Monitor your IT Infrastructure

Zenoss is an Open Source IT infrastructure monitoring

package that can identify a large number of devices on a network. The software

can monitor availability, performance, events and configuration changes of

devices as well as applications. It allows you to monitor multiple subnets,

servers and apps. The information regarding all the resources is collected via

SNMP, WMI, Telnet, SSH and Syslog components, which run as daemons. Here, we

show you how you can setup Zenoss, to monitor your enterprise IT infrastructure.

Pre-requisites



Before installing this software, you need to configure a few basic things on

your Zenoss machine. The software runs on Linux, UNIX or Mac platforms. On top

of it, you need MySQL 5.0.x which can be downloaded from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/

mysql/ 5.0.html. You also need Python  ver. 2.3.5 or higher which can be

downloaded from http://www.python.org. Make sure you have assigned password to

user in MySQL. You can do this by giving this command 'mysqladmin —u root

—p password'. The existing password will be replaced by a password that you

want to set for MySQL root user. 

The Zenoss dashboard gives you a summary of your network infrastructure, system events and SNMP alerts

Installing Zenoss



In our setup we used Redhat Enterprise Server 4 that included development

components. If you are using some other Unix flavor OS , then make sure you have

its development component installed.

First of all copy the 'zenoss-0.19.4.tar.tar' in /root

folder. After this create a user named 'zenoss' by issuing command

'adduser zenoss'. Then you have to increase the size of the net buffer, so

that Zenoss can work perfectly. 

In order to do so, open /etc/sysctl.conf in an editor and

add the following lines:

 net.core.rmem_default=1048576 



 net.core.rmem_max=1048576 


 net.core.wmem_default=1048576 


 net.core.wmem_max=1048576

After this reboot your machine and login as root user and

copy 'zenoss-0.19.4.tar.tar' /home/zenoss folder. Now, logout from root and

login from Zenoss user. You will have to unpack the zenoss-0.19.4.tar.tar

tarball inside Zenoss home directory. To unpack the tarball issue this command

'tar —zxvf zenoss-0.19.4.tar.tar'.

This will extract all the files from tarball to \zenoss\zenoss-0.19.4

folder. Before installing Zenoss, you need to give full permission to Zenoss

user on /usr/local folder. To do so, use 'su' to get root permission and

issue command 'chmod 777 /usr/local.' Then exit from 'su' (super user

mode) and open /home/zenoss/.bashrc file in a text editor and add the following

line:

export ZENHOME=/usr/local/zenoss 



export PYTHONPATH=$ZENHOME/lib/python

This will add Zenoss home path to Zenoss user, so that it

can run the Zenoss daemon from its home path. To start the installation process,

login as Zenoss user and issue the following command

 $ python zenossinst.py

install -p

Here will be replaced by the password that

you want to give to Zenoss monitoring system. The process will take some time,

because the installer compiles source files first and then installs the

software.

Once the device is disconnected from the network, Zenoss raises an error on its dashboard which is escalated to the system administrator

Configuring the database 



After successful installation, you need to configure the database, so that

Zenoss monitoring system can store its data. In order to do so, first start the

database, if it's not already started. Issue the command given below:

 # service mysql start

(start it from the root only)  

Now you need to add the Zenoss data model and event data

structures into the database, to do this issue the following commands. 

$ /ZENHOME/bin/zeneventbuild

MYSQLUSER MYSQLPASS 



$ $ZENHOME/bin/zenbuild -u MYSQLUSER -p MYSQLPASS

Here MYSQLUSER and MYSQLPASS will be replaced by user name

and password of the MYSQL database.

After this you have to configure Zope object database in to

Zenoss configuration database. For this issue the command 'ZENHOME/bin/zeoctl

start.' With this your database configuration part is over and you can start

the Zenoss monitoring system Web portal. To do so, give the command

'ZENHOME/bin/zopectl start.'       

You can access the zenoss portal from your Web browser by

typing http://127.0.0.1:8080/zport/dmd. You would require a username and

password to get inside the portal. Give 'admin' as username while the

password would be same that you gave during installation. This will open a web

interface of your Zenoss monitoring system.

Configuring daemons 



Now, your Zenoss monitoring system web portal is ready, but you need some

daemons that will monitor the systems on the network and provide information to

web portal. For this, first log in as root and issue the following command on

your terminal window

 #/home/zenoss/zenoss-0.19.4/bin/zenping

run



 #/home/zenoss/zenoss-0.19.4/bin/zenping start 


#/home/zenoss/zenoss-0.19.4/bin/zensyslog start


#/home/zenoss/zenoss-0.19.4/bin/zendisc start

After this logout from root, login as Zenoss and follow the

steps given below:

Step 1:  Open $ZENHOME/etc/zensnmp.conf file

and configure the username and password for these monitors (Zenoss as a username

and password would be the same that you have given while creating Zenoss user).

Step 2:  Now you need to activate the zensnmp

daemon, which will collect information about connected devices. Issue the

command given below 

$ZENHOME/bin/zensnmp run

 If the above command  works, start the following

as a daemon

$ZENHOME/bin/zensnmp start



         $ZENHOME/bin/zenmodeler start


         $ZENHOME/bin/zenactions star

Step 3:  Finally you need to check that all the

daemons are working or not, for this issue the command '$ZENHOME/bin/zenoss

status.' This will show you the list of daemons and their status as given

below.

        Daemon:

zeoctl program running; pid=XYZ  



        Daemon: zopectl program running; pid=XYZ 


        Daemon: zensnmp.py program running;
pid=XYZ 



        Daemon: zenmodeler.py program
running; pid=XYZ 



        Daemon: zencrkbld.py program running;
pid=XYZ 



        Daemon: zenping.py program running;
pid=XYZ 



        Daemon: zensyslog.py program running;
pid=XYZ 



        Daemon: zenactions.py program
running; pid=XYZ

With this your Zenoss monitoring system is up and ready to

serve your organization.

Here the system administrator can see the status of all the devices that Zenoss has detected from the network

Using Zenoss



To start using Zenoss, open its Web portal and add all the devices that you

want to monitor. For example, as a test we added a router to it. This router

provides Internet connectivity to our labs network.

On adding the devices, you can select the model of the

device, OS and other device details from its drop down menu. Once you have added

the device it will automatically be monitored by the Zenoss monitoring system.

In order to test the reaction by the Zenoss system we purposefully plugged out

the router LAN cable. Within 10 secs, Zenoss monitoring system started showing

critical fault on its dashboard.

 You can even configure alert and event so that in

case a known fault comes, the system is able to restart the service

automatically without human intervention. Overall it's a good monitoring

system, but configuring is a pain.     

Sanjay Majumder