rainos wrote:
> Interesting..
>
> Can you provide a little more information on the extensibility of the Zenoss
> model and comparisons of implementing a management system using Zenoss
> compared with something like WBEM (Open Pegasus).
I'll try, although I'm sure that other people will have widely varying
experiences, expectations and opinions. :)
Let me start off by saying that I think that due to the way that Zenoss is
constructed, I think that it is quite compatible with the whole philosophy of
CIM -- especially if you examine the implementation of SNMP into the product.
I say this because they nicely separate out the concepts of "specification" (eg
a MIB easily viewed through /zport/Mib) vs "implementation" (eg a device with
data populated using SNMP, /zport/dmd/devices/... ).
From an extensibility perspective, I think that there are two things that
Zenoss has going for it that make it a better approach than (say) OpenPegasus:
a) Zenoss uses python rather than C++ to implement it, so it's faster to
add functionality
b) Zenoss uses Zope as the foundation for their GUI, database and package
management system. The OpenPegasus approach, IMO, is re-inventing a wheel that
seems to be working quite well, although they might not have had that option
when they started the project. :)
WRT extensibility, Zenoss could benefit from more templates (eg code,
implementation examples) and more extensive and detailed documentation for
developer use. Of course, you can say that about pretty much any product, I
suppose! :)
rainos wrote:
>
> I'm struggling to understand the pros/cons over using a app like Zenoss
> compared to a more open standards based approach. Seems to me that we're more
> likley to find COTS application providers e.g. A database like Sybase can
> ship with a standard WBEM CIM data model that allows it to be managed
> (monitored, Controlled and configured) by a WBEM management application.
>
> With Zenoss, it seems we would always have to write our own SNMP Agent that
> would interface with internal APIs to actually perform management functions.
NB: If I mention the word 'you', I mean it in the more generic 'the person
who needs to get job X done'. :)
Unfortunately, there just isn't any magic bullet for the sysadmin trying to
make sense of huge number of technologies and systems out there. At some point
in time you'll be forced to write a plugin or something more extensive in order
to get the type of information you need to understand what's going on. I'm
going to go a little further and say that it's more inevitable when you develop
Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that are specific to your company's processes.
For instance, "how many transactions of type X do we receive from outside
partners?" may or may not be important to you, but it will be crucial to
someone out there. :)
To quickly address the comment regarding standards, like the saying goes,
the beautiful thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
:) (Andrew Tannebaum?) Zenoss is using SNMP as the standard to monitor and
probe, and I happen to thing that it represents a good pragmatic choice as it
allows them to develop a good system quickly. SNMP does have much better
out-of-the-box support on the client side than WBEM, and so SNMP represents a
better all-around choice for auto-discovery, which is one of the big
attractions of Zenoss.
I think that Zenoss is in a good position to be able to extend Zenoss in the
next couple of years to provide more CIM support. IMO (for what it's worth!
:), the value in CIM isn't so much in the client support but on the management
server side.
kells
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Read this topic online here:
http://community.zenoss.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10382#10382
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