Zenoss Primary Server / Data Collector Daemon Overview & Configuration Set Up

After research, I summized the following regarding which Zenoss daemons should run on the Primary Server and Data Collector(s).

 

Zenoss Primary Server and Data Collector Daemon Configuration Set Up

 

• User Layerzopectl daemon only runs on the the Zenoss Primary Server.

• ZEO back-end object database, zeoctl daemon only runs on the  Zenoss Primary Server.

• Zenoss Process Layer(zenhub, zenactions and zenjobs) daemons only runs on the Zenoss Primary Server.

• All other daemons run on both the Zenoss Primary and Data Collector(s).

 

Zenoss Daemon Overview ->

• ZOPE is the Application Server used by Zenoss. (ZOPECTL Daemon)
• ZEO is the ZOPE python object database. This is where the configuration model is stored. (ZEOCTL Daemon)
• ZENHUB is the communication hub that Zenoss uses to collect data from monitoring sources and other data collectors (ZENHUB Daemon)

 

(Note: The below information was extracted from Zenoss documentation ....)

 

Automated Modeling Daemons

zendisc Discovers new network resources. zendisc is a subclass of zenmodeler. It walks the routing table to discover the network topology, and then pings all discovered networks to find active IP addresses and devices.

zenmodeler Configuration collection and configuration daemon, used for high-performance, automated model population. It uses SNMP, SSH, Telnet, and WMI to collect its information. zenmodeler works against devices that have been loaded into the DMD. It models devices on a periodic schedule (typically every 12 hours).

Availability Monitoring Daemons

zenping Performs high-performance, asynchronous testing of ICMP status. Uses the Zenoss Standard model to perform Layer 3 -aware network topology monitoring.

 

zenstatus Performs active TCP connection testing of remote daemons.

 

zenprocess Checks for the existence of monitored processes by using SNMP host resources' MIB, logging their CPU and memory utilization. For cases in which more than one process is matched, sums the CPU and memory and tracks the process count.

 

Event Collection Daemons

zensyslog Collects and classifies syslog events. Parses the raw format to find the level and facility, host name, and tag (the freeform message string of the event). Syslog events often have specific, proprietary formats used by vendors; zensyslog tries to parse these by using a series of regular expressions defined in it. Once parsing is complete, the event is sent back to the event system (through zenhub) to be integrated with the model.

 

zeneventlog Collects Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) event log events. Forwards these events to zenhub for further processing.

 

zentrap Collects SNMP traps, parses them, resolves OIDs into MIB names, and then forwards them to zenhub for further rules processing.

 

Performance Monitoring Daemons

zenperfsnmp Performs high-performance, asynchronous SNMP performance collection and stores it locally to the collector. Thresholds are tested each time a value is written to disk.

 

zencommand Performs XML RPC collection. Allows running of Nagios© and Cactii plug-ins on the local box, or on remote boxes through SSH. Commands must conform to the Nagios or Cactii API specifications.

Automated Response Daemons

 

zenactions Runs background jobs, such as email notification, database aging and maintenance window processing.

 

- Ken