There is the easiest way to run IT management tool

If you are not a Linux guru, windows is the OS you can use only. It does not matter. You could easily try it on your Windows Laptop probably. Since VMware Player is free for using, and there are lots of VMware applications on the internet. So, you just download whatever you need and run them on everywhere. Then you get a fancy IT management solution running on your computer; you really do not even know about Linux and open source. You will see it rocks for you; you won’t troubleshoot for installation issues.

• 
  

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

• OpenNMS 1.3.2-CentOS4

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4141&package_id=227240

• Zenoss 1.1.1

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/zenoss/zenoss-1.1.1-x86.vmware.zip

• GroundWork 5.1

http://www.groundworkopensource.com/downloads/full_download.html#vmw

• OpenESM (ZABBIX)

http://www.openesm.com/s1/

More will coming soon.

ZABBIX特点介绍，转自它们的网站

FROM：http://www.zabbix.com/features.php

ZABBIX offers functionality that will make your IT resources look more transparent, and it will also help to easily identify performance and availability problems. ZABBIX greatly increases the productivity of system administrators by providing simple-to-use monitoring system.

Key features

• 开源的方案Open Source solution
• 能编译运行在多种OS：AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, MacOS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Tru64/OSF
• SQL database存储配置、性能等各种信息
• Web interface 简单易用的访问
• 提供实时和历史的监控分析数据
  
• Data 可视化和影射
  
• 高性能的监控代理 (UNIX, Win32)
• 监控 "agentless" 环境
• 维护和监控SLA of IT Services
• 监控 SNMP (v1,v2,v3) devices

IT Services 提供IT基础架构（组建/服务/硬件）等和业务逻辑的联系和对应

ZABBIX's unique technology allows you to relate your applications and underlying servers or network to a IT Service such as application, location, server, network device, region, etc. This technology allows you to correlate your business to your IT infrastructure and identify the impact of your IT infrastructure to the delivery of business service to your customers.

Data visualisation

ZABBIX provides excellent visualisation of statistical and real-time information, ranging from simple graphs to complex views containing graphs, maps and text information. All graphical information is accessible from WEB interface. The wealth of information available such as the trend analysis (days to threshold), the historical graphs and histograms allow you to make informed decisions about the weaknesses and performance of your IT infrastructure.

Application monitoring 应用监控

Enterprise applications such as Oracle, WebSphere, WebLogic, Exchange, Apache, etc. can be monitored using SNMP. In many cases, agentless technology can be used, cutting down on the deployment and management costs.

ZABBIX agents can be easily extended to perform monitoring of any aspect of your applications. It is matter of writing a shell script which would return required data back to the agent.

Server monitoring 服务器监控

Virtually all server platforms are supported including but not limited to UNIX, Win32 and Novell Netware. ZABBIX native agents take care of CPU utilisation, memory utilisation, disk usage, network I/O, temperature of CPUs and mainboards, status of processes, etc. All real-time performance data is immediately available by WEB interface.

Network monitoring 网络设备监控

ZABBIX supports monitoring of Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, Nortel, Foundry and other routers as well as firewalls from Netscreen, Fortinet, Cisco or Checkpoint. Any network devices (routers, hubs, printers, etc) having SNMP support can be easily monitored by ZABBIX.

ZABBIX makes possible creation of network maps which give very clear representation of monitored network infrastructure. The maps show network devices, connections, statuses of the devices, and reasons if a device is not available or has any problems.

Integration of Fault and Performance Management集成化的故障和性能监控

The need to effectively integrate fault and performance management is becoming increasingly apparent to IT organizations seeking to ensure quality delivery of business services. ZABBIX generates real-time notification of threshold violations based on scheduled performance tests.

What is ZABBIX?

第一次看到这个软件是在OpenNMS的邮件讨论组中，他们计划做一个vmware的image放到VMTN上 。我在VMTN里哪里点击了一下监控管理这一类，一个叫OpenESM的项目进入了我的视线。它能引起我的注意是因为，它在项目的描述中说:我们理解ITSM、、、、Check it out! 大致浏览了一下他们的网站，发现他们的目的是在Zabbix的基础上作一下优化和开发，加入若干特色：GSM modem发短信、新报表、SLA监控等。

现在很多项目都有迅速实施的解决方案。对于很多开源项目来说，它们对于新手的相同门槛就是安装。安装上了，不会配置；配置好了，不会用；用上了解决不了问题。

我先下载了OpenESM ，一个不算太大的文件1.3GB。解压缩之后用VMWare打开运行，猜出root的用户名是openesm，登陆之后发现它是一个Fedora的虚拟机。登陆OpenESM的控制台， http://ip/ 接下来就需要去www.openesm.com上下载手册了，否则无法继续下去。照着手册安装代理，在我的两个Windows的机器上。安装需要先下子代理安装包，允许安装命令的时候需要制定自己的主机名和服务器的主机名。在控制台中加入这两个安装了代理的机器，由于是初次使用没用玩自动发现之类的功能。收集了一阵子数据之后，很快发现了很多有趣的数据。

最终总结如下

• 这是我安装的第一个有代理程序的开源监控软件，感觉在Windows下代理的安装还是比较方便的。比我想象的简单，安装文件只有一个exe文件，装完之后形成一个服务。我记得在查阅文档的时候看到了一文档，上面列出了所有代理程序能收集的数据的表格，说明了什么数据在什么操作系统中支持，那些不支持。它能在多种操作系统上安装，他的安装时说从代码编译安装，windows上不需要，在非windows上就以为这需要安装编译器什么的。这好像并不是特别好。
• 可用性和性能的数据都能收集。
• 事件管理功能，能触发action，还没有试过，能触发邮件和GSM短信等。没有试过。
• 没有试的还挺多，还需要进一步研究。