"In the large and bewildering world of network managers, we are inching ever-closer to the network administrator's ultimate dream: magic network monitors that show you the data you want and alert you to only the important problems without making configuring the monitor your life's work. Does Zenoss cross that magic threshold? Not quite, but it's an excellent network monitor, anyway.
"Installation is the weak point of most network monitors. They have complex dependencies and don't provide a nice easy 'appliance' bundle, so it can take a fair bit of hair-pulling to put all the pieces together. Zenoss offers several installation options: source tarballs, RPMs and a VMware virtual appliance for either Linux or Windows. The source installation provides a nice install script, so it's not too bad. Zenoss requires Python and MySQL, and you must be sure to have the correct versions..."
