Pandora FMS
Pandora FMS (for Pandora Flexible Monitoring System) is software for monitoring computer networks [3]. Pandora FMS allows the visual monitoring of the status and performance of several parameters from different operating systems, servers, applications and hardware systems such as firewalls, proxies, databases, web servers or routers.
Pandora FMS tactical Screen | |
Original author(s) | Sancho Lerena Urrea [1] |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Ártica |
Initial release | October 14, 2004 |
Stable release | 7.0 NG 742[2]
/ December 19, 2019 |
Repository | |
Written in | Perl, PHP, C++, JavaScript |
Operating system | Linux, Windows |
Available in | English, Spanish, Japanese, Russian, Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, German, French, Arabic |
Type | Network monitoring, System monitoring |
License | GNU General Public License or proprietary EULA |
Website | pandorafms.com |
Pandora FMS can be deployed in almost any operating system. It features remote monitoring (WMI, SNMP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP...) and it can also use agents. An agent is available for each platform. It can also monitor hardware systems with a TCP/IP stack, such as load balancers, routers, network switches, printers or firewalls.
Pandora FMS has several servers that process and get information from different sources, using WMI for gathering remote Windows information, a predictive server, a plug-in server which makes complex user-defined network tests, an advanced export server to replicate data between different sites of Pandora FMS, a network discovery server, and an SNMP Trap console.
Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Pandora FMS is free software. At first the project was hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over one million times,[4] and selected the “Staff Pick” Project of the Month, June 2016,[5] and elected “Community Choice” Project of the Month, November 2017.[6]
Components
Pandora Server
In Pandora FMS architecture, servers are the core of the system because they are the recipients of bundles of information. They also generate monitoring alerts. It is possible to have different modular configurations for the servers: several servers for very big systems, or just a single server. Servers are also responsible for inserting the gathered data into Pandora's database. It is possible to have several Pandora Servers connected to a single Database. Different servers are used for different kind of monitoring: remote monitoring, WMI monitoring, SNMP and other network monitoring, inventory recollection, etc. Highly scalable (up to 2000 nodes with one single server), completely web-driven and a multitenant interface. It has a very flexible ACL system and a lot of graphical reports and user-defined control screens[7].
Servers are developed in Perl and work on any platform that has the required modules. Pandora was originally developed for Linux.
Web console
Pandora's user interface allows people to operate and manage the monitoring system. It is developed in PHP and depends on a database and a web server. It can work in a wide range of platforms: Linux, Solaris, Windows, AIX and others. Several web consoles can be deployed in the same system if required. Web Console has multiples choices, in example SNMP monitoring.
Agents
Agents are daemons or services that can monitor any numeric parameter, Boolean status, string or numerical incremental data and/or condition. They can be developed in any language (as Shellscript, WSH, Perl or C). They run on any type of platform (Microsoft, AIX, Solaris, Linux, IPSO, Mac OS or FreeBSD), also SAP, because the agents can communicate with the Pandora FMS Servers to send data in XML using SSH, FTP, NFS, Tentacle (protocol) or any data transfer means.
Database
The database module is the core module of Pandora. All the information of the system resides here. For example, all data gathered by agents, configuration defined by administrator, events, incidents, audit info, etc. are stored in the database. At present, MySQL database and MariaDB database[8] is supported. Oracle support has been added in 6.0 release.
Timeline of releases
Date | Release[9] | Notes |
---|---|---|
December 19, 2019 | Pandora FMS 7.0 NG 742 | Updated to cURL 7.635.3 version. Bugs fixed in private dashboards.[2] |
December 4, 2019 | Pandora FMS 7.0 NG 741 | SAP monitoring in remote and centralized mode, debugging mechanism and improvement for users, event alerts correlated with logs, Omnishell for automated infrastructure management, an integrated console was added (via GoTTY) for SSH and Telnet.[10] |
October 1, 2019 | Pandora FMS 7.0 NG 739 | Integration with the Open-source Ticket Request System through an add-on created for this purpose. For the Entreprise version, a new complement to monitor RedisDB, greater integration with the Integria IMS complement. New options to guarantee high availability environments; Fixed several visual errors, in the metaconsole, SNMP, CSV reports, among others.[11] |
Software appliances
Pandora FMS has a software appliance based on a customized CentOS Linux, installable on CD, comes ready to use (including a live CD) or ready to install to hard disk.
It have also an AMI Appliance based on Amazon AWS.
A Docker image is also available at Docker Hub.
See also
- Comparison of network monitoring systems
- Data logging
- NetXMS
References
- Monroy, Jesus (10 September 2017). "Sancho Lerena Urrea, presidente de Ártica ST". "Sector Ejecutivo" Magazine. sector-ejecutivo.com. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
- "WHAT'S NEW Pandora FMS 742". Pandora FMS. 19 December 2019. Archived from the original (html) on 29 December 2019. Retrieved 23 January 2020.
In release 742, we have updated some components integrated into the solution, such as cURL 7.65.3 version, in addition to several bugs being solved to help improve software performance, such as an error in SLA-Wizard reports or on private dashboards.
- Cottrel, Less (19 September 2017). "Network Monitoring Tools". Network Monitoring Platforms (NMPs). slac.stanford.edu. Retrieved 19 September 2017.
- "Pandora FMS - Download Statistics". SourceForge.net. 30 November 2018. Archived from the original (html) on 30 November 2018. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
Downloads 1,086,185 2014-08-30 to 2018-11-30 Countries Top: US, at 34% Operating Systems Top: Other, at 59%
- "June 2016, "Staff Pick" Project of the Month – Pandora FMS". SourceForge.net. 3 June 2016. Archived from the original (html) on 3 June 2016. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
For our June “Staff Pick” Project of the Month, we selected Pandora FMS, a flexible monitoring system ready for big environments. Sancho Lerena and Axel Amigo, the people behind the project shared some thoughts about the project’s history, purpose, and direction.
- "November 2017, "Community Choice" Project of the Month – Pandora FMS". SourceForge.net. 1 November 2017. Archived from the original (html) on 1 November 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2018.
Pandora FMS was previously selected “Staff Pick” Project of the Month in June of 2016 where the Pandora team spoke about the project’s developments and direction. Recently we caught up with project founder Sancho Lerena to find out how the project has been doing since then.
- Ishikawa, Mutsumi (18 September 2017). "Pandora FMS: Flexible Monitoring System". Downloads. OSD.net. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
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Raj (9 August 2017). "How to Install PandoraFMS Server on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 – Monitoring Solution for your Infrastructure". IT'zGeek. Archived from the original on 20 September 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2017.
Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring solution for your servers, networks, virtual infrastructure, and applications. It is a Free software and released under GNU General Public License.
- Pandora FMS blog, category:release
- "WHAT'S NEW Pandora FMS 741". Pandora FMS. 4 December 2019. Archived from the original (html) on 5 December 2019. Retrieved 29 December 2019.
As mentioned in the last release 740, even updates will focus on fixing bugs and odd ones on developing new features and improvements that help all users.
- "What's new in Pandora FMS 7.0 NG 739". Pandora FMS. 1 October 2019. Archived from the original (html) on 21 October 2019. Retrieved 28 October 2019.
In this release 739 several integrations have been carried out, ranging from RedisDB monitoring, integration with OTRS or interconnectivity between Pandora FMS and Integria IMS, one of the products of Pandora FMS suite. In addition, the HA environment has been improved with new features.