Hello everyone, Even after installing Zenoss, I am not totally certain of what Zenoss can do for me, and how, it's absolutely confusing to me. So I'll try to post what I have understood from IRC and by reading forum posts and the documentation, and would be very happy if someone could correct me.
In what follows, I'll use the term "server", for the central Zenoss server and "clients" for the machines that I want to make an inventory of. ⢠The server runs on many common platforms (in my case Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 Desktop). ⢠The clients can be either Windows or *nix machines and do not need to have a special software installed to be recognized by Zenoss. o Non Windows clients should have snmp enabled for Zenoss to be able to retrieve information other than ping information. o Windows clients can be âcheckedâ via two methods: either snmp or via WMI. When WMI is enabled on the Windows machine, Zenoss can retrieve some information out of WMI. This is achieved through the module Zenwin which needs to be installed on the server. (or is it installed by default?) The Zenwin module runs on all the platforms that are supported by Zenoss. o For some reasons, Zenoss can login via SSH or telnet into the devices, but cannot use either of the two protocols to retrieve information? ⢠There is an Enterprise edition of Zenoss which provides more features. Which ones, I could not figure out clearly. What I could figure out clearly is that Zenoss Enterprise has some support options. Now, if I understood this right, but I might obviously be totally wrong, I am still quite far away from my goal. Here is what I have done in my environment: ⢠Install Zenoss (from the tarball) on a Ubuntu Feisty 7.04 Desktop (only the zensyslog service is not running because of some port conflict; I was told on IRC I can live without, so I will for the moment) ⢠Have Zenoss discover some of my subnets. For some, it worked fine, but some other, I could not manage to explain to Zenoss that my subnets are not on /24 masks but on /20 masks and that I would like it to accept my subnets. Well, letâs say I can live with that, too, for the moment, but it could be one of the causes for some of my problems. ⢠When a device is discovered, I see some information, but generally not even the operating system, and I am not quite sure how to explain to it how to log in to a Windows machine correctly (I set the zWinPassword and username, but this does not seem to have a big effect on it). No idea where to set the *nix login passwords (for SSH and telnet), is it zCommandPassword? If yes, it has had no effect on my discovery. This is where I stand at the moment. I do not know if I need to buy the Enterprise Edition for the features I need (basically, make an inventory of my network, providing Zenoss with all the login credentials needed), or if core does all I need, or if Zenoss is not at all what I am looking for. In that case, what can one do with Zenoss? I would be very grateful if a generous soul could give me some clarification on the matter, and I am sure that it might help other people out here trying to understand what exactly Zenoss is made for. Have a nice day, Felix. -------------------- m2f -------------------- Read this topic online here: http://community.zenoss.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=10806#10806 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ zenoss-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users
