The following is the Question and Answer log from our inaugural "Getting Started With Zenoss" webinar.  It was originally held Tuesday, April 7, 2009 , and presented by Zenoss' own Nathaniel McCallum.  If you missed this session, the next two are already on the schedule.  You can register for those here:

Tuesday, April 21 – 9:00 a.m. EDT

Tuesday, May 5, 12:00 noon EDT

Q: if we want to monitoring workstations pc , does some kind of agent of zenoss has to be installed on the workstations? or does the monitoring server needs the admin rights to the workstations?

A: SNMP needs to be running and if you want to get windows events, Zenoss will need admin rights

Q: Can you supply your own map/maps?

A: You can enter any addresses Google maps recognize and use those to generate your maps.

Q: is there known issue running Zenoos on IE 6?

A: IE6's Javascript support is not very robust, we officially support IE7 and Firefox 3.

Q: How to turn on the software?

A: The community version comes fully enable without any keys etc. The Enterprise version is fee based and requires a license agreement beyond GPL

Q: Can we make an automatic discover ??? the full LAN?

A: yes, discovery works by entering the network or networks you wish to monitor and having Zenoss 'discover' your devices.  It will ping the networks and attempt to monitor the machines with SNMP or WMI.  In the next release (2.4, currently in beta), there will be a setup wizard to make the process even easier.

Q: How easy is it to setup Zenoss to monitor multiple sites from a central location?

A: If the various protocols are open (SNMP, WMI) etc monitoring remote devices is no different then ones that are on the same LAN

Q: Do you recommend RHEL over ubuntu?

A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.

Q: What type of configuration (i'm guessing snmp) to our servers servers is required for zenoss to be able to receive information about the server?

A: The servers will probably need to have either SNMP, SSH or WMI (for Windows) enabled to allow remote monitoring.

Q: How do you tell Zenoss about dependencies so that, for instance a switch goes down, I don't get alerts from the 25 devices connected to the switch that are also in alarm status, because of the switch?

A: Zenoss keeps an internal topology map of the network , so when a router or switch is no longer reachable the devices that connect to it are marked as unavailable as well, suppressing their events based on the more severe event of the router being down.

Q: Is there a good way to monitor a netblock for new devices comming on line using only ping?

Q: or zenping / autodiscovery

A: Once new devices are discovered, you can move them from the /Discovered device class to the /Ping device class so they are only monitored with ping.

Q: Do you recommend Redhat over Ubuntu?

A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.

Q: I was able to add a Device, but does not see details in OS, Hardware and Software. It will be great if you could let us know how this can be setup.

A: You will probably want to review the Getting Started With Zenoss Guide (http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/Getting_Started_with_Zenoss_2.3.pdf) and make sure you have the device in the proper device class and the correct SNMP community string or SSH or WMI credentials are correct.

Q: Can i run my Zenoss on Windows and monitor Linux resources and vice versa?

A: The Zenoss VMware image can be run under VMware Player on Windows or you can run Zenoss natively on Linux.  Both platforms can monitor the same devices, Windows, Linux, routers, etc.

Q: Does ZenOSS have an auto-discovery of devices based on IP ranges or Active Directory in Windows?

A: you can specify a subnet range.

Q: I've got one - how does one change the log severity level for a Zenoss daemon, namely Zenactions?

A: You can edit the configuration files for the daemons in $ZENHOME/etc or run the daemons from the commandline with the '-v10' flag to get additional debugging.

Q: Can one do auto-location assignment based on subnet?  I.E. can we create a relationship between a subnet and a location group?

A: That is not currently supported.  Opened an enhancement request to support it: http://dev.zenoss.org/trac/ticket/4828

Q: What the maximum no. of devices zenoss can monitor

A: The max number hardware dependent. We have both commecial and community install monitoring tens of thousands of device

Q: What is availability in status tab

A: This is the percentage of time that this machine is responding to monitoring.

Q: My network structure seems to be detected automatically, but the hierarchy is all messed up. This essentially breaks the 'Network Map' feature.  My heirarchy would look like 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 > 10.0.0.0 ...  devices in each layer instead of 1

A: There are several tickets related to network discovery of hierarchies, please check out the 2.4 beta and see if this has been resolved and feel free to open a ticket if it has not.

Q: If i add a new device class and then add my device. then add the mibs for that device, how do i correlate the mibs to the device class to collect all the information the device has?

A: The MIBs will be used for translating the descriptions of inbound SNMP traps.  MIBs are not required (the messages are just easier to read) and there is no association of MIBs to devices.

Q: Do we need to install any other agent other than genaral SNMP agent to monitor windows 2003 server with all performance data.

A: You will either need SNMP-Informant installed or the standard SNMP and WMI turned on to get full coverage in Core.  Enterprise has additional support for only WMI-based monitoring.

Q: The version download from the zenoss site is the community version, right?

A: Correct.

Q: They can show the installation commando again

A: There is a Zenoss Installation Guide available at http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/

Q: I can't seem to get the network map to load on my computer either... on IE or firefox... it's just a white screen how yours looks, even once flash is installed_

A: Please verify that you have entered the proper network address in the "Selected Device or Network" box ('192.168.1.0' is the default).

Q: They can show the installation comman do again

A: There is a Zenoss Installation Guide available at http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/

Q: Can i monitor a specific process running on a linux server from zenoss?

A: Yes.  Processes can be monitored via SNMP: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch12s03.html

Q: Does the documentation detail how to set up snmp on the client machines?

A: Yes, the basics are covered.  The Getting Started with Zenoss guide and the Administration Guide both have basic information on configuring SNMP. http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/  Depending on the device, you may need to get further documentation from your vendor or distribution.

Q: Is Samba 4 needed for WMI?

A: Zenoss uses code from Samba 4 for WMI monitoring.  It is not an installation requirement.

Q: We usually do not admin access to our windows desktops. any way we can still monitor the processes on our desktop?

A: Yes, there is a way to configure your Windows desktops for monitoring without Admin privileges.

Q: How do I stop multiple events from being sent when a device goes down?

A: Duplicate events are already suppressed, events can also be correlated.  Please refer to the Admin Guide: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/

Q: It seems most documentation sticks to SNMP v1. Do you recommend putting in the effort needed to move to v2c or v3?

A: Zenoss supports SNMP v2 completely and SNMP v3 OID monitoring but not SNMP v3 traps.  SNMP v2 has better performance than v1 and v3 adds additional security features.  Most documentation uses SNMP v1 for simplicity.

Q: in my Zenoss installation, networkmap, I can't see nothing probably as I have a class c superneted network like 192.168.200.0/22, is this right? I can see my other networks /24

A:  There are several tickets related to issues with non /24 subnets, please check out the 2.4 beta and see if this has been resolved and feel free to open a ticket if it has not.

Q: Matt, What is the name of that open-source snmp agent again? you broke up

A: SNMP-Informant http://www.snmp-informant.com/

Q: Does Zenoss provide CMDB services?

A: Zenoss records all configuration data in an object database that can be accessed through reports, custom reports, the command line, programatically and remotely.

Q: SNMP informant - did you just say it was open source?  Pretty sure it's not GPL!

A: That is correct, it is free buy not Open Source or GPL.

Q: The thresholds for the servers parameter like Windows, Linux (free memory, CPU utilization,etc) where is modified ?

A: You can modify these on the device templates under 'Thresholds' or make local copies and modify those.

Q: As should be the snmpd.conf file on the client to see the full information

A: Configuring the snmpd.conf varies from device to device.  You may need to get further documentation from your vendor or distribution.

Q: What is the setting to enable collection of software info form linux targets?

A: This varies from distro to distro.  Here is a recent blog post for Ubuntu and Debian: http://blog.zenoss.com/2009/02/18/tip-of-the-month-snmp-software-inventory-for-debian-and-ubuntu-machines/

Q: Is there a way to change filesystem tresholds for just one device?  i know you can click on specific filesystem and change it there, but imagine you have lot of them

A: You can make a local copy of the template and change it for the device class or create a new device class and make the change there.  Devices in the class will use those settings.

Q:  How does one change the ping/polling interval for a specific device class?  Also, can events from a specific device class be auto-downgraded, e.g. Critical Events --> warnings?  (For workstation monitoring)

A:  Ping intervals are set for all devices under the Collectors->localhost->Edit.

A:  You could add an Event Transform that checks if the device is in a System or Group and downgrade the event accordingly.

Q: How to monitoring application log files?

A: Zenoss supports syslog and Windows event log, but there is not specificly targeted support for logfile monitoring.  You could add an SSH call to look for certain strings as an intermediate solution.

Q: For Cisco Routers there are a restriction about the IOS version??

A: None that we're aware of, there are no reports of specific IOS versions not currently working.

Q: Is your product used a lot for workstation monitoring?

A: There are a lot of users using it for monitoring workstations in conjunction with their other monitoring.  Since it supports WMI, SSH and SNMP it is easy to monitor workstations.

Q: Here is a long one, is it possible to apply ZenOss to a MSP model where I as a service provider can install a ZenOss collector in my customers site and then have the data forwarded to a central repository in my office.

A: This is a use case for Zenoss Enterprise.  Core users will have a lot more manual configuration to support it.

Q: Are there any discovery protocols besides SNMP?  Many organizations have become leery about plain-text SNMP, and SNMPv3 is still pretty rare.

A: Discovery in 2.3 can use WMI or SNMP, the 2.4 release is adding SSH as well.

Q: will someone be able to show the installation and use of zenpacks during this seminar?

A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch25s01.html#IntallZenpacks

Q: Can map links be generated between devices in different subnets, e.g. for VPN links?

A: If the interfaces on the devices are aware of the other subnets they will be added.  If not there is a HOWTO for manually adding dependencies between devices http://www.zenoss.com/Members/netdata/create-manual-device-dependencys/

Q: In the reports section i do not see any option for doing monthtly reporting and emailing those reports.  Is there an option for this

A: There is a command line option that can be run to generate and email the report. Users will put that into cron to be run on a monthly basis

Q: Can reports be auto-emailed on a regular basis?

A: There is a command line option that can be run to generate and email the report. Users will put that into cron to be run on a regular basis.

Q: is there a way to change filesystem util tresholds for just one device ?  not for the whole group ?

A: Yes.  You can make a local copy of the performance template and edit it.

Q: can you explain a little about eventclasses and eventclasskeys

A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch11.html

Q: What is the best way to troubleshoot WMI connect errors

A: There is a Community HOWTO: http://www.zenoss.com/community/wiki/TroubleshootingCommonErrorsSeenWhenMonitoringWindowsDevices/

Q: Sales type question - for Zenoss Enterprise or Pro is there a recurring annual cost or is this a one time thing with seperate annual maint fee?

A: those products are licensed on a recurring annual subscription

Q: Does Zenoss monitor web transactions as well?

A: that is support in the Commercial versions.

Q: Can the collectors be created on distributed Lan's where they have conflicting IP structure and send the data to the central core over unsecure web through an open port?

A: we support that in the Commercial version

Q: RHEL vs Ubuntu...which is better?

A: The majority customers and testing are on RHEL or CentOS, but there are a large number of community users running on Ubuntu.

Q: Can we monitor a device by ping only.  For example an exchange edge server where I just want to know if it goes offline.

A: craig, there is a "ping only' class that just does ping availability

Q: If I understand this correctly, then Eventclasskey is used to more quickly map an event to a class otherwise events are compared to all eventclasses?

A: http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch11s10.html  Unknown events will map to /Unknown, but you can create a new mapping for them.

Q: could i talk with you offline in regards to the adding device and mibs quetion

A: feel free to followup with community@zenoss.com

Q: I find the mib adding to be cumbersome.  Is there a plan to make an "upload and add MIB files" section similar to a browse and upload screen for a webpage or web-mail application?

A: Feel free to enter an enhancement ticket or post on the threads requesting input for future releases: http://forums.zenoss.com/viewtopic.php?t=9296

Q: Can auto-discovered devices be automatically assigned to groups based on the device name? For example all discovered routers with a name xxx-edge-yyy could be grouped together?

A: There is not currently support for this out of the box, but there is a Community HOWTO that outlines a way to automate the process: http://www.skills-1st.co.uk/papers/jane/auto_disco_paper.pdf

Q: what the maximum no. of devices zenoss can monitor

A: There are no fixed limits, the max number is hardware dependent.  We have both commecial and community installs monitoring tens of thousands of device.

Q:how to monitor os process like a custom java appication with zenoss

A: There is a ZenJMX ZenPack for monitoring Java applications.  http://www.zenoss.com/community/docs/zenoss-guide/2.3.3/ch25s02.html#zenjmx

Q: Does Zenoss monitor the status of services running on a server?

A: Yes.  Windows services and IP services may be monitored in addition to process monitoring.

Q:Does the snmp-informant come in a MSI format so I can push it out to all windows devices through active directory?

A: There is an automated process from www.snmp-informant.com: http://www.wtcs.org/informant/kb/2004-003.htm

Q: what is the 'simple setting' to allow software info to be collected for linux box? I couldn't find in docs?

A: Go to zCollectorPlugins and make sure zenoss.snmp.HRSWInstalledMap is enabled

Q: What determines which devices show up on the map? are they only the snmp ones? this is not helpful for me. is it something I can tweak?

A: Devices show up on the map if they are in a location that is on the map.  The location will appear on the map if it has an address that is resolvable.  SNMP is unrelated to map display

Q: Is there a version that knows about topology (like certain tivoli nms) where I can see the layer 1/2 connectivity such as server connected to switch1, switch1 connected to switch2, switch2 connected to router? I know it can be done, netcool/ibm have shown that...the switch has enough data via snmp to determine topology...

A: We do not currently do Layer 2 mapping.  However we do currently have layer 3 mapping