Steve Aiello, Solutions Architect at General Electric, discusses his team's migration to Zenoss 5.0 at GalaxZ 16 in Austin, Texas, USA.

1. HEIGH-HO… HEIGH-HO…
…IT’S OFF TO ZENOSS 5.0 I GO
@StevenAiello | #GALAXZ16

2. © 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFIDENTIAL@StevenAiello #GALAXZ16
WHERE WE WERE… WHERE WE ENDED UP
Zenoss 4.1.1
Architecture:
• 8 Servers: 38 processors, 104GB memory
• Dedicated ResourceManager, Database Servers
• 6 Collectors, 2 of which running secondary collectors
Reliability:
Monitoring Load: ~3k Devices monitored, ~1.5M Events per day, ~750 Incidents created per day
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15 Jan-16
Zenoss 4.1.1 Incidents
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
Sep-15 Oct-15 Nov-15 Dec-15 Jan-16
Zenoss 4.1.1 Downtime (in
mins)
Zenoss 5.0.9
Architecture:
• 9 Servers: 68 processors, 192GB memory
• 3 ResourcePool Types: ControlCenter, ResMgr, Collector
• 3 Collectors, comprised of 5 servers
Reliability:
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
Feb-16 Mar-16 Apr-16 May-16
Zenoss 5.0.9 Incidents
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
Feb-16 Mar-16 Apr-16 May-16
Zenoss 5.0.9
Downtime (in mins)

3. © 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFIDENTIAL@StevenAiello #GALAXZ16
HOW WE GOT THERE…
Zenoss 5.0.x key evaluation factors:
Pros:
• Support Longevity
• Reduce effort / increase investment value
• Projected service availability increase
• Huge performance impact, horizontally scalable
• Newer technology that directly benefits us
• Minimize platform management/recovery
Cons:
• Higher risk potential, a dot-O release
• 4.1.1 feature compatibility not 100%
• Introduces newer infra dependencies
 01/2015 - Evaluated 4.2.5
 05/2015 - Evaluated 5.0.x
 06/2015 - Decision to Migrate to 5.0.x
 08/2015 - Platform design & build (Dev & Prd)
 11/2015 - 4.1.1 Customizations migrated
 12/2015 - Devices Migrated
(Zen4 & Zen5 running in Parallel)
 01/2016 - Cutover
The Journey

4. © 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFIDENTIAL@StevenAiello #GALAXZ16
HOW WE GOT THERE…
What was easy:
• Device migration
• Most ZenPacks just worked
• Most customizations & configurations worked with little
to no modification needed
• Trigger migration
• ServiceNow Incident integration & customization
• API calls required little to no modifications
Our Upgrade Tenents:
1. A completely new and fresh build
2. Audit 4.1.1 & migrate only what is useful & valid
3. Customer participation is absolutely required
4. Apples-to-Apples migration, avoid use of new capabilities
& features
5. Every customization & configuration must be bundled in
a ZenPack
6. Work Smarter not harder, use Zenoss Professional
Services
7. Avoid extreme customization
What was challenging:
• LDAP Auth
• Windows monitoring, using WMI not WinRM
• Email Notifications did not migrate over cleanly
• Changes to Zenoss ZenPacks which impacted dependent
customizations
• ‘Custom’ Zenoss provided filtered event view
functionality

5. © 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFIDENTIAL@StevenAiello #GALAXZ16
AFTER THE DUST SETTLED…
What we liked:
1. Increased platform availability
2. Ease of performance scaling
3. Reduction of device management effort
4. Smother platform update process
What we would like to see improved:
1. Backup process (improved in 5.1.x)
2. Platform update process is slow (improved in 5.1.x)
3. Increased self-monitoring & capacity checks
4. Notifications from ControlCenter
What we are looking forward to:
1. Update to 5.1.x
2. ControlCenter Active-Active redundancy
3. Service Impact functionality
4. Window Server monitoring via WinRM

6. © 2016 All Rights Reserved CONFIDENTIAL@ StevenAiello #GALAXZ16
Questions ?