Pandora FMS (for ''Pandora Flexible Monitoring System'') is software for monitoring computer networks. Pandora FMS allows monitoring in a visual way the status and performance of several parameters from different

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, servers, applications and hardware systems such as firewalls, proxies,

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...

web server A web server is computer software and underlying Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

s or routers. Pandora FMS can be deployed in almost any

. 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 The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

stack, such as

load balancer In computing, load balancing is the process of distributing a set of tasks over a set of resources ''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically ...

s, routers,

network switch A network switch (also called switching hub, bridging hub, Ethernet switch, and, by the IEEE, MAC bridge) is networking hardware that connects devices on a computer network by using packet switching to receive and forward data to the destinat ...

es,

printer Printer may refer to: Technology * Printer (publishing), a person * Printer (computing), a hardware device * Optical printer for motion picture films People * Nariman Printer (fl. c. 1940), Indian journalist and activist * James Printer (1640 ...

s 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 Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an Internet Standard protocol for collecting and organizing information about managed devices on IP networks and for modifying that information to change device behavior. Devices that typically su ...

Trap console. Released under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, Pandora FMS is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

. At first the project was hosted on SourceForge.net, from where it has been downloaded over one million times, and selected the “Staff Pick” Project of the Month, June 2016, and elected “Community Choice” Project of the Month, November 2017.

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. Servers are developed in

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

and work on any platform that has the required modules. Pandora was originally developed for

Web console

Pandora's

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...

allows people to operate and manage the monitoring system. It is developed in

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

and depends on a database and a web server. It can work in a wide range of platforms:

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *Alternate index, for an IBM Virtual Storage Access Method key-sequenced data set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belg ...

and others. Several web consoles can be deployed in the same system if required. Web Console has multiples choices, in example

monitoring.

Agents

Agents are daemons or

services Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

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,

or C). They run on any type of platform (

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, IPSO,

Mac OS Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. in a succession of two major series. In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the classic Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system ...

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

), also

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in the xylem cells (vessel elements or tracheids) or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant. These cells transport water and nutrients throughout the plant. Sap is distinct from latex, resin, or cell sap; it is a s ...

, because the agents can communicate with the Pandora FMS Servers to send data in

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

using

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH Protocol) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH was designed for Un ...

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and dat ...

, 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 MySQL () is an Open-source software, open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A rel ...

database and

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

database is supported.

Oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...

support has been added in 6.0 release.

Software appliances

Pandora FMS has a

software appliance A software appliance is a software application combined with just enough operating system (JeOS) to run optimally on industry-standard hardware (typically a server) or in a virtual machine. It is a software distribution or firmware that impleme ...

based on a customized

CentOS CentOS (, from Community Enterprise Operating System; also known as CentOS Linux) is a discontinued Linux distribution that provided a free and open-source community-supported computing platform, functionally compatible with its upstream (softw ...

Linux, installable on CD, comes ready to use (including a

live CD A live CD (also live DVD, live disc, or live operating system) is a complete booting, bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than lo ...

) or ready to install to hard disk. It have also an AMI Appliance based on Amazon AWS. A Docker image is also available a
Docker Hub

References

External links

* {{Official website, pandorafms.com Free network-related software Free software programmed in Perl Multi-agent systems Free network management software System monitors