Orion vs. Zenoss

Hello-

I have never been torn between two things as much as I am now. I am looking to deploy a new NMS solutions for my company. We are currently running an outdated version of Nagios that no one likes and is a pain to use. Over the past few months, I have been trying both Zenoss and Orion (more recently.) I was wondering if anyone has used Zenoss and reasons they may have switched to Orion.

The environment that I will be monitoring consists of ONLY linux servers and Cisco routers. Zenoss was appealing at first since it seemed to offer more linux support. Just as I was about to pull the trigger on Zenoss, I became concerned due to potential instability of the product itself. I started demo'ing Orion and really like the stability of the product and the ease of customization of the gui. My concern with Orion is the lack of linux support. It seems Orion is more geared towards monitoring windows environments rather than linux.

Can anyone shed any light here? I understand this is a Orion forum to responses may be bias. Is there anyone out there this is JUST monitoring linux hosts and is completely happy?

Thanks much guys!

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aliendan

What do you want to or need to monitor? If you are looking to monitor CPU, Memory, HDD, or interfaces you should have no issues from Orion.

Mithrilhall

I've never had any luck with Orion monitoring Linux; or course that was with version 8.02.

Last I knew you needed 1 specific version of snmpd running that would work with Orion. I don't think any other versions were working.

FormerMember

I've never had any luck with Orion monitoring Linux; or course that was with version 8.02.
Last I knew you needed 1 specific version of snmpd running that would work with Orion. I don't think any other versions were working.

Orion supports the latest version of net-snmp. We poll the host resources MIB, which is what other SNMP-based vendors are going to poll.

If you to go beyond SNMP-based monitoring on Linux, you can use our Application Performance Monitor module. In the upcoming 2.0 release, APM will include a Linux Script Monitor which will allow you to schedule an SSH connection to a linux box, where any script supportable on the box can be run to collect data, which will be returned to APM for graphing, alerting, and reporting.

grantsewell

I understand this is a Orion forum to responses may be bias.

I think one of the greatest benefits to Orion is this forum. I have never actually called Solarwinds TAC, and have always been able to find a cheerful answer here, whether it required me to submit a question or find an existing response.

The environment that I will be monitoring consists of ONLY linux servers and Cisco routers. Zenoss was appealing at first since it seemed to offer more linux support. Just as I was about to pull the trigger on Zenoss, I became concerned due to potential instability of the product itself. I started demo'ing Orion and really like the stability of the product and the ease of customization of the gui. My concern with Orion is the lack of linux support. It seems Orion is more geared towards monitoring windows environments rather than linux.

Orion, truthfully, is geared more towards Microsoft. However, I have a number of firewalls, routers, and servers running Linux (or a derivative), and they all report quite well providing I'm using a properly configured net-snmp, or that the manufacturer (in the case of an appliance) has properly configured it for me.

Is there anyone out there this is JUST monitoring linux hosts and is completely happy?

I cannot claim this, unfortunately. My primary firewall vendor does not properly configure net-snmp on their devices, so I get very little custom date from these systems. HOWEVER, I do get all the CPU, HDD, memory, fan speed, and uptime information from them successfully. If this is the info you want to monitor, Orion will take care of you just fine. I've also found it to be a lot more supportive and user friendly than Zenoss, but that's just one guy's opinion.

Cheers,

Grant

BHG_2008

Neither. You want a Linux solution that runs on Linux, use ZABBIX.

Server IPAddress/Port and ListenIP/Port are configurable in agent conf file, will pass through firewall NATs, no problem. Escalating Alerts, etc. Stack multiple values on same graph.

Control User perms by usergroup. Apply multiple templates to same host.

Monitoring about 30,000 items across 2,800 or so hosts with Dual Quad 2.8Ghz and 16GB RAM.

At about 90 seconds average for polling interval. Use CentOS for OS, MySQL for database, apache for frontend. No cost. Just the hardware.

Only downside is installing an agent on every Linux and Windows machine.

SLAMAN

Zenoss is a very high cost and support cost for software/hardware. Zenoss is the worst solutions I have seen in 20 years. We can not move from Zenoss fast enough. If you have something go in to alert you get some much e-mails that you can not e-mail your staff to talk about the fix. The support is good if you have weeks to wait for a reply. If you need setup help it $1,800.00 a day. It is the must useless product on the market. They say it's use in the government, it's only on the GSA schedule. The government would not buy Zenoss

No one likes to use it the manger that got is no longer with us after getting this. I have ever meet anyone who is using this. Run from this if you want to keep your job and save money. No reports that your would show management.