Zenoss and the Art of Network Monitoring

摘要

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? This the classic query designed to place your mind into the Zen-like state known as the silent mind. Whether or not you want to hear a tree fall, if you run a network, you probably want to hear a server when it goes down. Many organizations utilize the long-established Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) as a way to monitor their networks proactively and listen for things going down. At a rudimentary level, SNMP requires only two items to work: a management server and a managed device (or devices). The management server pulls status and health information at regular intervals from the managed devices and stores the information in a table. Managed devices use local SNMP agents to notify the management server when defined behavior occurs (such as errors or "traps"), which are stored in the same table on the server.