September 10, 2009
Kings of open source monitoring
Built on open source, OpenNMS and Zenoss Enterprise take different paths to rich, scalable, and extensible network and systems monitoring
34 RecommendationsNetwork monitoring is a fact of life for IT departments. Monitoring software ranges from simple ICMP-based scripts for up/down monitoring to midrange products like SolarWinds to high-end offerings such as HP's OpenView and IBM's Tivoli -- all of which have their drawbacks. Simpler monitoring systems don't provide enough information about your network, while the feature-laden high-end systems can be prohibitively expensive. At the same time, midrange systems might not scale well for monitoring large networks.
Two network monitoring systems with open source roots, OpenNMS and Zenoss, provide a bevy of features at a lower (or no) cost than their high-end competitors, and can scale to monitor large numbers of network nodes. Both solutions compete with large commercial systems such as OpenView and Tivoli. They are advanced systems capable of monitoring a wide variety of network devices. OpenNMS is completely open source, while Zenoss offers Core, a free open source edition that can be extended with free Zenoss- and community-built add-ons.
[ The 2009 Bossie winners are in! See Best of Open Source Software Awards 2009 and even The greatest open source software of all time. ]
Although OpenNMS and Zenoss support a large number of common network devices, computers, and applications out of the box, some companies will have uncommon or specialized equipment that is not yet supported. Both provide facilities to extend the functionality of the system and to add custom network device support. Zenoss uses its ZenPack system, which is a Python-egg plug-in architecture.
OpenNMS has several ways to provide additional capabilities. First, most of the configuration information for OpenNMS exists in XML files in /etc/opennms. These files can be edited to add new notification methods and other small extensions to the application. Next are event automations, which allow you to specify an SQL query to look for thresholds being exceeded and create events or trigger actions (such as shell scripts). External tools -- such as mib2opennms for SNMP Traps and the mibParser for data collection -- can be used to convert SNMP MIB information into a format OpenNMS can use. Finally, if you're a Java programmer, it is pretty straightforward to create custom monitors and data collectors in Java.
In addition, both systems have the ability to run custom scripts, and they can use Nagios plug-ins to extend functionality. This is a handy feature, but note that it can hamper scalability for large networks. (See the sidebar, "Maximize the performance of your monitoring system.")
Big, complex
OpenNMS and Zenoss put in good efforts at making their applications easy to use, providing Web interfaces for management and information delivery. Nevertheless, to get the full network monitoring benefits of these two systems, you will need to roll up your sleeves and spend at least some time on the command line. For example, neither has the ability to import a list of devices via the Web interface. And we have to face the fact that an enterprise-grade network monitoring system is not a simple piece of software. Despite both companies' best efforts at making their software easy to manage, these are complex systems, and IT staff will want to read all the documentation and take full advantage of the training classes offered by both companies.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that installation is quite easy for the two products, and both support a variety of Unix-ish platforms, including various Linux distributions, FreeBSD, Solaris, and Mac OS X. OpenNMS can also run on OpenBSD and Windows. As a longtime Debian user, I'm used to being disappointed when big commercial applications do not support Debian's native apt installer or even deb packages. So I was pleased that Zenoss provides stand-alone deb packages with dependencies, and OpenNMS maintains a software repository for use with Debian's apt software installation system.
Further, both of these network monitoring systems can be run on virtualization platforms such as VMware and Xen. Zenoss maintains a VMware image of its open source Core version, and OpenNMS makes a VMware image available for download from SourceForge. My company runs OpenNMS on an Amazon EC2 cloud computing instance.
| Test Center Scorecard | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |  |  |  | |
| 20% | 20% | 20% | 10% | 10% | 20% | ||
| OpenNMS 1.6.5 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 8 | 10 |
7.5
Good
|
| 20% | 20% | 20% | 10% | 10% | 20% | ||
| Zenoss Enterprise 2.4 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 7 |
7.9
Good
|
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jgehlbach
10-Sep-09 2:11pm
A small correction to the paragraph about OpenNMS' notification subsystem: the author uses the term "user notification paths" several times. The correct term from the OpenNMS lexicon is "destination path". Thanks for recognizing the flexibility that reusable paths bring!
jgehlbach
10-Sep-09 3:51pm
I would also like to point out that the value gap between OpenNMS (whose every feature is always 100% free for anybody to use for any purpose) and Zenoss Enterprise (which costs annually by the node for the right to use the premium features) is much larger than the three-point difference in the Test Center Scorecard seems to indicate.
The Standard Support package available for OpenNMS costs $14,995 annually, regardless of how many devices one is managing. The least expensive Zenoss Enterprise deployment that one can buy (250 nodes with Silver support subscription) has an annual list price of $25,000. That's a cost advantage of over 40% in OpenNMS' favor.
For a small-to-medium enterprise environment consisting of 500 managed devices and requiring weekday support with a four-hour response time SLA, the OpenNMS support pricing would still be $14,995 annually. A Zenoss Enterprise Gold subscription for that same environment would list for $75,000 annually. The cost advantage grows to over 80%.
At the high end of the spectrum, imagine an organization that manages 100,000 nodes, integrates the management platform into its own customer-facing portal, and needs 24x7 support. That organization would pay a flat $59,995 annually for OpenNMS ULTRA support (24x7 coverage plus development support). To cover that same size deployment with a Zenoss Enterprise Platinum subscription (which provides only 13x5 coverage) would cost $18 million annually at list price. Even at a ludicrously generous 95% discount, the annual Zenoss Enterprise Platinum subscription pricing would be $900,000. The cost advantage of OpenNMS in this scenario reaches over 95%.
Another important point that is easy to overlook is that the annual subscription-licensing model used by Zenoss Enterprise revokes the user's right to use the premium features of the software if she stops paying the bill. Even leaving out this distinction, a 40% cost advantage seems worth more than a three-point spread in value. How many points is an 80% or 95% cost advantage worth?
Of course, the freedom to continue using all of the software's features independent of paying any license or support fees is... you guessed it... priceless.
What about the two-point gaps in the Features and Documentation columns? You can hire The OpenNMS Group to close those gaps through custom development projects. We'd love to talk with you about it.
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