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

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

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

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

s, web servers 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 stack, such as load balancers, routers, network switches,

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

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 behaviour. Devices that typically ...

Trap console. Released under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

, Pandora FMS is free software. 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 family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

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

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

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 f ...

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:

, Solaris,

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

, AIX 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 p ...

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 technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

, AIX, Solaris,

, IPSO,

Mac OS Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc. 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, rebranded "M ...

or FreeBSD), also

SAP Sap is a fluid transported in 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 separ ...

, 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 arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

using

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) 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 applications are based on ...

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 data ...

, 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 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 relational database ...

database and

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

database is supported. Oracle support has been added in 6.0 release.

Timeline of releases

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 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 bootable computer installation including operating system which runs directly from a CD-ROM or similar storage device into a computer's memory, rather than loading f ...

) 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