Announcement

Release Notes for Zenoss 2.3.0

2008/11/12

Release Notes for Zenoss Version 2.3

These release notes contain important information about this release of Zenoss™, including:

• New features
• Where to download the software
• Supported software and environments
• Installation, upgrade, and implementation notes
• Known issues
• Defects fixed in the release
• Documentation updates
• How to report problems and provide feedback

What's New in This Release?

For Enterprise customers, Zenoss now provides comprehensive monitoring of your VMware infrastructure. It collects performance data from VMware servers (hosts), virtual machines (guests), VMware clusters and VMware data stores. By monitoring the entire VMware stack, Zenoss provides a complete picture into VMware's performance and availability, allowing you to quickly troubleshoot VMware-related problems.

Zenoss 2.3 expands your ability to monitor Java applications with improved JMX monitoring and error reporting. Zenoss also can receive JMX events that are sent from JMX applications.

This version of Zenoss also provides improvements to monitoring the performance and availability of Windows servers. It collects data by using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and Windows Perfmon.

Zenoss offers an expanded list of ZenPacks for download, including 30 community-contributed monitoring ZenPacks.

Downloading Zenoss Version 2.3

Zenoss Core 2.3 is available from this location:
http://www.zenoss.com/download

Zenoss Enterprise 2.3 is available from the Zenoss download site. Contact your Zenoss representative for more information.

Supported Software and Environments

You can install Zenoss 2.3 on one of these platforms:

• Linux®
  • RedHat® Enterprise 3, 4, 5
  • Fedora™ Core 6, 7, 8
  • Ubuntu® Server 6.06, 8.04
  • openSUSE 10.2, 10.3
  • SUSE® Enterprise 10
• Windows® (requires VMware™ Player and the Zenoss Virtual Appliance)

To run and use Zenoss 2.3, you need:

• One or more monitored targets, such as:
  • Windows server (2000 or 2003)
  • Linux or other UNIX® server
  • VMware ESX host
  • Tomcat™ or other Java/JMX server
  • Any SNMP-enabled device
• For each system that will access Zenoss through a Web browser:
  • Adobe® Flash® Player
  • Firefox 3.x, Firefox 2.x, or Internet Explorer 7
  • SSH client to facilitate command line tasks

Installation, Upgrade and Implementation Notes

Read this section for important installation, upgrade and implementation information.

Installation

Minimum system requirements for installing the Zenoss appliance are:

• 2GB RAM
• 20 GB free disk space

Appliance Upgrade

If you see the following error when following the "conary migrate" instruction to upgrade the Zenoss Virtual Appliance image:

 

            group-zenoss-enterprise was not found on branch...

then insert

            devel//

in the string. For example, if migrating from Zenoss Enterprise Version 2.2.x to Version 2.3, enter this command:

 

 

            conary migrate --interactive --resolve \ group-zenoss-enterprise=/zenoss-project.zenoss.loc@zenoss:devel//enterprise-2.3

 

Upgrade Paths

If your current version is 2.1.x, then you can upgrade directly to the 2.2.x version of Zenoss.

If your current version is 2.2.x, then you can upgrade directly to the 2.3 version of Zenoss.

Note: Zenoss strongly recommends that you upgrade to Release 2.3. When you upgrade to the latest software release, you receive the latest features and defect fixes.

Distributed Collector

For each distributed collector you add, you must have an additional 500 MB system memory on the machine running the collector.

VMware

If you have the ZenossVirtualHostMonitor ZenPack installed, and have added VMware virtual hosts, you must delete those hosts before adding a VMware infrastructure using the new ZenVMware ZenPack.

Windows Monitoring

Zenoss recommends that monitored machines running Windows 2000 be updated with the latest Microsoft patches.

Known Issues

The following issues are known for Version 2.3:

• The VMware ZenPack cannot collect performance data if the system clocks for the Zenoss installation and VMware server are not in sync.
• ZenJMX requires Sun Java SE Version 5.0 or higher to perform correctly. If you have a different version of Java, ZenJMX appears to run but is not functional.
• Error messages from one user can appear in multiple sessions. (Defect 3992)

Defects Fixed in This Release

To view the list of defects fixed in this release, click this link:

http://tinyurl.com/5zb4tx

Alternatively, follow these steps to navigate Trac and query for defects fixed in this release:

• Navigate to this location:http://dev.zenoss.org/trac
• From the Zenoss Trac site, click View Tickets.
• From the Available Reports list, click Custom Query.
• On the Custom Query page, make these selections and changes:
  • From the Add Filter list of options, select Resolution.
  • In the Filters area, select the Status value closed (de-select all other options).
  • In the Filters area, select the Resolution value fixed.
  • In the Filters area, select the Milestone value zenoss-2.3.
• Click Update.

Documentation Corrections and Updates

This section includes release-related documentation changes and corrections that do not appear in the product documentation.

Zenoss Installation for Professional and Enterprise Version 2.3

In the chapter titled "Chapter 1. Installing Zenoss from the Stack Installers," Step 1 is changed to:

1. Download the Zenoss installation files from the

               suse/

   directory at http://support.zenoss.com/download.

Zenoss Administration for Version 2.3

In the chapter titled "Chapter 32. Authentication Enterprise ZenPacks," in Section 2.2, the procedure "Setting Up LDAP Authentication" is changed to:

1. Go to: http://yourzenoss:8080/zport/acl_users/manage
2. Choose your authentication plugin, and then click Add.
3. Choose "ActiveDirectory Multi Plugin" for Microsoft Active Directory.
4. Choose "LDAP Multi Plugin" for any other LDAP server.
5. Complete the form with your LDAP credentials and paths.
   • ID - Enter a value similar to "ldapAuthentication."
   • Title - Leave this value blank.
   • Default User Roles - Set to ZenUser.
6. Click Add to save your changes.
7. Click plugins in the list of objects.
8. Click the Authentication Plugins link.
9. Move your ldapAuthentication plugin to the list of active plugins.

Reporting Problems and Providing Feedback

Use the Zenoss forums and Trac to submit issues and provide feedback.

If you are a Zenoss Enterprise customer, you also can contact your Zenoss representative.

Documentation Feedback

Zenoss welcomes your comments and suggestions to help us improve our documentation. Please send your comments to: docs@zenoss.com.