I have read the administration manual, browsed this forum, the faqs, the wiki, google, .. but I don't seem to find any good source of how things in zenoss actually work. I find how to use the user-interface and where to find all properties, but not the explanations about the properties or how things actually work, only the simple things.
I am test-driving zenoss (the VM appliance) since it looks very promissing, but I can't get it to work in a way that we would be able to depend on it: For example: I added a (SLES) Linux server to the /Server/Cmd class and configured the SSH access and ZenPlugin.rpm (There is no SNMP running on the server.). And did a few Device modelings. During the second modeling it finds a http service being UP and a smtp service being DOWN (since there is absolutly no smtp service running on the server). Why is this SMTP service found while it is not there? No problem, I think, I tell Zenoss to not monitor the smtp service and the ipservice dissapears. I also want to monitor the ArcServe Agent running on the server, so I add a new service to the system. Not finding any decent documentation about all the properties I have to fill in (what are those service keys?) , using the mysql ipservice as an example: Name: BABagent Monitor: True Port: 6051 Description: Brightstor ArcServe Backup Agent Service Keys: BABagent, tcp_06051, udp_06051 Next I wanted to add that service to my server, and found out that there is no posibility to add services manualy due to a bug in the UI. After some forum-browsing I found a patch and then I was able to add the service as a tcp ipservice. It was displayed as being UP. Everything succesfull I thought. After a while I noticed that the service BABagent was gone again. Seems it gets removed during automatic remodeling. Which looks to me as unwanted behaviour? I read on this forum that every six hours a remoddeling happens and services not being up (and not locked) at that moment get removed ??!! In other words, if an important service fails right before such a remodel, it gets removed and there is no critical error triggered??? Anyway, I re-added it a few times and it gets removed every time during a modeling. Then I read on the forums about enabling the port-scan collector plugin, so I did that, and now indeed the BABagent is automaticaly found and added to the device. Not as a tcp but as a udp ipservice. Again I thought, no problem..as long as it gets monitored.. Out of curiousity I removed the port-scan plugin again en did another remodeling. This time the BABagent ipservice is kept.. So I was happy.. Then I shut down the BABagent on the server itself to check the response time of zenoss.. One hour later.. BABagent is still up and running according to zenoss. Netstat on the server shows me that port 6051 is not used.. Why doesn't zenoss detect the service being down? I did the same for the http service and within a few second zenoss detects it..why not with the BABagent ipservice? Is zenoss dependable? I really like its approach, it's features and promisses, and would really like to use it, but I need a stable and dependable system to convince my boss. Please tell me that I did things wrong, that zenoss did the right things. If more (debugging) information is needed to be able to give me an explenation, please ask me, I will try to provide it. -------------------- m2f -------------------- Read this topic online here: http://community.zenoss.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=24705#24705 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ zenoss-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users
