Synthetic modules

Synthetic modules are used to generate new data from existing data through arithmetical operations or average values. It is very useful for calculating the total throughput of a switch by adding the traffic of all their interfaces. With Synthetic modules, you can calculate the number of total sales by adding the average sales value of each franchise, or calculating the average temperature of a room from the temperature value in all its points.

Performance & Availability Monitoring

Pandora FMS provides a complete solution for performance & availability by monitoring the key resources across the infrastructure. Therefore it is ensured that all the devices are ready to respond to any user requests.

These tests can be run in the software agent as well as from Pandora FMS Server, what eliminates the associated risk when running monitoring software on target systems.

Pandora FMS specific tests and features include:

Scheduled Availability Tests:

• ICMP response and delay

• SNMP Polling (v1, v2c, v3)

• Standard TCP/IP services (HTTP, SMTP, etc.)

• Specified TCP/IP ports with regular expression matching

• Linux/Unix process availability (via SNMP)

• URL availability

• Nagios Plug-In Support (for both, availability and performance)

• Network traffic in a device

• Network latency time

Scheduled Performance Tests:

• CPU, Disk and Memory Usage

• System overload

• Number of occurrences in a logfile per second

• Temperature on a system

• Output of a system command

• Obtaining of WMI or Performance Counters values in Windows

• Service availability or running processes

• Oracle DB status, as well as its tablespaces and other values

Visual console for custom defined service-level monitoring

Pandora FMS enables every user to customize their monitoring view. It is a customized-defined graph view based on a representation in the space of selected items, represented status, data, graphs and other visual console status, scaling always the critical events.

This feature, combined with the service-based monitoring on weights, is a very flexible monitoring tool for groups of elements with user-defined margins. Unlike the "specific monitoring" for specific indicators, the Pandora FMS monitoring services manage different kind of "groups" of elements with certain "margin of error" based on the failure accumulation.

See more details in our Service-level monitoring section.

Virtualization and cloud computing monitoring

The Enterprise version has a specific enterprise plugin (included in the Enterprise license) for detecting automatically the VM in VMWare 4.x infrastructure with a single centralized point (VCenter) and gathering all the information through the VMWare API. There are OpenSource plugins available for VirtualBox, Xen, KVM and EC2.

See more details in our Virtualization & Cloud computing section.

High Availability

Pandora FMS provides a multiple server based structure (Data Server, Plugin Server, Network Server, etc.), a Web console and a Database that are redundant over all their items. As many servers, consoles or MySQL clusters for the Database as you wish can be created. HA concepts are also related to the Export Server, the Metaconsole and the history database (all of them are Enterprise features). Read more about these advanced topics in our Architecture section.

Monitoring delegation to secondary servers (Export Server)

The Export Server enables to connect self-sufficient installations no matter if the machines are situated in the same building or in different countries. All the Pandora FMS installations are connected to a central Pandora FMS, which collects and centralizes all the information. The Export Server is an Enterprise feature.

High scalability (Metaconsole)

The Metaconsole manages independent installations from Pandora FMS that are coordinated in server farms from a single tool. It allows Pandora FMS to monitor independent installations from a federated and independent system. This is why it provides almost unlimited scalability.

Read more about these advanced topics in our Architecture section.

Centralized Management using monitoring policies

It is a very important feature for organizations with a high number of agents. Pandora FMS is able to manage thousands of devices with thousands modules and alerts. We have developed this feature in order to facilitate the administrator's job. Policies are applicable by using a command line interface and can be used in a multi-tiered environment.

These policies assign modules and alerts to the agents, so every policy module and alert is propagated to every subscribed agent. This is an Enterprise feature.

Automatic updates with Open Update Manager

The Export Server provides the data escalation feature, enabling you to have a completely distributed installation at the same building, office, or in different countries. The different Pandora FMS installations are connected to a Central Pandora FMS, which collect and centralize the information. Since the 3.2.1 version, Update Manager can use offile (zip files) to update the system.

LDAP/AD Authentication

Pandora FMS has its own user system, stored in its database. However, you can use the Active Directory or LDAP to authenticate against remote systems. Therefore, you can keep relevant data regarding Pandora rights and roles in its own database. Pandora FMS has got an authentication API so it can be extended to proprietary mechanisms, implemented by the user itself.

Geolocation (GIS)

Since the version 3.1., Pandora FMS has provided location information and interactive maps that show the agent's location. From the version 4.0., Pandora FMS includes support for Android Phones. This application, first sends GIS information and translates it into "human" addresses (using Reverse Geocoding), and then, shows the device location and a list of addresses with timestamps in a map.

CLI Management

Pandora FMS can be managed via command line. The CLI (Command-Line Interface) is used to make command-line calls (pandora_manage). This method is especially useful to integrate the 3rd party applications with Pandora FMS via automated tasks. Basically, it consists in a call with parsed parameters to realize an action like creating or deleting an agent, a module or a user, among other tasks.

Recommended capacity limit per server

Pandora FMS has been designed to work on company environments: groups of systems that can grow progressively. Our engineers estimate an average of 2000 agents per server, with 25 modules per agents, executing tasks every five minutes. By means of the Metaconsole and the Export Server, these numbers can increase by adding more servers or assigning more agents in a single server (this last option needs a very fine customization).

Pandora is a very flexible tool. As an example, we could mention a client with 6000 agents, and a setup of four servers and a metaconsole and another client with a single server and 160,000 modules.

Monitoring with weights

As long as there is a “specific monitoring" where defined values from defined indicators are gathered, the service monitoring can monitor sets of elements from different types, with some error ranges based on the failure accumulation.

DB Historic to store data during long periods

The Enterprise version supports an additional database to store all the data that are not used often (i.e data older than one month). These data are browsed transparently anytime needed, allowing to have a soft and fast system data processing in “real time” and store more data and for a longer time.

Support (Experimental) for Oracle & PostgreSQL as backend

From the version 4.0, Pandora FMS has incorporated support for Oracle or PostgreSQL as database systems for the Pandora backend, replacing MySQL (the only backend supported so far).  Since it is experimental, we do not recommend using it in production systems yet.

Centralized file distribution system

A file collection is a set of files (scripts and/or executables) that are copied automatically to a specific folder in the agent (Windows or Unix). File collections allow these files to be propagated within the policies. Therefore, they can be used by a group of agents through a “package” of scripts and the modules used by them.

3rd Party Product Integration API Library

The Pandora FMS external WEB API is used to make HTTP/HTTPS remote calls (REST API). This method has been created to integrate applications from third parts with Pandora FMS. This is a HTTP request with the parameters formatted to receive a value or a list of values. The API also allows to set operations on the server (like apply a policy or insert a value). The API is also used to get event information for an external event manager.

AGENT'S TECHNOLOGY                                                                              

Full featured multiplatform agents for Windows, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD, AIX and Linux

There are software Agents for Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD and Mac. These agents provide information about the system where they are installed (CPU, memory usage, disc usage, the output of any command, etc.). There are also hardware Agents to monitor temperature, humidity, smoke, Gas, flood and any device that sends dry contact.

Embedded agents and Android agent

Pandora FMS has developed a specific agent for embedded devices. It has been made in Posix C, aimed at devices with very little RAM that can work with all types of processors (ARM, VIA, etc). These agents are able to run on any Linux-embedded device. Pandora FMS also has a specific agent for Android phones: Pandroid.  Pandroid reports GPS information to the GIS system on Pandora, and also returns battery levels, compass information or sensor information, like proximity information. In the future, this agent will be the platform from which mobile devices will send centralized information.

Delegated agents (Broker mode) and Proxy mode

This is a special work method for the agent, which allows it to work in different complex architectures by operating over a single physical agent and deploying remote monitoring from that agent. Therefore, although it would behave as if several agents have been installed, a single agent would be monitoring several systems. 

Tentacle protocol supports the use of proxies (in HTTP/Connect mode) in a way other agents can connect directly to the server using a standard proxy. In the same way, agents can be configured so they can act as intermediate servers (Drone mode), so they can be used to centralize the communication with the destination server or with another proxy. This system also allows file collection and remote configuration management.

Conditioned module execution in the software agent.

It allows us to interact from the agents immediately if something is going wrong, independently from the next actions in the console. This preconditions system allows us to stop monitoring systems that don't have activity in that moments like high availability systems or agents running specific maintenance processes (backup scripts).

Remote Inventory or with Agent

It's a new system and service inventory thatl acts like a system inventory by showing software and hardware in the monitored systems. It is possible to choose whether agent-less or agent-based configuration to get the data.

Remote agent management

Since the Pandora FMS 3.1 Enterprise version you can modify the configuration of any Agent installed from the Web Console. It allows us to add or remove modules from the agent, change the IP address of Pandora FMS server, the interval, the connection port, and any other configuration option of the Agent.

NETWORK ENVIRONMENTS / COMMS                                                                                  

Ipv6 Support

This version includes full support for TCP, ICMP and SNMP protocols.

Dynamic browsable network maps

These maps are an improved and extended version of the original visual console and network maps. This allows the user to create his own maps with real monitoring elements, reorder them following a customized network view, establish multiple hierarchies with them, as well as linking them to other maps and browse them in a completely visual environment

Autodiscovery and network topology detector

Pandora FMS scans, periodically, new non monitored systems and detects its OS and profile based on TCP ports. Then, depending on the network, OS or port profile, it assigns them to a specific network monitoring template. Recon server also detects the network topology and "attaches" it to the new host most direct known parent.

SNMP Monitoring

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a UDP-based network protocol. It is used mostly in network management systems to monitor network-attached devices for conditions that warrant administrators attention. Pandora FMS can monitor any device with SNMP protocol directly from the Pandora FMS Network Server.

WMI Monitoring

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) or Windows Management Interface [1] is a set of extensions for the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface, through which the instrumented components provide information and notification. Pandora FMS can monitor any Windows System SNMP protocol directly from the Pandora FMS WMI Server or by using the WMI module in the Windows Agent.

SNMP Trap Monitoring

Pandora FMS has a Trap Console that shows the SNMP events received by the Pandora FMS server. It shows the following information about the event: status, OID source; and the associated Agent: date, if it has any associated alert and the action to take on the event. From the same Console, alerts could be assigned in order to receive traps.

Pandora FMS Enterprise SNMP traps console has a few interesting features for our Enterprise customers:

• It has a MIBs loader for traps definition.

• User can define a Traps alias to show the information differently.

• It can forward a TRAP to agent, as a string module.

• It can filter SNMP before processing traps.

Transactional advanced WEB Monitoring

Pandora FMS WEB monitoring is a transactional or synthetic test that truly reproduces the complete browsing "process". It could include features such as authenticating a form, doing click in a menu option, filling in a form and verifying that each process returns a specific text string. Any mistake during the process will have a checking failure as a result. The complete transaction includes the download of all the resources (graphs, animations, etc), that the real browsing has.

WEB monitoring returns a "real" user experience and reporting time of transaction. It is also able to "check" if the complete transaction is finished by checking text output response.

Hi-Speed ICMP & SNMP Exploration

Pandora FMS v4.0 incorporates the new “Enterprise Network Server”, which performs the same tasks as the OpenSource version, but up to 50 times faster. Thanks to specific super fast tools for testing and organizing the checks in multi-thread blocks, it provides a very efficient management in systems with thousands of ICMP and/or SNMP checks.

SSH/Telnet console

USER INTERFACE AND REPORTING                                                   

Skins System

The Pandora FMS Enterprise version allows us to design our own interface -per user group- so that we can have fully customized views: colors, icons, layout, logos, etc.

100% WEB Environment, multiclient with separated views, ready for SaaS

Pandora's architecture and design have been oriented to meet all the needs of different clients with the same infrastructure. It is multiclient (each user sees only their elements). Since it is 100% web, it allows any remote client to access their views and manage their reports.

Role-Based Access Control Levels

Pandora FMS has a user role and a permission system that allow us to define new users with different permissions over the different monitoring groups. Therefore, a user could be administrator of the Accounting System, having only permissions to see the events of the Human Resources group. There is also an Enterprise ACL system that expands this feature.

Custom reports

Now it is possible to change the report logo and add a first page, a header, a footer or an index in the reports. With the Enterprise version of Pandora FMS, you can create reports in HTML, PDF and XML and set dates to send emails.

Besides, reports can be recurrent and sent every week, month, each 6 months, etc. In the Enterprise reports, the first page can be customized with a WYSIWYG editor, automatic content indexes, custom fonts (including non Latin characters, like Japanese, Arabic...). Furtheremore, different Wizards can be used to provide an easier and faster management.

Fine Grain ACL System

Enterprise ACL system allows you to configure through the ACLs what parts of the Operation and Administration systems every user can see. Therefore, this allows you to define different interfaces for every user. You can decide who can have access to what operations, restricting operations to individuals who may be even tool administrators.

Dashboard

Since Pandora FMS 3.1, the Pandora Console has a new main page, called Dashboard. Our dashboard is based on "pieces" of custom-defined information called widgets and is totally customizable with different screens and frames. Each dashboard has different widgets such as reports, graphs, maps, metrics etc. Each user can define its own dashboard.

Light WEB Console for mobiles

Pandora FMS provides a specific interface for light mobile devices (such as mobile phones) where essential system data is shown in an efficient and fast format, adapted to the terminal used at that moment. This interface can show graphics, status, events and some other relevant data in Pandora.

 EVENT MANAGEMENT AND SLA