Enhanced Use of Layer 2 Protocols Strengthens Network Monitoring Through New Zenoss ZenPack

Coverage Includes Devices from Cisco, Brocade, CheckPoint, Nortel, and More

Austin, TX – October 1, 2014 – Zenoss Inc., the leading provider of unified monitoring and analytics solutions for physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructure and applications, today announced the availability of its new Layer2 ZenPack.

"Network device issues have the potential to disrupt service delivery. Comprehensive network monitoring integrated into a holistic infrastructure view of compute, storage, and virtualization, is the key to fast root cause isolation and rapid identification of issues and restoration of services," states Alan Conley, CTO at Zenoss. "With this release we have enhanced our use of mainstay protocols including LLDP, CDP and BRIDGE-MIB to deliver more efficient monitoring for both modern and legacy network components."

As a part of its comprehensive network monitoring support, Zenoss offers ZenPacks for many common networking devices, including Cisco, Brocade, Check Point, Citrix NetScaler, Nortel, and Juniper equipment. Zenoss also can monitor any network device that supports industry-standard SNMP MIBs.

The new Layer2 ZenPack from Zenoss provides the following capabilities:

• Automatic Discovery and Modeling: Using CDP and LLDP, Zenoss automatically discovers all devices attached to Layer 2 switch ports, including Layer 2 switch "neighbors," and also provides automated switch port mapping to quickly identify switch, port, and device relationships.
• Manages event storms to enhance effectiveness: By suppressing "events" from downstream devices, Zenoss eliminates unnecessary alerts, which speeds identification of malfunctioning components and expedites restoration of service.
• Faster Root Cause Analysis: Automatically adds upstream switches for servers to service impact models, creating faster root cause analysis of service-impacting events.

ZenPacks are pre-packaged, customizable, and extensible plugins that use standard APIs and protocols, including SNMP, WMI, and SSH, and allow users to collect configuration information and monitor specific elements, devices or systems without agents.

The flexible, highly extensible ZenPack model easily extends discovery, performance, and availability monitoring to new technologies. In addition to the Layer2 ZenPack, Zenoss provides more than 370 ZenPacks for the broadest and most flexible coverage anywhere.

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About Zenoss
Zenoss is a leading provider of unified monitoring and analytics software for physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT infrastructures. Over 35,000 organizations worldwide have deployed Zenoss to manage their networks, servers, virtual devices, storage, and cloud infrastructure, gaining visibility and control of their IT operations.

Media Contact
Alison Guzzio
aguzzio@zenoss.com
610-925-2761