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NETWAYS Blog

Weekly Snap: CeBIT & MonitoringExchange reflections, Puppet & Chive, Cat5e & PoE recommendations


Mar 15 -19 was a full blog week with CeBIT and MonitoringExchange reflections and a string of recommendations from Puppet classes, MySQL development cycles and Chive database management, to Cat5e and PoE hardware.
Manuela gave us the heads up on the coming Puppet training course and its fast disappearing places. Led by Reductive Labs (Puppet’s founding development team) the course will be held on 20 – 22 April in greater Nuremberg.
Bernd L then tipped off the latest PHP database management project known as Chive. Comparable to phpMyAdmin and SQLBuddy, it has a few advantages nonetheless. With extended routine, trigger and view functions, Chive is up and running without adjustment once unpacked from the archive.
Following on with tips, Hardware man Martin offered us new USB extensions to soothe our 5m cable grumbles. With lengths up to 60m, the Cat5e USB extender works without a driver and effortlessly with Linux system- all for less than the typically expensive Windows exclusive, USB extenders. He also introduced the Wiesemann and Theis range of monitoring hardware which run on Power over Ethernet (PoE). From temperature, humidity and air pressure to relay output, all can send alerts through email, SNMP Trap and even Twitter. All are available at our online hardware shop.
Bernd E celebrated MonitoringExchange’s 2000th project milestone. Cause for celebration, as we recently revamped the platform with Ajax search, extended developer-user communication channels and the mysterious Catalot system. Now there’s even more plugins, addons and utilities to browse for open source monitoring solutions the likes of Nagios, Icinga, Zabbix and OpenMNS.
We paid our respects to MySQL’s development cycle, while Karo reflected on the recent CeBIT. She posted photos, a news video clip and a shout out to customers who popped by to visit including T-Mobile, Sidmach and Tradoria. Julian, Bernd and Michi’s presentations will soon be available in the Linux streaming archives, with the slides of course coming to our blog too. Thanks to Bayern Innovativ, it was such a pleasure to be a part of their group stand that we can’t help but say: see you @ CeBIT 2011!

MonitoringExchange.org nimmt 2000er Hürde


Bereits vor einigen Tagen verzeichnete die von uns entwickelte und betriebene Plattform MonitoringExchange.org über 2000 Projekte und setzt somit den erfolgreichen Trend der letzten Jahre fort.
Erst vor einigen Monaten haben wir MonitoringExchange.org auf Basis von Catalot eine neue, von uns entwickelte Plattform, spendiert. Um wichtige Features wie Ajax-Suche und Kommunikationsmöglichkeiten zwischen Entwicker und Benutzer erweitert, findet der Anwender hier alles rund um Plugins, Addons und Utilities für die populären Open Source Monitoring Lösungen Nagios und Icinga aber auch anderen Plattformen wie Zabbix und OpenNMS.
Gerade die große Zahl der aktiven Entwickler und deren langjähriges Engagement machen MonitoringExchange.org zu der Plattform und motiviert uns für weitere kommende Features. Vielen Dank an alle, die uns und natürlich die Community seit Jahren unterstützen.

Bernd Erk
Bernd Erk
CEO

Bernd ist Geschäftsführer der NETWAYS Gruppe und verantwortet die Strategie und das Tagesgeschäft. Bei NETWAYS kümmert er sich eigentlich um alles, was andere nicht machen wollen oder können (meistens eher wollen). Darüber hinaus startete er früher das wöchentliche Lexware-Backup, welches er nun endlich automatisiert hat. So investiert er seine ganze Energie in den Rest der Truppe und versucht für kollektives Glück zu sorgen. In seiner Freizeit macht er mit sinnlosen Ideen seine Frau verrückt und verbündet sich dafür mit seinen beiden Söhnen und seiner Tochter.

Weekly Snap: Spamassassin, LiveStatus & MonitoringX

weekly snapJan 4- 8 started the New Year with a stable LiveStatus release, MonitoringExchange twittering and quick fixes for admins suffering from spam turn-of-decade inconveniences.
Bernd L shared a tip for admins using Spamassassin who may have found many emails being filtered out due to the filter rule FH_DATE_PAST_20XX. He showed how to modify the Spamassassin rule and offered the patch which unfortunately will face the same problem at the next turn of decade. For the lazy and those who don’t want to wait for the coming updated distribution package, he suggested sa-update.
Birger tipped off the release of check_mk version 1.1.0 and with it, a stable LiveStatus event broker addon. Enabling efficient status data transfer from a Nagios or Icinga core to other applications such as NagVis, Live Status is on the flipside unable to deliver historical data. This disadvantage however is shared with its alternative software – ndo2fs. The other drawback of its generic API incompatibility with all data sources can luckily be resolved by Icinga’s API. This can be adapted for LiveStatus with the majority of the work already done and available on GIT.
More on monitoring, Julian announced MonitoringExchange’s entrance to Twitter. To keep yourself informed of the new or updated plugins and projects as they are released, simply follow the account- MonitoringX.

Follow MonitoringExchange on Twitter

monitoring_exchange_menu-kopieNachdem wir MonitoringExchange technologisch mit Catalot auf eine neue Plattform gestellt haben, werden wir nun die regelmässige Betreuung des Katalogs weiter ausbauen und auch kontinuierlich neue Features integrieren.
Eine wichtige Funktion des Kataloges ist, schnell und einfach über neue oder aktualisierte Plugins und Projekte informiert zu werden. Das ging schon bisher über ein Abonement der beiden RSS Feeds „New Projects“ und „Updated Projects“ in Ihrem bevorzugten Reader. Seit ein paar twitterTagen haben wir MonitoringExchange nun auch an Twitter angebunden. Alle neuen und aktualisierten Projekte werden nun über den Twitter Account MonitoringX announciert.

Julian Hein
Julian Hein
Executive Chairman

Julian ist Gründer und Eigentümer der NETWAYS Gruppe und kümmert sich um die strategische Ausrichtung des Unternehmens. Neben seinem technischen und betriebswirtschaftlichen Background ist Julian häufig auch kreativer Kopf und Namensgeber, beispielsweise auch für Icinga. Darüber hinaus ist er als CPO (Chief Plugin Officer) auch für die konzernweite Pluginstrategie verantwortlich und stösst regelmässig auf technische Herausforderungen, die sonst noch kein Mensch zuvor gesehen hat.

Weekly Snap: Catalot, Linux Technical Review & refurbished MonitoringExchange

weekly snapDec 7-11 brought a few big announcements with a new in-house development called Catalot, the relaunch of MonitoringExchange.org and Julian’s new role at Linux Technical Review.
Taken on to their Editorial Board, Julian will contribute his over 14 years’ open source experience by way of article selection and polishing. The highly specialist publication dives deep into topics ranging from storage and backup to monitoring, virtualisation and performance optimisation.
Following the media theme, Manuela reported on the reportings of iX magazine which applauded our recent Open Source Monitoring Conference: “New name, exploding visitor numbers and highly acclaimed release candidate 1.0”. We thank them for the flattering review and look forward to the next one on 6-8 October 2010.
From the other side of the office, Marius shared news from the developer team; relaunching MonitoringExchange.org and announcing its new catalogue system Catalot developed in house. Written in PHP5 and based on Agavi and Doctrine frameworks, Catalot is a powerful new tool to manage the massive database of over 2000 plugins. As always, Catalot is available to download under GPLv3 at netways.org.
Thanks to Catalot and other developments, the refurbished Monitoring Exchange is packed with new features including:

  • Greater security on a role-base access control model with the validation of all data
  • CMS support for individual pages
  • Agavi-MVC and modularization for easy future extension
  • Database abstraction with Doctrine
  • File bundling
  • Nested categories which can be referenced (nested sets)
  • Project roles (Admin, Owner, other participants) as part of improved user administration
  • Detailed comment and rating functions

So check it out and pop us a few comments, we look forward to the feedback.