Test Drive Zenoss EnterpriseEvaluate Zenoss EnterpriseRequest more info

Announcement

Release Notes for Zenoss 2.4.2

2009/06/25

 

Copyright © 2009 Zenoss, Inc., 275 West St. Suite 204, Annapolis, MD 21401, U.S.A. All rights reserved.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/; or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 2nd Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

 

 

The Zenoss logo is a registered trademark of Zenoss, Inc. Zenoss and Open Enterprise Management are trademarks of Zenoss, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries.

Flash is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Oracle and the Oracle logo are registered trademarks of the Oracle Corporation.

SNMP Informant is a trademark of Garth K. Williams (Informant Systems, Inc.).

Sybase is a registered trademark of Sybase, Inc.

Tomcat is a trademark of the Apache Software Foundation.

Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.

 

All other companies and products mentioned are trademarks and property of their respective owners.

1. About These Notes
1.1. What's New in This Release?
1.2. Downloading Zenoss Core
1.3. Supported Software and Environments
1.4. Installation, Upgrade and Implementation Notes
1.4.1. Migrating MySQL Data
1.4.2. Upgrade Paths
1.4.3. Windows Monitoring
1.4.4. ZenJMX
1.5. Known Issues
1.6. Defects Fixed in this Release
1.7. Reporting Problems and Providing Feedback
1.7.1. Product Documentation Feedback

1. About These Notes

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 and issues fixed in the release

  • Reporting problems and providing feedback

1.1. What's New in This Release?

This version of Zenoss Core offers these new features and improvements:

  • Zenoss Setup Wizard, which guides you through initial system configuration and device addition

  • Additional, simplified method for adding devices

  • Ability to implement remote SSH monitoring (requires ZenPack creation following provided example)

  • Reporting normalization

  • Over 70 community-contributed ZenPacks

  • Expanded documentation, including the Zenoss Extended Monitoring guide

1.2. Downloading Zenoss Core

Zenoss Core is available from this location:

http://www.zenoss.com/download

1.3. Supported Software and Environments

You can install Zenoss Core on these platforms:

  • Linux®

    • RedHat® Enterprise Linux 4, 5

    • CentOS 4, 5

    • FedoraTM Core 9, 10

    • Debian® 5

    • Ubuntu® Server 6.06, 8.04

    • openSUSE 10.3, 11.1

    • SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server 10

  • Mac OS® X v10.5 Leopard®

  • Windows® (requires VMwareTM Player and the Zenoss Virtual Appliance)

For each system that will access Zenoss through a Web browser, you need:

  • Firefox 3.x or Internet Explorer 7

  • Adobe® Flash® Player (for network map functionality)

The following partial list of resources can be managed by Zenoss:

  • Windows Server (2000, 2003, 2008), Windows XP, and Windows Vista®

  • Linux or other UNIX® server

  • VMware ESX Infrastructure

  • TomcatTM and other Java®/JMX servers

  • Any SNMP- or SSH-enabled device

1.4. Installation, Upgrade and Implementation Notes

Read this section for important installation, upgrade, and implementation updates. For complete installation and update instructions, refer to the latest version of Zenoss Core Installation.

1.4.1. Migrating MySQL Data

Migrating MySQL data from Zenoss 2.3.x to 2.4.x may take several hours for systems with numerous events. Once started, do not stop the migration process.

1.4.2. Upgrade Paths

Refer to the following table to determine the upgrade path you must follow when upgrading to a newer version of Zenoss.

If your current version is:  You can upgrade directly to this version: 
2.1.x 2.1.3
2.1.3 2.2.4
2.2.x 2.2.4
2.2.4 2.3.3
2.3.x 2.4.2

Note

Zenoss strongly recommends that you upgrade to the latest release to receive the latest features and defect fixes.

1.4.3. Windows Monitoring

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

1.4.4. ZenJMX

The ThreadCount data point in the ZenJMX and Java templates has been changed to type GAUGE. This change for ThreadCount invalidates the previously incorrect data on devices that use these templates, so the existing data will be deleted as part of the upgrade.

If you have made copies of the Java or ZenJMX templates, then you should update the ThreadCount data points to be type GAUGE. Also, you should delete the old RRD files for the affected data points.

1.5. Known Issues

The following issues are known for this version of Zenoss Core.

  • The data normalization feature provides the ability to compare system metrics across platforms. Currently, this feature is supported by the CPU Utilization report, found in /Reports/Performance Reports/CPU Utilization. In the initial feature release, some platforms do not correctly report values for all metrics. (Defects 4398 and 5218)

    To resolve this issue, you must update any local copies of the templates for SSH Linux, SSH AIX, and Windows-based clients, as follows:

    • SSH Linux Clients

      1. From the navigation bar, click Devices to go to the base Device device class.

      2. Navigate to the /Devices/Server/SSH/Linux device class.

      3. Select the Templates tab.

      4. Click the Device template.

      5. Click the cpu data source.

      6. Click the ssCpuldle data point.

      7. Select Remove Data Point Alias from the page menu.

      8. In the dialog box, select the cpu__pct alias, and then click Remove.

      9. Select Add Data Point Alias from the page menu.

      10. In the dialog box, provide this information:

        Name cpu__pct
        Formula __EVAL:str(len(here.hw.cpus())) + ',/,100,EXC,-'

        Note

        The name "cpu__pct" includes two underscores.

      11. Click Add.

    • For SSH AIX Clients

      1. From the navigation bar, click Devices to go to the base Device device class.

      2. Navigate to the /Devices/Server/SSH/AIX device class.

      3. Select the Templates tab.

      4. Click the Device template.

      5. Click the cpu data source.

      6. Click the ssCpuldle data point.

      7. Select Remove Data Point Alias from the page menu.

      8. In the dialog box, select the cpu__pct alias, and then click Remove.

      9. Select Add Data Point Alias from the page menu.

      10. In the dialog box, provide this information:

        Name cpu__pct
        Formula 100,EXC,-

        Note

        The name "cpu__pct" includes two underscores.

      11. Click Add.

    • Windows-based Clients

      Follow these steps for the /Devices/Server/Windows and /Devices/Server/Windows/WMI device classes:

      1. From the navigation bar, click Devices to go to the base Device device class.

      2. Navigate to the /Devices/Server/Windows device class.

      3. Select the Templates tab.

      4. Click the Device_WMI template.

      5. Click the ProcessorTotalProcessorTime data source.

      6. Click the ProcessorTotalProcessorTime data point.

      7. Select Add Data Point Alias from the page menu.

      8. In the dialog box, provide this information:

        Name cpu__pct
        Formula Leave the formula blank.

        Note

        The name "cpu__pct" includes two underscores.

      9. Click Add.

    Note

    After updating the templates, you may notice that the RRD type for AIX (GAUGE) and Linux (DERIVE) differ. This is correct; do not modify them. Doing this will cause the data to be stored incorrectly.

    For more information about data normalization, see Zenoss Administration.

  • When installing from source on FreeBSD, fonts do not appear correctly in performance graphs. (Defect 5006)

    To correct this issue, you must install Liberation fonts with the following command:

                ln -s /usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Liberation /usr/share/fonts/X11/

  • When adding a device manually by IP address, the device name does not resolve to its discovered name. To work around this issue, manually change the device name. Alternatively, use the Autodiscover devices option (select Easy Add from the Add Device page). (Defect 4799)

  • In some cases, an upgrade may stop after producing the following messages:

                Error: There has been an error.
            Error running /usr/local/foo/zen/mysql/scripts/ctl.sh stop : child process exited abnormally
            Press [Enter] to continue :

    This is due to MySQL taking longer to shut down than expected. The upgrade should proceed successfully when run again. (Int Defect 1600)

  • On RPM upgrade from 2.3.x to 2.4.x, the following messages may occur multiple times:

                INFO: Commenting out unknown option 'configpath' found on line 12 in config file
            INFO: Commenting out unknown option 'zenwinmodeler' found on line 15 in config file

    This is expected behavior. (Defect 4829)

  • Error messages from one user can appear in multiple sessions. (Defect 3992)

  • In Windows 2000, logical disk performance counters are disabled by default. After Zenoss models file systems for Windows 2000, it does not gather performance data until you modify the server to enable those performance counters.

    To enable the performance counters, use the diskperf command on the server. For more information, read the Microsoft Knowledge Base article titled "Using Diskperf on Windows 2000" at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/253251. (Int Defect 1223)

1.6. Defects Fixed in this Release

Go to the following location to view defects fixed in this release:

http://tinyurl.com/knztqe

1.7. Reporting Problems and Providing Feedback

Use the Zenoss forums (http://forums.zenoss.com/) and Trac (http://dev.zenoss.org/trac) to submit issues and provide feedback.

1.7.1. Product Documentation Feedback

Zenoss welcomes your comments and suggestions to help us improve our product documentation. Please send your comments to:

docs@zenoss.com