What is OSE (OpenNMS Sans Effort) ?

OSE (OpenNMS Sans Effort) is a Linux distribution based on Centos that automatically installs and configures the OpenNMS network management software. It includes:

 

• The CentOS Linux distribution
• The OpenNMS network management software
• An automatic OpenNMS configuration script

 

 

 

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What is OpenNMS ?

is an Open Source network management platform. It's developed in Java and relies on the Jetty application engine to function.

 

The principal functions of OpenNMS are as follows:

• Discovery of network equipment
• Measuring the network connectivity between the server and the managed devices
• Identifying and listing network problems (outages, path outages)
• Providing a basic utility to translate MIBs and integrate them with the platform
• Translating and displaying SNMP traps received in the form of events (without correlation) and in the form of alarms with two basic correlation functions:
• Deduplication: a counter increments as more alarms of the same type are received
• Up / Down correlation: the "clear" alarm clears the "trouble" alarm.

 

For more information: http://www.opennms.org.

 

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What is CentOS ?

is a GNU/Linux distribution. All its packages, with the exception of the logo, are compiled from the same sources as the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) distribution compiled by the company Red Hat. It's therefore almost identical and compatible.

 

The binary version of RHEL, directly installable and usable, can be obtained only by purchasing a usage license from Red Hat or a reseller. Most of the programs included and delivered with Red Hat are published under the GPL license, which requires the redistributor (under certain conditions) to furnish the sources. CentOS therefore uses the RHEL sources (accessible freely on the Internet) to recreate an identical Red Hat.

 

One may therefore consider CentOS like a gratis version of Red Hat. The technical support is of the community variety: it's done free of charge and openly via mailing lists and the CentOS community forums.

 

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Example Open Source management architecture

Below is an example of an Open Source management architecture for an IT infrastructure made up of servers and network devices. In this example, Nagios is used for the management of server systems, but this may be replaced by another management utility like Zabbix.