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57392 Views 9 Replies Latest reply: Feb 19, 2010 10:22 AM by Ryan Matte RSS
mcking Newbie 5 posts since
Feb 16, 2010
Currently Being Moderated

Feb 18, 2010 11:37 AM

Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

I'm trying to do 2 things with the Zenoss Appliance.

 

  1. Back up the Zenoss Appliance using Netbackup.  The Netbackup processes run under inetd, but there is no inetd installed in the appliance or available in the conary repository.  The appliance repository also has no gcc or other dev tools available, so compiling is not an option either.  Is it OK to add another repository to conary to pull in something like xinetd?
  2. Setup a firewall.  Is there documentation available on the proper way to setup iptables in rPath appliances?
  • Andrea Consadori ZenossMaster 863 posts since
    Feb 11, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. Feb 18, 2010 1:45 PM (in response to mcking)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    rpath appliance is good for test not for production..

    instead install a centos vm and zenoss rpm on it... if you read the install guide is very easy and you will have a powerfoul installation.

  • Ryan Matte ZenossMaster 653 posts since
    Mar 26, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    3. Feb 18, 2010 3:29 PM (in response to mcking)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    As Andrea stated, the appliance is fine for demo/testing but absolute garbage for production.  I am monitoring 352 devices (17.5k datapoints) on my Zenoss install and it's barely even breathing hard.  Here are the options that you need to change to enhance performance: docs/DOC-2521.

     

    Install whatever distro you want (CentOS and Ubuntu Server are the best tested distros), then install Zenoss, and perform those tweaks.

  • Ryan Matte ZenossMaster 653 posts since
    Mar 26, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. Feb 18, 2010 5:14 PM (in response to mcking)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    Honestly, you have no idea whether any tweaking was done to the Appliance.  It's not a clean install, it's a ready to go install with who knows what changes already done.  The way you're describing it, you'd think that the appliance were "magical" or something, but that's not the case.  If a clean install of Linux with a clean install of Zenoss was outperformed by the appliance, then it's obviously because of some configuration differences on the appliance.  When I said that it's not good for production I wasn't referring to the performance.  I was referring to the fact that people who use the appliance always run in to all sorts of crazy weird issues that no one runs in to when not using the appliance.  Do a fresh install, do the tweaks that I pasted, and see how it goes.

     

    If you had bad luck with the CentOS/RPM install then try Ubuntu Server with the Zenoss Stack Installer.  That's what I'm using and I'm monitoring a ton of devices on my Zenoss servers with no performance issues.

     

    I'll also point out that I helped someone out in the Zenoss chatroom the other day whose Zenoss pages were taking like 2 minutes each to load.  He was monitoring a large number of devices, similar to yourself.  I had him run through the tweaks listed here: docs/DOC-2521.  After he ran through the tweaks he described it as "screaming fast".

  • jmp242 ZenossMaster 4,060 posts since
    Mar 7, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    6. Feb 19, 2010 8:46 AM (in response to Ryan Matte)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    I want to chime in and agree with Ryan entirely. Users on the Appliance

    for any amount of production use always seem to have issues. Often, they

    end up re-installing on CENTOS or RHEL. In fact, Matt Ray (Zenoss

    Employee) has hinted that around the 2.6 release timeframe, Zenoss Inc

    is planning on changing the appliance to run on CENTOS.

     

    I haven't run CENTOS + Zenoss on a VM, but it your experience is not

    typical of other users. I don't know why you're getting such bad

    performance, but certainly tuning the CENTOS install would be a good

    place to start.

    --

    James Pulver

    Information Technology Area Supervisor

    LEPP Computer Group

    Cornell University

     

     

     

    Ryan Matte wrote, On 2/18/2010 5:11 PM:

    Honestly, you have no idea whether any tweaking was done to the Appliance.  It's not a clean install, it's a ready to go install with who knows what changes already done.  The way you're describing it, you'd think that the appliance were "magical" or something, but that's not the case.  If a clean install of Linux with a clean install of Zenoss was outperformed by the appliance, then it's obviously because of some configuration differences on the appliance.  When I said that it's not good for production I wasn't referring to the performance.  I was referring to the fact that people who use the appliance always run in to all sorts of crazy weird issues that no one runs in to when not using the appliance.  Do a fresh install, do the tweaks that I pasted, and see how it goes.

    >

  • Andrea Consadori ZenossMaster 863 posts since
    Feb 11, 2008
    Currently Being Moderated
    8. Feb 19, 2010 10:15 AM (in response to mcking)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    Hi,

    i told you to make a centos fresh install only because vm is based on centos so a migration will be very easy using zenbackup and zenrestore.

  • Ryan Matte ZenossMaster 653 posts since
    Mar 26, 2009
    Currently Being Moderated
    9. Feb 19, 2010 10:22 AM (in response to mcking)
    Re: Questions on the Zenoss Appliance

    Yeh, you could use zenbackup and zenrestore to import everything over from the appliance to the fresh install and test with it.  Maybe you can run both until you get a fresh install working properly and then make the switch over.  If that's not possible then have fun with the appliance.

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