Netstat -vat by Sean Michael Kerner (bio )

A command line view of IT

« Mozilla Jetpack gets bootstrapped for add-ons | Sean Michael Kerner Blog | Operating Systems not the key security risk anymore »

MonitoringForge launches for open source network monitoring

By Sean Michael Kerner on September 15, 2009 9:47 AM

From the 'Interesting Idea' files:

There are a lot of different open source system and network monitoring projects. Then there are the professional open source vendors like Zenoss, Hyperic and Groundwork that integrate some projects together.

Now one of those professional vendors is trying something new.

Groundwork today is officially launching the monitoringforge.org site, as an effort to be a portal for open source network and system monitoring apps. According to Groundwork, at launch there are already more than 1,700 open source projects and plugins listed.

I spoke with Tara Spalding, vp of marketing for Groundwork about MonitoringForge and she stressed that the idea was to create an open space that is vendor-neutral.

Makes sense to me, but then again there are already so many different places to get the same information isn't there?

There are projects that have their own sites, there are the big code hosting sites like Sourceforge and Google Code too. How is a user supposed to know where to go to file a bug or get the latest update?

Spalding told me that the monitoringforge effort will now be micro-managed and each individual open source project can decide how they want to run their project's information and participation in the forge.

So instead of having to sift through all the different sources, a user could just go to monitoringforge and then be directed to wherever the project wants to direct them.

No, this isn't information overload, it's a niche play, for an area in which open source solutions can add real value. There are likely many network managers that have a need for tools, but have never had a single source to see all the network management tools in one spot. In my own experience, I know full well that I used to just search Sourceforge with the keywords network monitoring to find new tools.

Spalding also told me that she has reached out to the other big commercial open source network monitoring vendors and she hoped that they would participate in the site as well. She also noted that Sourceforge will participate in an advisory role.

Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0) | Share