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31663 Views 2 Replies Latest reply: Sep 19, 2009 8:39 PM by mwoodling RSS
mwoodling Rank: White Belt
mwoodling
46 posts since
Aug 10, 2008
Currently Being Moderated

Sep 17, 2009 7:05 PM

Easy-add is lame-ish

Sorry to be negative here, but I had such high hopes for easy-add when I first saw it and I found it less than useful and I think it would be very confusing if I were a new user.

 

The "Manually find devices" option:

  1. It didn't try the 2nd SNMP community name in the list
  2. What the F is "device type"?  I am a newly sort-of-experienced user and am using device classes like there's no tomorrow.  What class is "Windows Server (SNMP)"?  Trial and error shows it is /Device/Server/Windows which is useless to me because nothing is in that class (I have multiple Windows forests and also manage non-domain servers that need their own class due to different authentication usernames).  How is a new user to know where to look for the device?  There isn't anything in the GUI that is labeled "Windows Server (SNMP)".
  3. Why can't I choose ANY CLASS?
  4. If you let me choose a class, I wouldn't then have to move the new devices into a class which is extremely processor intensive.

 

The "Autodiscover devices" option:

  1. If you would just let me choose a class I wouldn't have to remember and specify that gobbledygook username with the highly obfuscated pasword I created in the domain for security reasons.
  2. If you let me choose a class, I wouldn't then have to move the new devices into a class which is extremely slow and processor intensive.
  3. Where do the devices end up after they are added?  /Devices/Discovered?  How does the new user who is likely to use "Easy Add" going to know this?

 

Thanks for allowing me to vent.  On the plus side, event management in general in Zenoss is a thing of beauty.

 

Matt

Zenoss 2.4.5 stack-installed

CentOS 5.2

  • jcurry ZenossMaster
    jcurry
    1,021 posts since
    Apr 15, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. Nov 15, 2010 9:38 AM (in response to mwoodling)
    Re: Easy-add is lame-ish

    2 comments here...

     

    I believe Zenoss understand the need for better classification at discovery time and I am hoping that something will be materialising in the King Crab, 2.5 release when I get to play with the beta.

     

    I did some work in this area back at the beginning of the year and wrote a paper that I have uploaded to docs/DOC-3540 .

     

    The paper mainly focuses on the auto-classification aspect and has a couple of scripts that I will attach to this discussion.  dev_to_class assigns a device to a device class - you change the code to affect the decision criteria.  disco_to_ping was an attempt to classify those devices auto-discovered by doing a network discovery (so devices end up in the /Discovered class) and move them to the /Ping class.

     

    The other aspect that I played around with was to perform script-based discovery with a Comma Separated Values (CSV) input file defining devices to be discoverd - this includes pretty-well any zProperty you want to assign.  This is jc_batch_load_2.py .  It dates back to Zenoss 2.3 and there were some intermittent issues at the time that Zenoss thought should now be fixed but I haven't been back and checked...

     

    If you try these, please let me know if they work for you!

     

    Update - November 15th 2010 - dev_to_class.py modified as dev_to_class_3.0.py ro work with Zenoss 3.x - code link below.  It seems to throw some error messages complaining about cataloging but it does work and do the requested class moves.

     

    Although the script  dev_to_class_3.0.py script does  move devices to classes, this should be a standard  function of Zenoss.  There was a rumour when I first did this work 18  months back that something similar "was being incorporated into Zenoss",  but we have had 2 major updates since then and no progress.....

     

    Any thoughts, Zenoss?

     

    Cheers,

    Jane

     

    Cheers,

    Jane

     

    Message was edited by: jcurry

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  • mwoodling Rank: White Belt
    mwoodling
    46 posts since
    Aug 10, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    2. Sep 19, 2009 8:39 PM (in response to jcurry)
    Re: Easy-add is lame-ish

    The work you've done is lovely, Jane.  Thanks for the detailed response.  Here's what I am hoping for Zenoss as far as auto-discovery and discovery-to-class in the future:

     

    1. Rules-based discovery, something like configuring alerts, except that the list of rules is processed top-down and the list can be freely resequenced.  I want to be able to use any combination of a number of criteria to be determine how a device is classed, including but not limited to:
      • Device name pattern (discoverable by reverse or forward DNS, SNMP host name)
      • IP address or address-range
      • SNMP OID
      • WMI criteria
      • Telnet or SSH command discovery (run commands on the device and look for particular responses)
    2. Only add devices to Zenoss that match a set of criteria.  For me, this is typically that the devices answers to SNMP using a particular set of community names.  I am sure others could think of a much for complete set of possible criteria.
    3. Periodic auto-discovery of elgible IP address ranges or using ARP tables, routing tables (like HP Network Node Manager) and Cisco CDP or LLDP.

     


    Matt

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