README.markdown

ZenPacks.zenoss.CloudStack

Please watch the Monitoring CloudStack video for a quick introduction that covers most of the details below.

About

This project is a Zenoss extension (ZenPack) that allows for monitoring of CloudStack. An explanation of what CloudStack is can be found at http://cloudstack.org/.

CloudStack is open source software written in java that is designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, scalable cloud computing platform. CloudStack current supports the most popular open source hypervisors VMware, Oracle VM, KVM, XenServer and Xen Cloud Platform. CloudStack offers three ways to manage cloud computing environments: a easy-to-use web interface, command line and a full-featured RESTful API.

Credits

I'd like to thank David Nalley for all of his help with the CloudStack API and for helping me to understand what in CloudStack would be useful to monitor.

Requirements & Dependencies

This ZenPack is known to be compatible with Zenoss versions 3.2 through 4.0.

All of the monitoring current supported is performed using the CloudStack API. It is expected that your CloudStack is running API version 2.2.4 or later, and that the API and secret keys be that of a full administrative user.

Installation

You must first have, or install, Zenoss 3.2.0 or later. Core and Enterprise versions are supported. You can download the free Core version of Zenoss from http://community.zenoss.org/community/download.

Normal Installation (packaged egg)

Depending on what version of Zenoss you're running you will need a different package. Download the appropriate package for your Zenoss version from the list below.

• Zenoss 4.1 - 4.2: Packages for Zenoss 4
• Zenoss 3.0 - 4.0: Packages for Zenoss 3

Then copy it to your Zenoss server and run the following commands as the zenoss user.

zenpack --install <package.egg>
zenoss restart

Developer Installation (link mode)

If you wish to further develop and possibly contribute back you should clone the git repository, then install the ZenPack in developer mode using the following commands.

git clone git://github.com/zenoss/ZenPacks.zenoss.CloudStack.git
zenpack --link --install ZenPacks.zenoss.CloudStack
zenoss restart

Usage

Installing the ZenPack will add the following items to your Zenoss system.

• Device Classes

  • /CloudStack

• Configuration Properties

  • zCloudStackURL
  • zCloudStackAPIKey
  • zCloudStackSecretKey

• Modeler Plugins

  • zenoss.CloudStack

• Monitoring Templates

  • Cloud
  • Zone
  • Pod
  • Cluster
  • Host

• Event Classes

  • /Status/CloudStack
  • /Perf/CloudStack
  • /App/CloudStack

The easiest way to start monitoring CloudStack is to navigate to the Infrastructure page, click the + menu to add a device and choose Add CloudStack. Fill out the URL, API Key, and Secret Key fields then click OK. The URL should only include the protocol, host and port (i.e. http://cloudstack.example.com/). You can find or create the keys by logging into the CloudStack web interface and navigate to Accounts and users.

Zenoss will then add the CloudStack device to the system along with all of its associated zones, pods and clusters. Monitoring will also start after the discovery is complete.

Metrics

Once you've successfully added a CloudStack cloud to Zenoss you will begin to see the following metrics available for the entire cloud. These numbers are aggregated from all zones, pods, clusters and hosts.

• Public IPs: Total and Used
• Private IPs: Total and Used
• Memory: Total (with and without over-provisioning), Allocated and Used
• CPU: Total (with and without over-provisioning), Allocated and Used
• Primary Storage: Total (with and without over-provisioning), Allocated and Used
• Secondary Storage: Total and Used
• Network: Read and Write

The same list of metrics are available for each zone. The same metrics with the exception of public IPs and secondary storage are also available for each pod.

The following metrics are available aggregated to each cluster, and for each host.

• Memory: Total and Used
• CPU: Total (with and without over-provisioning), Allocated, Used and Cores
• Network: Read and Write

Events

CloudStack has both alerts and events. Once you've successfully added a CloudStack cloud to Zenoss you will automatically receive all CloudStack alerts as events in Zenoss. You will also automatically receive all CloudStack events. However, the events will go straight into your event history by default.

To avoid overloading CloudStack and Zenoss, only the last two (2) days of events will be checked. This allows for timezone discrepency between the Zenoss and CloudStack servers as well as some downtime without missing events. There is no real-time event collection mechanism with the CloudStack API, so alerts and events will only be polled once per minute.

What's Next

The CloudStack management server is Java-based, specifically Tomcat. So there is a possibility to use JMX to get useful metrics out of the management server itself to watch its health and capacity.

Simple process and port checks could also be added for the Tomcat application server.

Screenshots