Let’s install Zenoss 4!

About a year ago I was playing around with Zenoss 3 as we were exploring the options for resource usage reporting.  Had a go with Zenoss, Splunk, and some other solutions.  In the end, we decided to go for something else, a more ‘commercial’ solution fit and worthy for an ‘enterprise’.

Since then, Zenoss has launched a new version which is Zenoss 4.  Our ‘commercial’ solution is moving along but is not quite done.  In the meantime, I want to come up with a quick monitoring dashboard so that I can do my job (system administration) better.  So, I decided to have another go with Zenoss.

First, let’s start with reading the installation guide and see what the requirements are.

Requirement number one: Zenoss runs on RHEL/Centos.  Good, I like rpm-based linux.

Requirement number two: Hardware.

Deployment Size Memory CPU Storage
1 to 250 devices 4GB 2 cores 300GB, 10K RPM or SSD
250 to 500 devices 8GB 4 cores 300GB, 10K RPM or SSD
500 to 1000 devices 16GB 8 cores 300GB, 15K RPM or SSD

Ok, I will probably use this on 200+ devices, so I think I will need 6GB and 2 cores.

Requirement number three: Non-journaled filesystem for RRD files that will be located in /opt/zenoss/perf.

The Zenoss installation guide contains installation instructions for RHEL5 and RHEL6.  I am going to install CentOS 6.4 as that is the latest version to date.

Prerequisites for CentOS 6 according to the installation guide:

  • SELinux is disabled (I don’t like this.)
  • Directory /opt/zenoss is not a symlink to another location
  • umask is set to 022
  • /home directory is writable by root (or /home/zenoss exists as user zenoss’s home directory)
  • connected to the internet
  • DNS is available

Software prerequisites for CentOS 6 according to the installation guide:

Prerequisite Version
Oracle Java 1.6 Update 31 (NOT 1.7)
RRDtool 1.4.7 or later
MySQL Community Server 5.5.25 through 5.5.28
RabbitMQ 2.8.6 or later
Nagios Plugins 1.4.15 or later
Erlang R12B

Further into the guide, there are detailed information on how to install Oracle Java, RRDtool, MySQL Community Server, and RabbitMQ.  However, nothing was written about Nagios Plugin or Erlang,

A quick google search reveals that nagios-plugins can be installed using yum, but it will involve a third-party repository, which I am uncomfortable doing.  Erlang looks like it will be installed together with RabbitMQ, but I cannot be certain at this point.

I am quite disappointed with the installation guide, but hey, that’s what you get with free things.

This hiccup brings me back to the Zenoss website.  Hey what’s this?  An auto-deploy script?  Ok, let’s use this instead.

This will be continued on the next post.

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