GroundWork Monitor 5.3 Ready for Testing

Published: November 18, 2008

by Alex Woodie

GroundWork last week announced the pre-release of GroundWork Monitor Community Edition 5.3, a new version of the company's open source systems management software that works with all major operating systems, including IBM i. With version 5.3, the company is bringing together the latest releases of many of the open source components that make up its GroundWork suite, and threatening the hegemony of the Big Four.

GroundWork is a San Francisco-based developer of open source systems management software. The company relies on a community of experts and enthusiasts--including the popular Ganglia, Nagios, NeDi, and Cacti open source projects--to create plug-ins and test new releases. This allows the company to cheaply deliver a product with a wide breadth of functionality, and compete with the likes of BMC, CA, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM for enterprise systems management deals.

Nagios forms the foundation of GroundWork, and GroundWork version 5.3 features the most current release of the enterprise computer and network monitoring solution. Nagios 3.0 delivers faster startup times, performance improvements and enhanced scalability for larger installations. "Nagios 3.0 provides features specifically aimed at larger deployments, and I’m looking forward to community feedback on the integration from GroundWork’s enterprise users," says Nagios creator and lead developer Ethan Galstad.

The pre-release of GroundWork Monitor Community Edition 5.3 also features a new wizard-based GUI installer, pre-bundling of Java and MySQL for easier setup, and unified packaging for Linux-based servers. As testing of the pre-release continues, GroundWork expects to add additional features, including better scalability and improved service management.

“With the integration of Nagios 3.0 into GroundWork Monitor, it is important that we open the pre-release version of the product to the community for their scrutiny, expertise and feedback,” said Galstad.

GroundWork Open Source product manager Simon Bennett says it's important that the pre-release sees extensive testing following the integration of Nagios 3.0. "This integration further validates GroundWork’s amalgamation strategy--combining and leveraging the strengths of more than a dozen proven open source projects including Nagios, RRDtool, SNMPTT, and MySQL--giving enterprise customers an integrated IT management suite with less cost and greater budgetary predictability.

GroundWork Monitor Community Edition 5.3 is available for testing now. For more information and downloads, visit www.groundworkopensource.com.

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