Python and Monitoring

One of the first things I did when I got back home on Sunday was check the laptop I left at home... and sort the 1800+ emails, spam a-taunting. Of the odd hundred or so that were valid communications, one was from a friend with a heads-up/contact about RedHat's new effort to break into the burgeoning monitoring market. Apperantly, they are looking for python talent with coders having a proven background in providing systems management and monitoring solutions.

I find this interesting not only because of my long involvement in the monitoring arena (including the pymon and CoyMon projects), but also because of my recent work with Zenoss and the contact I have had with competitors in the field over the past year. My interest in architecting efficient and fast monitoring systems led me to develop pymon in twisted. This was, in part, a reaction to my not-so-happy experience with NetSaint/Nagios. On the other hand, CoyMon was positively inspired by Cacti, with an aim to give similar usability to NetFlow data. I have found it instructive to discover the various impetuses that drove me to develop monitoring solutions and to find what inspired others to do the same. I wonder what is driving RedHat. Business need? Business opportunity? Chronic issues with their current system?

On a side note, I did some more work on pymon this weekend, and I am really happy with the way the internals of it are progressing, primarily

1. how damned fast it runs, and
2. how easy it is to setup and configure.

Most of all, though, I find the design increasingly flexible and elegant. There's still some horrible crud tucked in the older crevices, but that stuff's on its way out.pymon is not explicitly systems management software, but rather a service-checking application. A part of me is curious, though, about what could be built using pymon's design principles. There could be some interesting possibilities to explore there.

Anyway, back to the topic: Systems monitoring and management a huge market and it is getting a lot of development effort and investment attention. When the dust settles in a year or two, it will be most interesting to see where all of this leads and what code bases/companies are left standing.

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Muse - Ruled by secrely

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