BenWilson wrote: > > sbrownian wrote: > > > > Sure, if you have to support/fix/tweak a product like this to make it work > > right in the first place. > > > > I've evaluated other netmon packages (like the one from Fluke that came out > > several years ago,) and it was pretty much a 'push button' operation. > > (Also âWhats Up Goldâ comes to mind..) > > > > Yes, they have some glitches, but not to the point where you have to be > > intimate with the OS and fluent in whatever backend database is used to > > support the product. > > > > > The problem with other netmon packages is they do not do what Zenoss does. > Ping checks and sending email are easy, and next to worthless to me. Being > able to effortlessly monitor system resource usage - per process - of custom > application across servers correlated with load balancing statistics is > something else entirely. Zenoss has some issues, I'm just happy to have a > product that will give me the data I need to make informed infrastructure > changes.
Actually there are a number of netmon packages that do what you mention, not just ping checks and email notifications. As well as one in particular that I can think of that uses agents to do promiscuous mode sniffing on the wire to discover stuff that doesn't even have layer three protocols running! (I'd like to see you try to discover MAC addresses, BPDUs and other layer 2 protocol stuff with Zenoss and then place them in the device database!?!) Of course, they aren't free, either. I am starting to gradually get used to Zenoss, and it reminds me of a program written by GE to setup the RTUs for their SCADA substation automation line. It is very complex and convoluted, but in so being it is very powerful and includes the ability to be very precise. I spent two weeks in training to run that GE software. The documentation is sadly lacking. The only way that I could successfully transfer that knowledge to another person when I returned to work was by taking close to 100 screen shots of the various configuration tasks and basically building my own documentation to supplement the factory provided stuff. In my opinion, the same applies to Zenoss. It is very flexible, and if you know the 'guts' of the program, you can pretty much make it do whatever you want, but the same caveats apply to the documentation. At least, if you have someone around that KNOWS the software, you can have them check your work. You can do everything by the book but it still won't work right and you haven't a clue why. I have had several experiences with the GE software where the instructor comes over, takes a look and says something along the line: "Ooops, you are doing every thing right, but the software seems to have a problem." Unfortunately, Zenoss seems to fall into that category all too often, but there is nobody around to say "It ain't you, bro, you aren't going nuts." For example, I've been trying to build a report using the multigraph functions. I've been able to thrash around to the point where I have my report built, the datapoints picked out, the grouping done, etc. I've gone through the manual section on multigraphs a half a dozen times, and I think, (but don't know for sure,) that I've gotten it right. A quick search on the forums leads to several threads that address the fact that multigraph indeed has problems and several scripts have been bandied about to fix the problem. I've tried them, with no luck. The last message was that a person finally got them running by using a script or procedure that somebody else cooked up, but they haven't bothered to put that information up on the forum yet. I cannot, in good faith, even demo this software to our IT department at this point in the products' development. Part of the problem is browser support, as I've mentioned earlier. I have talked to a person from Zenoss sales who's answer was (paraphrasing,) "Get our Enterprise version! Then you will have support and then we can quickly fix the problems for you!" (But you still have to use IE7 or Firefox.) Uh huh, yeah, right. At least I'm running it using VMware player. I can get it to where it is doing pretty much what I want, then shut it down and make a backup of the entire VM files to preserve what work I have done and the system state. If it blows up or acts weird, I can just unzip the backup files and I'm right back to where I was. -------------------- m2f -------------------- Read this topic online here: http://community.zenoss.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=18046#18046 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ zenoss-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users
