Why is setting this up so hard?

[janosch]

Unfortunately your reaction is typical. You are so enamored by the capabilities of these products that you don't see that their complexity, esoteric concepts, and sheer geekiness turns off most of the money-men these days - severely so in my segment.

That's one of the biggest IT problems nowadays. Because of Windows and MAC OS everyone who ever installed a PC thinks he can also run an IT-business. But that would also mean you know about troubleshooting.
All those eye-candy-themed-tools lack that from my experience.

They want point-and-click systems now - nothing but. They want to hear "automagic", not "configurable".

This works perfectly until you ever experience a change or something unforseen. Which, and you should know with your experience, happens in IT.
It's our turn, as IT professionals, to tell them how unrealistic such expectations are and you obviously fail big times on it. Just tell them the truth about IT and don't try to work it out their way. It would help us all but if everyone just denies to start with it nothing will change at all.

If they need expert-support, they expect it from India, not local. They hate the word "Linux" but love the word "free". These are the folks that Zabbix and the like keep enticing. Starting to see why I wanted to smack Zabbix along with you techno-enthusiasts? The way you present these products creates a false market impression which makes my job MUCH harder having to explain the truth and get them cough up the cash for what they really need.

Those people really work in IT or are the deciders? I guess they are the deciders, if they really work on IT: Hell we (and especially they) are doomed.
Most administrators and consultants just fail to explain managers the concepts of IT because they talk the wrong language. I totally understand that a manager is looking for a reliable service or monitoring system which does not cost him much, it's call economical thinking.
But that does not mean on the same hand that you should rule Zabbix out because it is not that easy to learn. I agree it isn't, absolutely not. But each it-administrator should be able to handle that. IF you only allow your it-people to work on eye-candy, closed source tools which do all the magic for you they will never learn anything about troubleshooting. They'll stay on a user level. Do you really want that?

[syndeysider]

Troll food

Your argument's are so flawed in logic it's completely acceptable now that it took you 3 days to configure an SNMP Interface and Macro in Zabbix.

If they need expert-support, they expect it from India, not local.

Economical sense. Why pay you $60 p/h for 3 days where I could pay $10 p/h to a grad student in India to get the same job done and get it done in 1/3 of the time?

...money-men these days - severely so in my segment... They hate the word "Linux" but love the word "free".

Must be a pretty small segment. Last I checked Linux was fast catching up with adoption compared to Windows in Enterprise.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rajsabhl...edmond-empire/

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2013/03/report-enterprise-linux-growth-outpaces-windows

And this is all outside of the fact that Zabbix flopped and the others I staged didn't.

Zabbix flopped because you didn't have the time and patience to understand how to make it work. It's all right there in black and white in front of you.

One other thing about paid products. Responsibility for when they fail doesn't fall on me. It falls on to whom the client wrote the check.

So your business model is to promote a product that is simplistic in nature and in the event it's "breaks" or doesn't perform up to standard, you get to turn around and blame the purchaser and/or provider thereby exempting yourself from the initial poor "Solution" and/or Design recommendations?

Be careful now. I can clearly tell this is your first time dealing with NMS Architecture on an Enterprise level and there is alot more to this segment of IT than you clearly understand. At both my Client and other Enterprises, NMS is marked as a Tier 1 Critical Service with penalties on performance and/or availability SLA's.

Last I checked, providers don't like paying penalties on poorly implemented solutions.

Good people like kloczek have the patience to actually try engage people like you and try turn a negative into a positive and even go so far as to encourage your trolling so as to better the products nature.

I just learnt something.

[richlv]

My Zabbix install (and reinstall and reinstall) never successfully queried a single device and I gave up on it.

not sure it's a problem of reinstall... did you try appliance + quickstart ?

Furthermore Zabbix is a very general monitoring system with no focus on any particular environment. That's deadly for shops where the IT staff can use the system but simply do not have the expertise or depth to understand how the system works.

being a general one increases the usability of it for many. if you want it to be set up and configured for you (and then have somebody help if things break), maybe you should consider commercial services/support

[OldExperienced&Bitter]

Oh I could weep at this kind of naivete...

First off I've dealt with NMS many times over the years. I change technologies every few months as new gigs come along. One loses patience with counter-intuitive products in my job.

A word about pricing. Clients don't pay me $60/hr. They pay my company at least 3X that much. Half of my compensation is tied to keeping said clients happy and coming back. Consultants are typically hired for short periods at a time, and only after local IT staff (or a one-man provider equivalent) has failed or lost mgmt's confidence (we get a lot of those).

I started playing with Linux back in 1991 on a genuine IBM PC with an Intel 386 accelerator board. I've been hearing from techno-weebies since that time how it would take over. I've been hearing for the last 10 years that each would be "the year of the Linux workstation". Yet MS & Mac continue to dominate overwhelmingly in my segment.

You are damn right that my job involves limiting my company's exposure to real or perceived liability. Business is about relationships, not products. That's the first lesson they teach every sales engineer (wake up).

I don't care why Zabbix flopped. It did. Others didn't. That's enough in this case. The next may be different. Not my concern now. I'm staging Zabbix because it's in the SOW, probably the result of a google-search by the CFO for free software.

Now here's where the rubber hits the road so listen up and learn. I put bread on my table by keeping the executive mgmt of the companies I service happy enough to keep signing the checks. There is a big difference between small-medium businesses where the people who sign those checks take the financial burdens personally and the enterprise where they don't. I keep said execs happy by delivering what they want. I get no points trying to broaden their horizons. Such efforts often generate suspicion as the client may interpret them as an effort to up-sell. You are in the "Twilight Zone" with your "Be careful now" and "Last I checked, providers don't like paying ..." nonsense. That chatter applies to larger businesses where detailed analysis enters the mix. In my segment, execs make most decisions quickly and from the gut. They're social folks and have little time for geeks or technical minutia. I have to bridge that gap and deliver a workable solution WITHOUT (and this is so key) increasing the number or required quality of their staff.

[OldExperienced&Bitter]

Time To Go Back To Work

richlv, thanks for your reply but I've flung my fling with Zabbix on this gig. I'll hope for better luck on the next. :-)

In the meantime we've beaten this thread for all I could have asked from it and it has no technical value.

[richlv]

richlv, thanks for your reply but I've flung my fling with Zabbix on this gig. I'll hope for better luck on the next. :-)

In the meantime we've beaten this thread for all I could have asked from it and it has no technical value.

well, i'd say reaction was a bit too harsh - although you did come in with a rant and no specific questions for help even

try asking specific questions that show that you have tried to solve things yourself first and you'll see that this is a friendly community (even on irc )

[OldExperienced&Bitter]

Correct on all the facts just not the strategy

That's one of the biggest IT problems nowadays. Because of Windows and MAC OS everyone who ever installed a PC thinks he can also run an IT-business. But that would also mean you know about troubleshooting.
All those eye-candy-themed-tools lack that from my experience.

>> More to the point, businesses owners, having watched their kid install a
>> PC, now hire their IT support-tech at 35K/yr. Individuals at that level of
>> the industry are not the strongest performers.

This works perfectly until you ever experience a change or something unforseen.

Just tell them the truth about IT and don't try to work it out their way. It would help us all but if everyone just denies to start with it nothing will change at all.

>> "Just tell them the truth" results only in a call to the account rep.
>> with the complaint that "your engineer really doesn't understand what
>> I want." Execs usually try to create the impression that they know
>> what they want. Indecision is not a trait they show easily. The best
>> way to stay employed is to give them what they say they want.

IF you only allow your it-people to work on eye-candy, closed source tools which do all the magic for you they will never learn anything about troubleshooting. They'll stay on a user level. Do you really want that?

>> The "deciders" as you call them miss that. I, on the other hand, have a
>> job because of it.