To me, layer 2 event correlation and suppression is critical. I am really growing to like Zenoss and am using it to do some critical alarming and performance collection, but the lack of alarm suppression based on layer 2 topology (give it a catchy name like "Layer 2 event suppression") keeps me from recommending Zenoss to my boss as a comprehensive monitoring system. If Zenoss does L2 correlation reasonably well and allows some manual manipulation of the topology, there is no way we could say no to Zenoss.
We run a managed IT service for small to medium-size businesses. We run our own Cisco MPLS network giving each customer his/her own private network. This prevents the L3 event correlation from working at all. We host shared and dedicated Windows-based services (Exchange, SQL, web, file shares, etc.) and operate many hundreds of Cisco routers and switches. Some parts of our network are extensive L2-only switch networks where L3 topology and event correlation means nothing. We currently rely on old,old,old NNM for our primary network alarming. Topology-based event correlation sucks on that platform, but I have not found a reasonable-cost and extensible platform that does it well. The sales people at SolarWinds say that Orion does it but I am skeptical. So, if you can add only one major feature to Zenoss in the next 6-9 months, make it this - I can wait for it while I get used to all the other cool Zenoss features. Hold off on Netflow and any intrusion detection until later, after you have a killer event correlation and suppression system. Experienced network operators will absolutely FLOCK to it once they have good event suppression demonstrated to them. Don't worry about building sweet-looking maps (the current mapping is a real disappointment because of slowness and inaccuracy in my network) and if topology-based event correlation and suppression works well, the map is just not important. Matt Woodling -------------------- m2f -------------------- Read this topic online here: http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?p=39242#39242 -------------------- m2f -------------------- _______________________________________________ zenoss-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zenoss.org/mailman/listinfo/zenoss-users
