Zenoss Melds Open Source Monitoring With Cisco UCS

Open source network monitoring and management vendor Zenoss is out this week with a new version of its commercial Zenoss Enterprise platform. Zenoss Enterprise 3 is built on an open core model, with the core product based on the Zenoss Core open source project and including some proprietary bits on top.

With Zenoss Enterprise 3, a new dynamic service assurance feature is being rolled in to help ensure service levels cloud and virtualization environments. Zenoss is also extending their platform to support monitoring Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) Unified Computing System (UCS) deployments.

The Zenoss platform has long been able to discover and help network administrators monitor network assets. With Zenoss Enterprise 3, admins can now get full visibility into cloud and virtual deployments.

Mark Hinkle, vice president of community at Zenoss, explained to InternetNews.com that Zenoss Enterprise 3 now has alerting capabilities for all layers of the network application delivery stack. As an example, Hinkle said that if an enterprise is running a Java Web application, Zenoss can provide visibility into how the application is performing at the app server level, the operating system level, the VMware image if it's virtualized or the Amazon image if it's on Amazon, and then actually see the physical hardware status as well.

"So if you're an admin and all you care about is an app server you can quickly see what's going on," Hinkle said.

Network monitoring is an exercise that often gathers lots of log data, which isn't always easy to make sense of. Hinkle said that with the new search capabilities in Zenoss Enterprise 3, the goal is to enable administrators to be able to search though log and event information and find whatever it is they might be looking for.

While Zenoss is able to monitor any type of network, with Zenoss Enterprise 3 they're adding in new capabilities for those that want to specifically manage Cisco UCS deployments. UCS is Cisco's effort to deliver converged networking and server hardware.

Hinkle noted that Zenoss is providing some instrumentation that will enable Cisco UCS users to monitor and manage their deployment, and that the Zenoss capability was built working in partnership with Cisco UCS customers as well as leveraging industry standards. Zenoss competes against multiple vendors in the UCS management space, including CA (NYSE: CA), which expanded its respective UCS management offering in May.

Open source model

Zenoss Enterprise 3 is built on the open core model, but is not open source itself. The Zenoss Core application is the underlying open source foundation for Zenoss Enterprise. Hinkle noted that Zenoss Core 3 is not yet available though he expects that it will be officially released on July 12.

The open source Zenoss Core 3 will not include the UCS, dynamic service views and search enhancements, but it will have interface and performance upgrades.

"The behind the scenes plumbing that makes Zenoss Enterprise good is what goes into Zenoss Core," Hinkle said.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.