-dev mailing list
    zenoss-dev@zenoss.org
    http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-dev



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  • eame0002 Newbie 4 posts since
    Jun 28, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    6. Jul 4, 2007 7:48 PM (in response to edahl)
    Just my two cents worth
    Service and host dependencies is a show stopper for us as well. I'm currently looking at zenoss to replace our nagios setup and we use service and host dependencies to control the flood of SMS and email messages we'd otherwise get when a switch fails or a physical host with a large number of virtual IP addresses and services fails.
  • jkgainey Rank: White Belt 25 posts since
    Jun 14, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    7. Jul 26, 2007 1:53 PM (in response to eame0002)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    I'm confused by this thread. Is there or is there not a way to create dependencies between services and hosts?
  • jbailey Newbie 4 posts since
    Jun 21, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    8. Jul 30, 2007 11:50 AM (in response to jkgainey)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    I am confused by this thread as well.

    According to this thread, this is possible. Yet it's being said that dependencies aren't handled, any conclusive answers?
  • mwatson Rank: White Belt 33 posts since
    Apr 22, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    9. Jul 30, 2007 6:08 PM (in response to jbailey)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    I had dependencies working in 1.x, and it worked as an automatic system based on the devices Route table it spewed out through SNMP, zenoss seemed to built its dependency tree with that. The problem I had with it then was that my Cisco PIX 515e Which acts as a router between several networks we have does not give out its routing table through snmp as a "security feature".

    In 2.x though - you can now manually add routing data to devices, however I can;t seem to get the dependencies working at all in 2.x, not even as they were in 1.x.

    When I was using 1.x I was using the VMware appliance and with 2.x I installed it on an Ubuntu server box, so its also possibly something on my system thats configured wrong... not sure.
  • shkodich Newbie 1 posts since
    Jan 13, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    10. Jan 13, 2009 2:25 AM (in response to mwatson)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    i think that full-automatic building newtwork map is mistake.
    this mistake and absence ability to create map on layer 2 (OSI) become show-stopper for me too.
    reason:
    1)map on layer 2 is very helpfull in monitoring and in solving network problems
    2)full-automatic building map based only on configuration which recieved from device is mistake because, every device in large networks can be administrated by many people and each of them can made mistake in configuration. Each network device can work not properly (bad power supply etc.) and need reboot, after each reboot apear risk of load old,non-accurate configuration.

    i suggest that zenoss must have:
    1)layer 2 map-building based on discovering mac-addresses
    2)building of map must have automatic creation with ability manual correction

    And notice that developers in this topic give promises that map will be fixed in branch 2.0 but already 2.3 have been released with unfinished map. sad
  • kingpin Rank: Green Belt 109 posts since
    Sep 22, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    11. Jan 29, 2009 4:55 AM (in response to shkodich)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    I’m waiting for layer 2 dependencies as well. I also feel it is a must for Zenoss or any serious network monitoring system for that matter. Luckily Zenoss currently does have layer 3 dependencies, it builds a layer 3 network map from the routing tables, etc. Although layer 3 does not cover everything, it still is very important. A kind person from the community has written a very useful tool you can use to verify the layer 3 path from the Zenoss server to a particular device.
    http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?t=6761

    Building a layer 2 table based on mac-address is not a very reliable solution. Layer 2 discovery via CDP and LLDP (cfr. Ciscoworks) would be a more rugged and ideal solution. I agree that manually configurable dependencies would be a usable intermediate solution (cfr. OPMananger). Or maybe a combination of manual dependencies with layer 2 discovery could be a complete picture. At the moment I use event transforms to tackle layer 2 but it is a painstaking way to do it :
    http://www.zenoss.com/Members/netdata/create-a-device-dependency/
  • mtrojahn Newbie 1 posts since
    May 14, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    12. May 14, 2009 2:01 PM (in response to kingpin)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    Hello,

    I know I'm reviving this rather old thread but that's the exact reason why I'm doing it... Since the thread is old and I can't find any updated information on this I decided to ask if layer-2 dependencies are already supported on Zenoss 2.4+ (even if manually)?

    I have a very large layer-2 monitored network (currently under Nagios monitoring using Parent/Child relationships) and I know Zenoss automatically detects layer-3 topology... But that's not enough... Layer-2 topology most likely have to be done by hand to avoid SMS flooding...

    Is there a way on the current version to do this? Even if by hand? Because this pretty much decides if I'll be able to use this software or not on my current environment...

    Thanks in advance for any replies,

    Marcelus Trojahn
  • mlist Rank: White Belt 49 posts since
    Mar 27, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    13. Jul 24, 2009 3:14 AM (in response to mtrojahn)
    RE: Just my two cents worth
    I'm very interested in this topic too.
    I would appreciate if some Zenoss developer or architect would give us some information about the intention to insert this great future in the roadmap.
  • Matt Ray Rank: Zen Master 2,484 posts since
    Apr 5, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    14. Jul 27, 2009 9:09 PM (in response to mlist)
    Re: Device/Service Dependencies
    This feature is high on our feature request list but we have not
    gotten to it yet because we have fairly limited development resources
    (5 developers). Much of the recent work has been targeted at
    improving stability and reliability with each release while squeezing
    in new features where we can. As seen in the "What do you want in
    King Crab" thread (http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?t=9296),
    this is quite popular request and we are very much aware of it.

    Thanks,
    Matt Ray
    Zenoss Community Manager
    community.zenoss.com
    mray@zenoss.com

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    zenoss-dev mailing list
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