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Zenoss Blog: No Node Left Behind

August 2007
shuckins

When you work in technology it’s hard to explain to your non-technical friends and family members (especially when you work in open source) what you do. Conversations with your elder family members go something like this:

Me: I went to work for an open source software company.
Grandma: Oh that’s nice….what’s open source software?
Me: It’s software that’s free to download and can be altered and redistributed by anyone.
Grandma (puzzled look): Then how do you make money if you give it away?
Me: Well we offer support and service for the software.
Grandma (confused look): That’s nice, I guess.

Today we were featured in the Baltimore Sun a paper my Grandmother reads, as do the relatives of many other Zenoss employees. I suspect today’s conversation will go something like this.

Grandma: I see your company is in the paper. Your company must be very important.
Me: Yes it is.
Grandma: I see they use it in hospitals, I am sure my doctor uses it then.
Me (chuckling): Yep Grandma, I am sure he does.

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admin

Not long ago Redmonk analyst Michael Cote coined the term “Little Four“ to describe a group of open source IT management solution vendors. This up and coming group of software companies includes Zenoss, GroundWork, Hyperic, and Qlusters (openQRM) and they are seen as alternatives to traditional vendors BMC, CA, HP and IBM (the Big Four). In one of his blogs (Origins of The “Little Four”) whurley of BMC stated the distinction may be short lived. whurley wrote “My moving from CTO at Qlusters (one of the Little Four) to BMC is a clear sign that at least one of the Big Four understands the value of open source in systems management.”

 

I agree with whurley’s first statement that the distinction of “Little Four” will be short lived, but not for the same reasons. Here is what I predict will happen:

 

  • In a short amount of time (next 18 months) names of “Little Four” will be well known the world over. How you say? Zenoss alone was downloaded for more than 250,000 times in the past 9 months. The pace of downloads is accelerating for Zenoss and the rest of “Little Four” while increasing number of large companies are deploying the solutions in enterprise environments.
  • Enterprises looking to deploy new IT management solutions already started to include Zenoss and others in their evaluation process. The pace of this inclusion will also accelerate to the point where members of “Little Four” will always be included in every IT management evaluation process.
  • Today, “Little Four” successfully win against and/or replace the Big Four in some competitive cases. The win/loss rate for “Little Four” will increasingly tip in their favor until it reaches a balance.

 

When my above mentioned scenario becomes a reality in the near future, it will no longer be necessary to distinguish Zenoss, GroundWork, Hyperic, and Qlusters as the “Little Four.” They will simply be considered part of the leading group of IT management solution vendors. whurley is right to say that the distinction will be short lived, but not for the same reasons he may be thinking.

 

What will happen to the Big Four? Will they understand the value of open source as whurley states? Do they understand it now? I think that in most cases, open source to Big Four is nothing more than Linux OS support for their software or hardware products. In some cases, open source means donating some old code that no longer brings any value, but can be a tax right off. In the near future, the meaning of open source to Big Four will change dramatically. I predict that as they feel competitive pressure from “Little Four”, they will slowly adopt open source business practices. Eventually, we may see Big Four with up to 50% of its software portfolio in open source. Big Four and Little Four will meet somewhere in the middle of the road and race to the end. May the best vendors win.

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shuckins

If you are already familiar with open source monitoring, you might also be interested in open source software configuration management. Software Configuration Management (SCM) attempts to identify the configuration of software at discrete points in time and to systematically control changes to the configuration for the purpose of maintaining software integrity, traceability, and accountability throughout the software life cycle.

 

For example, say you have a cluster of Apache servers and you want to update them all with an additional mime-type, or add a virtual host to each. Rather than manually updating each configuration file on each server you could use a tool that process all the changes simultaneously. Or a tool that pools all the configuration variables into an easily readable form driven interface. The other benefit for some of these tools is the ability to have a changelog so that if your roll out a new configuration and it doesn’t work you can revert to the last good configuration easily.

 

  • cfengine – Cfengine is an automated system for managing Unix-like systems. It claims to go beyond change management and is purported to be autonomic. It’s also been around for a fairly long time –1993. Here’s a good FAQ on cfengine. Bottom line: cfengine is very powerful and geared to provide automation of systems management tasks.
  • NetDirector – NetDirector is a Web-based Linux and Solaris systems administration platform that provides secure, easy-to-use, one-to-many management of popular services running on a wide variety of Linux and UNIX platforms. It’s a web-based application much like Zenoss but runs on Java technology instead of python. It’s GUI interface makes system administration easier for those not familiar with configuration of many open source applications. NetDirector is released under the NetDirector Public License which is a license similar to the Mozilla Public License. Bottom line: Easy-to-use configuration management in a Web 2.0 presentation, no programming necessary.
  • puppet – Puppet is designed to work on most varieties of UNIX-like operating systems. Puppet is has a very robust scripting language to perform many system administration tasks. So you could create a library of configurations then the puppet daemon connects to clients via XML-RPC over HTTPs and pushes out these configurations. It can even check for changes and make sure that the changes match the library. Perhaps one of the most powerful of the solutions listed. Here’s an overview. Bottom line: Can be described as a next generation tool similar to cfengine but with some modernization.
  • Webmin – Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any modern web browser, you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and much more. Webmin removes the need to manually edit Unix configuration files like /etc/passwd, and lets you manage a system from the console or remotely. Unlike the other solutions you need to install webmin locally on each box you want to edit and there is no one to many capabilities as with the other solutions. However, there are tons of plug-ins for different configuration items that can be managed by Webmin. Bottom line: Easy-to-Use, and expandable. Perhaps the most popular Linux/Unix software configuration tool.

 

All the software listed here is freely available for download under an open source license.

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admin

Chairman and CEO of Symantec, John Thompson was interviewed on CNBC’s Squawk Box this morning. He is known to be an outspoken person, and he usually provides very interesting quotes. This morning he said:

“Software industry has been in a phase of consolidation for the past 3 to 4 years. The pace of consolidation has picked up for the last 12 to 18 months.” Thompson continued to say: “Software industry will inevitably consolidate itself in to few, very powerful companies with strong positions from which they can defend and grow their portfolios.”

When I heard Thompson make his prediction, I could not help but to think back to a similar quote I had once read from a British Telecom CEO in the early 1990’s. He had rightfully predicted that one day there would be 5 large telecommunication companies left in the world. In the industrialized world, we are rapidly racing down to 5 very large telecommunication companies. If history repeats itself, what does this mean for John Thompson’s prediction for software industry?

 

You don’t have to be prophet to see that software industry is in the midst of a major consolidation phase. Recent acquisitions from HP (Mercury Interactive, Opsware), IBM (FileNet) and Citrix (XenSource) are few recent examples of this phenomenon. However, can anyone imagine a world where there would be only 3 to 5 very large software companies left in the world? What would software industry look like at that point? Which companies would be in that small group? SAP, Oracle, HP, IBM, CA? Note that I did not include BMC and EMC in the mix, since I predict that they would be acquired by the large vendors over the next few years.

I can a see a time when there will be 3 to 5 large vendors offering a wide range of IT software in the near future. However this will not mean that customers will have no other choices. As we have today, there will be hundreds of thousands of open source projects in existence. These projects will be started all around the world, and they will offer cheaper, better and more efficient software solutions for users.

Some of these open source projects will find traction and they will become commercial open source companies like RedHat, MySQL, Zenoss, others. As stand alone entities, they may never become as large as HP or IBM, but their eagerness to adopt open standards will allow them to work together, and build competitive open source software stacks that will rival those from the mega vendors.

 

There is a very big difference between telecommunication and software industries. One requires a very large investment in infrastructure, lobbyist, sales and marketing. The other requires a laptop, internet connection and your dreams.

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shuckins

Today’s news has been peppered with the outage of the Windows Genuine Advantage servers today. Now we aren’t endorsing DRM rights by any means but if you are running mission critical servers you need to look beyond availability monitoring. If the system is customer facing you probably will know by the inquiries from angry customers soon enough that your servers are down. That’s why having a view of system performance is helpful to prevent outages and to prevent them.


For example, say you are only monitoring for availability you only know that a server is down once everyone else does. The ideal situation is to monitor both performance and availability. For example, say you are monitoring a web server, you might want to use Zenoss to monitor performance and set alerts when that web server reaches 90% CPU utilization so you can check to see how long before the CPU pegs and your web server becomes unresponsive. You also may want to look at the processes for your application servers like Tomkat Tomcat or JBoss, the more information and the more likely you are to prevent many outages.


You could also use our Zenoss Enterprise to monitor web transactions like form submissions (think shopping carts) to validate that not only is the website up but the mechanics are running as desired.

 

I am sure that Microsoft monitors their infrastructure. However, in case they need a new solution the offer is open download Zenoss Core for free and give us a call if you need help.

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shuckins

Linux Action Show

Simon Jakesch, one of our systems integrators and I were guests on the Linux Action Show this week. We would like to thank Bryan and Chris for having us. Since I have a face for television I was a perfect podcast candidate. The show should air on Sunday the August 26th. Tune in then to hear the their interview with us.

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shuckins

Ubuntu Leads Linux Desktop

Posted by shuckins Aug 23, 2007

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols shares the results of the DesktopLinux.com poll of 38,500 readers of their site in their annual desktop Linux survey. I am not surprised by Ubuntu gaining the top spot but SUSE running a close second is a surprise, at least to me. A lot of us run Ubuntu Linux here at Zenoss and we hope to soon have support for both Debian and Ubuntu for Zenoss Core. Read the complete desktop Linux survey here.

 

Linux Desktop
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shuckins

I spend a lot of time surfing the internet to see what people are saying about Zenoss. If you said something good or bad you probably have gotten a note from me trying to help you or thanking you for your kind words. Today I was surfing when I came across this Help Wanted ad at  Joel on Software for a Senior Linux Systems Admin. One thing that popped out at me:

Desired Skills – Nagios/Zenoss

 

The job requirements included a need for very few commercial proprietary applications and when it did there was an open source alternative for example VMware/Xen.

 

Considering the money they are saving on commercial proprietary software they could probably afford to throw a couple extra bucks into the salary bucket for a Zenoss savvy sys-admin ;)

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admin

writer2LaTeX

Posted by admin Aug 19, 2007

This is probably going to be my last post to the Zenoss Blog, seeing as how I've only got 2 weeks left on my contract, but I wanted to take the time to shout out to Henrik Just and writer2LaTeX. Henrik's software, which is now also integrated into OpenOffice, is fantastic. The last big project I worked on for Zenoss was the OpenOffice (.sxw) to Plone converter for the HTML-ization of the Zenoss Guide. The purpose of generating an HTML version, split by section, was to

 

  • provide an easily accessible on-line version (non-OpenOffice, non-PDF)
  • have multiple versions of the Guide be searchable
  • provide users with the utility of being able to comment on each section of the guide

 

There was XML-wrangling, HTML post-processing, and Plone content type generation involved -- lots of moving parts. At times, we ran into issues such as Java problems (what writer2LaTeX is written in) or obscure/hidden formatting issues in our source document. Other times, we needed specific features that weren't in writer2LaTeX.

 

Enter Henrik: he helped us out a great deal, not only by discovering the root issues of several of our problems, but in addition addressed the features we needed with instant patches. He and I worked together to test these features and make sure everything was running as expected. His responses and contributions ended up saving Zenoss big $ and me big time. Thanks again, Henrik!

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shuckins

BarCampESM Video

Posted by shuckins Aug 18, 2007

Coté from Redmonk literally did a man on the street video about the upcoming BarCamp ESM with John M. Willis, whurley, and myself at last weeks LinuxWorld Expo. We did the video while standing on the street outside the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco.


Watch the video to find about what what we are trying to accomplish with the world’s first Enterprise Systems Bar Camp.We are really hoping to have participation of not just Zenoss developers but those of other systems management software and projects. Beyond that I think our real measure of success will be how many systems management users attend the event so sign-up now. The date looks like it will be sometime on January 18-20th in Austin, TX.

 

barcampesmvideo.png
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admin

I joined Zenoss from a proprietary and very successful software company.  I am talking about Mercury Interactive which was acquired by HP.  When my former Mercury friends heard that I was leaving a successful career to join an open source software company, they were surprised and sometimes discouraging.  In fact, I find that most people who work in proprietary software companies in Silicon Valley either under estimate or simply don't understand open source software.

 

This is not necessarily their fault.  Their perception of open source is best summed up by Audrey Rasmussen in the article "Open source system management suites: A viable alternative?  http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid80_gci1268233,00.html ."

 

Audrey writes most people think of open source software as "the typical techie-oriented, do-it-yourself open source tools that have been available for quite a while."  I know this perception very well.

 

During my career at Mercury, I faced open source competition, and my attitude towards it was one of ignorance.  When I used to receive frantic phone calls from sales people facing free or almost free open source competition, I used to tell them "Ask your customer who they will call for support.  I bet it is 2 guys in Alabama working out of their garage."  So when I told my friends that I was leaving a good career at HP Software to join an open source company out of Annapolis, MD, they thought that I was going to work out of someone's garage.

 

I am here to tell you that open source software companies are not any different than proprietary vendors.  Most start up as a small project.  Some find traction and even funding.  After that, some grow up and do great things like RedHat.  Others get acquired for multi millions of dollars like XenSource and yet some others disappear due to lack of long term interest or success.  This story is not different for proprietary vendors vs. open source software companies.

 

This means that today the playing field is leveled.  Good software ideas regardless of their licensing mechanism will find users, supporters, customers and financiers.  The new breed of open source software companies have in their management a good mix of experienced executives, open source advocates and VCs with funds.

 

These companies provide very high quality support and differentiate themselves based on their ability to deliver top notch software and services.  They address the needs of their users and customers while keeping the faith that good products will eventually rise to the top.  They know how to compete with the proprietary vendors and they have been out of garage for a long time.  The proprietary software companies failed to notice them because they have their head stuck in the sand.  The new breed of open source software companies are different, and they are not your father’s open source software company.

 

Murat Aksu

VP of Marketing at Zenoss

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shuckins

Systems Management BarCamp

Posted by shuckins Aug 9, 2007

This week at  LinuxWorld this week I was hanging out with friends who make their living in proprietary software but are open source friendly. While having lunch with whurley and John Willis we talked about having a Enterprise Systems Management Barcamp. Today we announced that we are looking for people to participate in a BarCamp unconference about Systems Management.

 

Hopefully we will get people from proprietary companies like BMC, IBM, CA, and HP together with open source developers from projects like Cacti, Nagios, OpenNMS, and RRDTool.

 

Zenoss is very interested in this because while we would love everyone to be a Zenoss user it’s just not practical, what is best for our customers is having systems that don’t lock you in and have a high degree of interoperability. We will be there and we hope you are too. Keep an eye on the Barcamp Enterprise Systems Management wiki for updates.
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shuckins

Basil has a post on his blog about using Zenoss Core to monitor Amazon S3 usage. He’s using a quick little and dirty little Python script.

 

What are you monitoring with Zenoss?

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shuckins

Matt Asay has a good interview with JBoss founder and open source rockstar Marc Fleury. If you aren’t familiar, Marc founded JBoss and sold it to Red Hat for $380 million. One of the better presentations I have seen on open source software was presented by Marc at Javapolis 2006. I like the part where he talks about how open source helps feel people feel connected. Hopefully, our community member feels that way about us. If not send me and email and tell me why.

 

Mark Fleury

Marc “FlavaFlav” Fleury
at Javapolis 2006
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shuckins

Ohloh I was browsing Ohloh today which is a cool open source software directory. The thing that makes Ohloh somewhat unique is that they try to provide an objective way for users to find open source software that meets their needs. For example, when I checked out the Firefox page, I was directed to related projects like Konqueror. Or when I checked out JBoss Application Server and I see that similarly related projects includingprojectcost.png Apache Geronimo.

 

I was also happy to see that there was a entry for Zenoss Core and we had a few ratings, and a review. It also has something called a Project Cost which is ohloh’s metrics for the estimated effort required to produce a given piece of software. If you take a look at Zenoss Core it says that it would take 180 person years, which I can’t speak to. What I can say is the reason it took us considerably less effort was that we are able to leverage work done by the Python, Zope, Twisted, RRDTool, and MySQL projects along with quite a few others.


What makes this site work is user contributions for ratings and reviews. So I would encourage all our members to take an opportunity to rate Zenoss Core on the ohloh site and include us in your stacks (a sort of open source favorites list) along with all your other favorite open source projects. Thanks for your support.

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