Well, as I understand it, Zenoss is (potentially) far easier to get set up. If you use the RPM on CENTOS5 and can install the requirements first, it's been pretty much rpm -ivh zenoss(blah) and that's it.
I haven't used Nagios myself, but here's my understanding from reading on the web: Nagios is more mature. It's been around longer, there are more plugins for it, it's well understood, and may be more stable. Zenoss has more out of the box, it's easier to do what it comes with, and you can plug in Nagios plugins without too much trouble. I'd guess that extending either is about the same amount of work (especially as you could write a Nagios Plugin, and use it in both!). Zenoss has multiple methods for adding on, so it can be more complex choosing the method, and potentially learning several methods. Zenoss also has the issue that under the hood it's hugely complex. When it just works, it's great, but troubleshooting can be "fun". Zenoss has a commercial company pushing it, so updates come out at a regular schedule, you can buy (expensive IMHO) support, and the community isn't driving development as much as customers are. Nagios is traditional OSS as far as I can tell. Whatever the devs want to work on gets worked on. The upshot is Zenoss does make it easy(ish) to extend more than just a performance collector vis a vis a Nagios Plugin. You can also learn to create or download pre made ZenPacks. These can do pretty much anything. So you could go off and create a Zenpack as a community member separate from the core project (like a Firefox Extension). Finally, Zenoss does accept bug reports / trac tickets from the community and usually works to fix them eventually (they get prioritized). Enhancement requests seem to fit lower in the queue, and I think really get driven by Enterprise customers, though Matt Ray could comment here if he wants. If I were you, I'd actually set up a VM or box with CENTOS5 and try the RPM install (read the quickstart guide). That really wasn't too hard with moderate linux knowledge. I figured it out just knowing how to use rpm in CENTOS... Turn off Syslogd first... So to summarize: 1) Nagios isn't weaker, just different (and harder to set up IMO). 2) Zenoss is easy to get started. 3) Zenoss is complex to get "finished". 4) If you want to do something not "on the box cover", it's about the same difficulty 5) Try it youself! -- James Pulver Information Technology Area Supervisor LEPP Computer Group Cornell University joe1871 wrote, On 11/25/2008 6:04 PM: > I just finished a failry extensive Nagios implementation. It is running > well. I was "told" to install Nagios, and I did withoput researching > alternatives. However now that I am more comfortable in this arena I am > considering other packages. Is there any quic doc or other thread available > to compare Nagios to Zenoss. Is there a prevailing sentiment about Nagios > being a weaker package? Is it a feature battle? (I assume you guys are > Zenoss fans... :-) > > I am only moderately comfortable in the Linux world. I was able to bootstrap > Nagios, I am concerned that Zenoss may be a little more difficult to install. > > I really appreciate anybody's help in advance. > > > > > -------------------- m2f -------------------- > > Read this topic online here: > http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?p=28303#28303 > > -------------------- m2f -------------------- > > > > _______________________________________________ > zenoss-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users _______________________________________________ zenoss-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users
