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Web Host News – AUSTIN, TX – Zenoss Inc., corporate sponsor of the award winning open source IT monitoring and management solution Zenoss Core, today announced the general availability of Zenoss Core version 2.5.2 under the GNU General Public License (V2). As part of this release, Zenoss Core now offers new monitoring capabilities for the Xen Hypervisor via the Zenoss Xen monitoring plug-in, or Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack.

The Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack discovers guests on Xen para-virtualized hosts and provides monitoring of performance and availability via SSH. while the Xen hosts run on physical servers, the virtual guests are listed per host and linked back to any discovered instances on the network. with this ZenPack, administrators can quickly find the associated hosts and guests and monitor their Xen virtual infrastructure along side their entire physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT environment through a single interface.

“We are committed to making sure Zenoss Core addresses the growing use of virtualization and cloud-based technologies,” said mark R. Hinkle, Vice President of Community. “By distributing Xen monitoring software as open source, we are enabling a large set of organizations who previously had no tools to manage their virtual assets to monitor virtual and physical IT infrastructure from one powerful, easy to use solution.”

Version 2.5.2 of Zenoss Core and the Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack are available for download from the Zenoss Open Source Community website:

• Zenoss Core 2.5.2: http://community.zenoss.org/community/download
• Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack: http://community.zenoss.org/docs/DOC-5803

About Zenoss Core
Zenoss Core is an award winning open source network monitoring and systems management project that delivers the functionality to effectively manage the configuration, health and performance of networks, servers and applications through a single, integrated software package. The Zenoss Community is comprised of over 75,000 active members who are instrumental in evolving the solution as well as providing timely support and help for all questions. one of the most active projects on SourceForge, Zenoss Core has been downloaded over one million times and is being used by companies in over 180 countries. The Zenoss Core project is sponsored by Zenoss Inc.,a commercial open source independent software vendor. for more information on Zenoss Core, visit http://community.zenoss.org.

About Zenoss Inc.
Zenoss is a leading commercial open source provider of Unlegacy enterprise IT management products. Zenoss Enterprise is a single model-based product that enables organizations to seamlessly manage physical, virtual and cloud based infrastructure with unprecedented power, agility and value. Leveraging a commercial open source model, Zenoss products monitor over one million network and server devices daily and have been used in over 25,000 organizations in 180 countries around the world. Commercial customers include leading companies such as Rackspace, VMware, WebMD, LinkedIn, Carlson, Motorola and Deutsche Bank. To learn more about Zenoss’ award-winning IT operations management software, visit www.zenoss.com.

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Tags: Zenoss

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Press Releases, Web Host News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Zenoss Announces Open Source Virtualization Monitoring For Xen Hypervisor

Does getting professional certification payoff in terms of compensation?

It depends where you put your efforts. a recent survey of technology professionals by Dice Learning, a career Web site for technology and engineering professionals, determined the 10 certifications most likely to reap paycheck rewards.

The survey suggests a mix of certifications — from entry-level to more senior qualifications — are important. This week, Comptia added to its roster of entry-level courses. And the 750 openings on Dice that require CISSP seems to strongly suggest that you’re never to too experienced to learn more. As one IT director, who preferred to be anonymous, said, “The entry-level certificates are great — but the senior-level certificates (VCP, VCDX, CCIE, CISSP, CISA) are definitely the certificates that get more attention from hiring managers and drive salary impact.”

Dice, which also offers an online IT job board, also provided some insight as to the popularity of the various certifications in employment ads. here now are the 10 most profitable certifications to have:

Certifications That Can Boost Your Salary

Many large companies have policies that allow employees to spend some of their time working on their own projects. these programs are often used to entice high-caliber job applicants, as well as encourage innovation. for example, Google has what it calls “20-Percent Time”, where its employees spend one day each workweek on project they’re passionate about, while 3M calls its version “15% culture,” which “encourages technical employees to spend 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing and initiative.”

This approach doesn’t have to only apply to corporate employees — it can apply to web workers as well. Whether you’re a freelancer or a corporate employee, if your work is measured on your performance rather than your presence, your work hours may be flexible enough to accommodate your own “20-Percent Time.”

But why do it in the first place?

• Innovation and creativity. Innovation is one of the most cited perks of 20-percent time. according to this handy infographic, half of Google’s products are a result of this employment perk. the products that have resulted from 20-Percent Time include Google Adsense and many Google Labs features. an example that might seem closer to home is cartoonist Hugh MacLeod. he drew his first gapingvoid cartoons during his downtime while he was working as a copywriter. now he’s published a book and does commissioned art. he may not have had a firm policy on creating things outside of work, but it’s easy to lose sight of side projects when one focuses on their “real” work almost every waking hour to the exclusion of everything else.
• Exploration. By making the time to pursue personal passions, you can dabble in different areas, which sometimes results a broader understanding or a new perspective on the field you’re working in. It might even lead to a new line of work altogether. 37signals started as a web design firm, but couldn’t find collaboration tools suited to their needs so they created Basecamp. this led them to develop their own web apps instead, eventually leading to the Ruby on Rails framework.
• Opportunity. By making time for personal projects you give yourself license to act on ideas, questions and passions that you might not be able to do during your work week. You’ll have a chance to do tasks would’ve been too risky, or even seemed downright strange.
• Motivation. in a popular TED talk, Dan Pink discussed the science behind three major motivators in the workplace (which I elaborated on in a previous post). these motivators are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Though your experience with the latter two may depend on the project you choose, giving yourself 20-Percent Time allows you to exercise your autonomy.

Setting your 20-Percent Time

Before you schedule your 20-Percent Time, remember that the number shouldn’t be taken literally. Allocate the time that works for you. You can take one day each week, an entire weekend, or even 30 minutes each day. Personally, I like to start my day working on a personal passion project. It gives me fuel to work through the rest of the day. Plus, it eases me into a heavier workload ahead — after all, if I make a mistake on my personal project, none of my clients will suffer.

As Simon noted in a previous post, it’s easier to get burned out when you don’t work a typical 9-to-5 job. With that in mind, how can the typical web worker manage to have 20-Percent Time especially if they have a busy home life? It’s hard to squeeze in a personal project if your family, pets, and home errands suddenly require your attention.

Taking a cue from Sylvia Plath, why not work on your project before your household wakes up? this might mean waking up earlier than usual, but even 15 minutes per day spent on a passion project is better than nothing. Plus, the quiet environment might make it easier for you to work.

But here’s some more common sense: mark the end of your workday. It may not be a cutting-edge life hack, but it’s simple and, more importantly, it’s true. Only by setting actual work hours can we draw a clear line between work and the rest of our preoccupations.

Do you set aside time for personal projects? if so, how did you manage it and what do you do with your time?

Photo by flickr user net_efekt, licensed under CC-BY-2.0

Mix Up the Workweek by Setting Your Own “20-Percent Time”

Here’s a quick way to get a mysql up and running with all user permissions.
CREATE USER ‘newuser’@'localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password’;
GRANT ALL ON database.* to ‘newuser’;

Phusion Passenger will make your web applications run without any need to do maintenance.  Let it moderate the resources by itself!

Phusion Passenger (mod_rails/mod_rack) is an apache module that makes deployment of Ruby/Rails applications as simple as PHP applications. It does not require use of any ruby specific tools to deploy application. All you have to do is copy your source files in appropriate directories on server and your code changes will be deployed. Main advantage of passenger is it allows to deploy rails application reliably on shared hosting environment. Passenger is not available for windows.

Lets see how to install Passenger on Cent OS. Cent OS 5.1 comes with Apache 2.2.3 installed. First of all make sure Ruby, Gems, Rails and ruby development headers is installed on the system, Issue following commands as root:

yum install ruby
yum install irb
yum install rdoc
yum install ruby-devel

Installing rubygems manually because distro dependencies:
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/45905/rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
tar -zxvf rubygems-1.3.1.tgz
ruby setup.rb

If you get:
RubyGems installed the following executables:
/usr/bin/gem

RubyGems is install and let’s move on.

Now install rails gems, it might take a while:

gem install rails -y
yum install httpd-devel – this might be already installed

Now, we are ready to install passenger.  It’s actually pretty easy to setup:
gem install passenger

After installing passenger and its dependencies make sure that Apache is stopped, launch passenger installer for Apache module from command line.

passenger-install-apache2-module

This will setup Apache2, teach you to configure apache and deploy your Ruby App.  You will be given instructions to add a few lines to the apache configuration file, let’s do that now.

vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

Look for this:
#
# The following modules are not loaded by default:
#
#LoadModule cern_meta_module modules/mod_cern_meta.so
#LoadModule asis_module modules/mod_asis.so

And add these three lines right below it:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.0.6
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

After the module is installed, go ahead and create a user app.  I’ll show you how to make one if you created a new user. Run:
su newuser
cd /home/newuser/www
rails demo

Now, log back into root and mod the directory to be read:
exit
chmod 755 /home/newuser

We need to setup the virtual host for this application.  Add these lines at bottom of file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName www.demo.com
DocumentRoot /home/newuser/www/demo/public
</VirtualHost>

Make sure DocumentRoot points to public directory of your rails application. Also add server name alias to hosts file in /etc/ folder. Now start apache server from console.

service httpd start

Your new rails application should be running now with Phusion Passenger.

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo
find [centosplus] and locate:
enabled = 0

change to

enabled = 1

yum install php php-mysql mysql-server php-gd postgres ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel

Now you got php, mysql, graphic manipulation, and posgres installed.

Let’s setup your MySQL:
/etc/init.d/mysqld restart – after you run this, you will get a bunch of useful text, read it!
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password ‘CHANGEMETOHARDPASSWORD’
/sbin/chkconfig mysqld –level 2345 on  – lets mysql startup on reboot

Now you have PHP installed with common libraries such as image manipulation and postgres and mysql for database work.

Make sure you are root, let’s get cracking!

/usr/sbin/useradd username – create the user
su username
passwd username – set the password

When you log into your new created user, you will create hidden directory called “.ssh”.  In this directory, you will also create a  file called “authorized_keys”.

mkdir .ssh
cd .ssh
touch authorized_keys

You will need to generate a key from your local machine to use to authenticate when you login.  On your local machine, let’s get generating! Use command “ssh-keygen -t rsa”.  You will be prompted for a password.  This is optional.  Once completed, a public and private key will be saved in the “~/.ssh” folder.

On your remote server, you need to copy the public key information.

scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub myremoteuser@11.22.33.44:~/
cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
rm id_rsa.pub
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Once, you add this in, make sure the user is setup in the ‘AllowUsers’ of SS for SSH Access.  This is set in the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.  Since you are using SSH keys, you don’t need a password anymore, so set “PasswordAuthentication yes” to “PasswordAuthentication no”.

/usr/sbin/visudo – If you want to give some sudo permissions for this user.

> mysql -u root -p
Enter password: <enter your password>
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Server version: 5.0.45 Source distribution

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the buffer.

mysql> create database newdb;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
mysql> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON newdb.* TO newdbuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password_for_newdbuser’;

To test if it’s created, run this command:
> mysql -u newdbuser -p
Enter password: <enter your password>
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Server version: 5.0.45 Source distribution

Type ‘help;’ or ‘\h’ for help. Type ‘\c’ to clear the buffer.

mysql> show databases;
+——————–+
| Database           |
+——————–+
| newdb              |
+——————–+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> use newdb;
Database changed
mysql> exit
Bye

Everything looks good!  Your database is created! Now you’re ready to create your Wordpress blog, just configure the settings with your database name, username, and password.

yum install pcre
yum install pcre-devel
yum install openssl-devel
yum install zlib
tar xzvf nginx-0.X.XX.tar.gz (get latest stable version)
yum install gcc
./configure –sbin-path=/sbin/nginx –conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf –pid-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.pid –with-http_ssl_module –with-md5=auto/lib/md5 –with-sha1=auto/lib/sha1
make
make install

This will get you off with a nginx server.  Then, you have to configure your conf file and setup some start-up scripts, etc.