Groundwork Open Source

A perspective on open source network monitoring tools...

…by Grig Gheorghiu over on the Agile Testing blog: The sad state of open source monitoring tools. I wish there was a standard nomenclature for this stuff, as well as a standard way for these tools to inter-operate. As it is, you have to learn each tool and train your brain to ignore all the weirdness that it encounters. One of the problems with I.T. is the absence of a standard terminology.

"New wave" network management buzz comparison

Google Trends is an on-line service for comparing the search volumes for up to five keywords. I thought it would be interesting to compare the relative buzz of the new wave open source network management players between themselves, but also between other open source projects and commercial products. Google Trends doesn’t supply the search volumes themselves, so no quantitative data will be presented. The data that is presented is solely comparative.

"New wave" network management licences

Michael Tiemann made an interesting post titled Will the Real Open Source CRM Please Stand Up. Alex Fletcher wrote an interesting follow up. That got me thinking…how kosher are the licences used by the “new wave” open source network management companies? Have Hyperic, Groundwork and Zenoss really got the open source bug, or do they want the open source kudos without really opening up? I did a bit of digging around, and I am pleased to say that, at least to my non-legal eye, the licences do look the real deal.

"New wave" Windows support

One of the odd things about the three new wave players is that, of the three, only one Hyperic supports Windows natively. The lack of native Windows support in the other two Zenoss/Groundwork seems like quite an oversight. It will be interesting to see whether the lack of native Windows support hinders their adoption. I’d be surprised if it doesn’t. Zenoss have produced a nice virtual machine for VMWare. Kudos to them for that.