IT Services Management With Zenoss Core 4

 The latest development in IT Services Management tools may well be the release of Zenoss Core 4 (see this Press Release).

Zenoss is a component-level IT monitoring tool with two versions:  Zenoss Core, a free and Open Source product, and the commercial version, Zenoss Enterprise, which is sold by Zenoss Inc., the corporate sponsor of Zenoss Core.  Large distributed IT departments will probably consider Zenoss Enterprise as it  extends the Core with multiple collectors.  As always, all components of the Zenoss 4 architecture are built from Open Source tools.

Major improvements in the new release include:

• enhanced ZenPing suppression (essentially,  the python code in ZenPing was rewritten to include better layer 3 link attributes)
• NMAP for ICMP packet generation
• a new auto-deploy script, making Zenoss Core 4 easier to install than past releases

The new release is initially available as the Core version.   Zenoss Service Dynamics version 4.2.2, which provides additional analytics and resource management capabilities, is set to be released later this year.

Today's dynamic data center relies crucially on virtualization and cloud services, and Zenoss continues to advance in that direction.  For an overview of the features of the Enterprise product, check out the ZenossSolution Overview Brochure.

I have found Zenoss to be a near perfect tool to help IT departments meet their monitoring needs in a more cost-effective manner.  While my focus today is on Microsoft SCOM, Orchestrator and Service Manager, I encourage you to consider Zenoss as a long-term, thoroughly professional alternative.