EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring Virtual Appliance

The EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring Virtual Appliance takes the tedious complexity out of installing and configuring a Zenoss ESX Monitoring system. It enables you to bring up Zenoss ESX Monitoring in a matter of minutes! It also includes a bonus - automatic SNMP configuration of the target ESX server. Enter the IP address and root password of your ESX server, and it will ssh in, configure the SNMP daemon, and sets up snmpd for auto start. Download a vmware or a xen appliance, and fire up the VM. Full GUI Configuration is included in the virtual appliance. You will not need to log into the underlying linux system to permform any administration tasks. The following illustrative screen captures are for the vmware appliance, however, the procedure is similar for the Xen Virtual Appliance.

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Visit the EnSpeed Virtualization Blog for notes, tips, suggestions, etc.

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE VMWARE VIRTUAL APPLIANCE:

• VM Host Computer
  
  1. VMware Virtual Machine Monitor Software
     1. VMware Server with VMWare Server Console on Linux/Windows XP
     2. VMware Player on Linux/Windows XP
  2. 512M of free memory
  3. 10 Gigabytes or more of disk space
  
  
• A DHCP or Static IP Address for the EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring Virtual Appliance


1. IP Address, Netmask, Default gateway and DNS Server information,
2. or, a DHCP Server that will hand out an IP address to this Virtual Appliance

REQUIREMENTS FOR THE XEN VIRTUAL APPLIANCE:

• VM Host Computer
  
  1. VM Host Server with Intel VT or AMD Pacifica (This is a fully virtualized Xen VM)
  2. Xen Virtual Machine Monitor Software - One of the following:
     1. EnSpeed VMM with LiveSync. EnSpeed VMM users may directly download this appliance into the EnSpeed VM Orchestrator using the built in Virtual Appliance browser. Read more about the EnSpeed Virtualization Platform here
     2. CentOS 5.0
     3. RedHat 5.0
  3. 512M of free memory
  4. 10 Gigabytes or more of disk space
  
  
• A DHCP or Static IP Address for the EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring Virtual Appliance


1. IP Address, Netmask, Default gateway and DNS Server information,
2. or, a DHCP Server that will hand out an IP address to this Virtual Appliance

INSTALLATION:

1	Download the EnSpeedZenossVA file.
2	Unrar or Untar it into a directory with at least 10 Gigabytes of free space
3	If this appliance is to be hosted on Windows, double click on the "Red Hat Linux.vmx" file
4	If this appliance is being hosted in Linux/VMware Server, then register the vmx with the VMware server using the command "vmware-cmd -s register full_path_name_to_the_vmx_file". Use the VMware Server console (vmware-server-console) program that is supplied as part of the "vmware-server-linux-console" package from vmware. Please note that the vmware server web UI, i.e. the vmware-mui package does not work with this Virtual Appliance. The following is a screen capture with the Virtual Appliance running in Vmware Server under Windows XP SCREEN CAPTURE 1 Click here to view Enlarged Image
5	The Virtual Appliance starts up and displays the single configuration and status page. At this point, please configure networking for the Virtual Appliance. You may choose a DHCP Configuration as shown in Screen Capture 2 below, or a static IP address. SCREEN CAPTURE 2 Click here to view Enlarged Image
6	Once the Network Configuration is saved, and the web browser returns to the main page. You can now use the main page to add an ESX Server to you Zenoss monitoring server. First, ensure that ssh access to the ESX Server is enabled. Also open up the snmp port in the ESX Server's firewall configuration. Now, when you enter the IP address of the ESX server and its root password, and press the "Add ESX Server" button, it peforms the following actions. First it sshs into the ESX server, and configures the /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf. It adds a ro community with the community string 'public', configures snmpd to start automatically, and starts up snmp. Finally, it adds this ESX Server to the Zenoss system. Zenoss begins monitoring your ESX server immediately.
7	Open a web browser and point it at the URL displayed in the step above, and your Zenoss ESX Monitoring login is displayed. Use the login admin with password enspeed to access your new EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring server. SCREEN CAPTURE 4 Click here to view Enlarged Image
8	Note the button "Enable ssh" at the top of the console admin page. Pushing this button enables ssh access into the EnSpeed Zenoss ESX Monitoring Virtual Appliance. The ssh port is not opened permanently. Once you reboot the Virtual Appliance, it starts up with the ssh access disabled.