After nearly a year of work, the OpenNMS iPhone App is now available from iTunes.

It costs US$4.99 and folks with commercial OpenNMS support subscriptions should just drop me a note for a free voucher code.

As I know there will be a few questions about this, I’ve tried to anticipate a couple of them.

Q: Hey, OpenNMS is free software. Why you chargin’ me $5?

OpenNMS is 100% free and open source software, and the iPhone app is no exception. The code is hosted in our git repository and there are complete instructions for downloading and building it on your own.

But, it was not a painless or inexpensive process to get this app created. In fact, the main reason it got completed is that we sent Ben off to the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and he learned what he needed to finish it (as well as to make it iPad compatible). That little junket cost us about $2000 – or nearly 575 copies of the app once Apple takes their cut.

So we decided to charge for the app but make sure than those who want to take the time have full access to the code.

Q: What about an Android app?

I would love to have an Android version of this app, but at the moment no one has stepped forward to own it. We do have a Nexus One at the office so the hope is that it will happen, and happen soon, but no promises.

OpenNMS was a winner in their “Best of Networking Software” category.

What I also thought was cool was that of the ten other projects honored in the category, OpenNMS integrates with three of them: Hyperic HQ, RANCID and OTRS, and it is a honor to be in the company of all the other projects who also won.

Last year the focus was on OpenNMS 1.6, and this year it is for OpenNMS 1.8.

They also mention the upcoming iPhone app. For those who have been waiting, version 1.0.0 has been submitted to the App Store for approval, and a big thank you to Ben Reed for working on this. We should know something about it within the next week.

It’s time for This Week in OpenNMS. In the last week, we did some more work in preparation for 1.8.1, worked a bit more on the iPhone/iPad app, and did a huge amount of bugfixing.

Project Updates

• 1.8: Current Release is 1.8.0
  1.8.0 is the current stable release, tagged June 7th. The first major stable release in the 1.8 series, it adds a whole slew of new features compared to 1.6. For a high-level overview, see the “New and Noteworthy” page on the OpenNMS wiki. While we consider this release to be stable, a ton has changed. It is recommended that you back up your database, and test an upgrade on non-production hardware before moving to 1.8 in production.
• 1.8: Inline Thresholding Regression
  Inline thresholding was enabled in the default configs late in the 1.6 series, but it was never enabled by default in the 1.7 branch, so 1.8.0 was released without inline thresholding enabled. This was changed with the fixing of bug #3912, so be aware when merging configs when 1.8.1 comes out!
• 1.8: Remote Poller Maps Updates
  Matt, Donald, and I did a bunch of work on the remote poller maps, doing a huge amount of optimization of the queries used to pull poller data into the UI, adding support for Mapquest’s click and double-click behaviour (center, and center+zoom), and adding support for multiple map types in the OpenLayers implementation.
  
• 1.8: Tons of Bug Fixes
  I did a bunch of work going through Bugzilla this week, trying to close out bugs in preparation for 1.8.1, which will go into code slush next monday, and be released on the 12th.

Bugs Fixed Since Last TWiO

• #1181: Collectin Windows disk space, trying to poll the CD drive
• #1920: javamail using authentication encodes the username and password twice
• #1959: Too many calls to getlocahost()
• #2922: PSQLException in poller backend: DB field length exceeded on remote location monitor status update
• #2944: java.lang.NullPointerException on KSC Graphs
• #3124: HttpMonitor doesn’t check JSON repsonses for response-text
• #3192: New Feature: allow syslogd to bind to specific ipaddress
• #3280: Equallogic iSCSI array performance data
• #3283: Reparenting of iLO interface on HP servers not working with ESX4
• #3291: provisiond : snmpinterfaces not created
• #3296: running the installer without the database running throws an exception about “The database server’s error messages are not in English”
• #3306: 1.7.svn (fresh today) does not show service, availability on node page
• #3514: default datacollection-config.xml breaks alias length limit
• #3536: Unable to use the “percent sign (%)” in a notification text message
• #3576: Fix send-event.pl script to encode time in DateFormat.LONG
• #3578: Incorrect http content-type header for svg request
• #3589: Advanced Alarm Search some of the Sort by options don’t work properly
• #3598: An Exception occurs when you try to create a surveillance category that already exists.
• #3622: Bugs with Hyperic servlets
• #3624: Rename from Import to Synch(cronize) in Prov Groups
• #3632: admin role is negated for users also in readonly role
• #3637: JasperException PWC6033
• #3644: trying to add list of ip range to discover
• #3656: mib2opennms does not install in Debian Lenny
• #3675: Events missing page counter
• #3722: Debian Packages: opennms-contrib missing dependency for libxml-twig-perl
• #3847: Page Sequence Monitor still submitting multiple ‘Cookie:’ response headers even with BROWSER_COMPATIBILITY is enabled
• #3869: Data Collection Failed Event (dataCollectionFailed) not informative
• #3871: linkd not showing links between nodes and cisco switches
• #3899: Patch: allow per node filtering in notifications list
• #3900: dashboard user has security issues
• #3901: add support for click/double-click handlers
• #3910: Patch: display First Next Previous links in events list at the bottom of the page
• #3912: inline thresholding is no longer enabled by default
• #3915: regular expression “pattern”s in XSDs are not evaluated
• #3923: Stale location specific status change events should be deleted
• #3924: NPE handled too gracefully by MailAckProcessor in Ackd

Goof-Up of the Week

Jeff relayed this tale of the importance of having priorities in scrum this morning…

I spent last week helping a telecoms industry client implement OpenNMS. Toward the end of the second day we decided to switch from Capsd discovery to Provisiond requisitions, so I wrote a small script that
reads an inventory dump from their old NMS (CA Spectrum) and creates an OpenNMS requisition describing the same nodes. The database was full of junk events from before we’d put in place some new SNMP trap definitions, so I went about removing all that stuff manually before importing the new requisition. Several folks were going out for a beverage and invited me along, so I hurried in order not to hold them
up. The next morning there were over 600 nodes in the system instead of the 391 I was expecting. I double-checked that Capsd was turned off, that Provisiond was not handling newSuspect events, and that there were in fact no such events in the database, then contacted the development team about my suspicion of a bug. After nearly an hour, the client mentioned that he was seeing some duplicate nodes that didn’t have any events, alarms, or notifications associated with them. Only then did it dawn on me that, in my haste to get my hands on some suds, I had forgotten to delete the old nodes themselves before importing the new requisition!

Upcoming Events

• July 7th-9th, 2010: Ben will be speaking at OpenStreetMaps’ State of the Map 2010, in Girona, Spain.
• July 21st, 2010: Tarus will be giving his “So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business?” talk at OSCON
• July 26th-30th, 2010: OpenNMS Dev-Jam 2010 will be held at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN

If you have anything to add to the events list, please let me know.

Until Next Week…

As always, if there’s anything you’d like me to talk about in a future TWiO, or you just have a comment, criticism, or blocking bug closing machines that you’d like to share, don’t hesitate to say hi.

It’s faster, more powerful and more flexible than ever before. And as always, it is 100% free and open source software. A list of the major new features can be found on the wiki.

A lot of work went into things under the covers. We are moving toward making OpenNMS database independent (by leveraging the Hibernate project) as well as preparing for the OSGi-based OpenNMS 2.0.

Users can now have fine-grained control over discovery using the new capsd replacement provisiond. Combining the best of automated discovery with the older model importer feature, provisiond can manage the most complex networks with its asynchronous and non-blocking design (we tested it against 300 devices, each of which had over 30,000 virtual interfaces).

We also made several changes to make OpenNMS, well, prettier. The Maps subsystem now works on all browsers with SVG 1.1 capability, and the integration with JasperReports means that the folks in the trenches can now wow management with pretty reports.

Please try it out and let us know what you think. As always, report bugs to our Bugzilla instance, and we hope you have as much fun using OpenNMS as we had making it

We’ve been on Sourceforge for over 10 years, which makes one of the projects that signed up during the site’s first year of existence.

If you are an OpenNMS fan, the article is worth checking out since I answered quite a few questions about the project. It also features most of the major contributors in the sidebar, and I apologize if anyone got left out.

The latest stable release is 1.6.11 and contains a number of bugfixes and small configuration additions, with several corrections made to fix installation issues. There should be no problem upgrading an existing 1.6 release to this version, but there is also no overwhelming reason to do so if you are not experiencing the problems it addresses.

The more exciting news is that our release candidate for 1.8, version 1.7.90, has been released. This is the feature complete release and we’ll be spending the next several weeks cleaning up bugs to make it ready to become the next stable. This also means that 1.6.11 will be the last release in the 1.6 line unless something major is found.

There will a number of 1.7.9x releases in the next few weeks, leading up to 1.8.0, so if you have a development machine we’d love it if you’d install it and give us feedback.

As usual, the the release notes can be found on our website, and the code is available from out apt and yum repositories and well as from SourceForge.

The OpenNMS Users Conference – Europe (6-7 May 2010 – Frankfurt, Germany)

This two-day event brings together both OpenNMS users and developers for two days of seminars and training. I can’t think of a better way to quickly get up to speed on the application. I’ll be giving a talk on the upcoming OpenNMS 1.8 release. Registration is still open.

The TeleManagement Forum’s Management World 2010 (18-20 May 2010 – Nice, France)

OpenNMS has partnered with BT for the Cloud Service Broker (CSB) catalyst to demonstrate a proof of concept for a trusted cloud management platform. OpenNMS will form the management piece integrating with BT’s cloud services, Square Hoop’s configuration system and Infonova’s billing software.

Southeast LinuxFest (11-13 June 2010 – Spartanburg, SC, USA)

The OpenNMS Group is a Diamond sponsor of this great conference on free and open source software. I’ll be speaking and we’ll have a booth there where you can meet some of the team and see the latest in OpenNMS.

Conferenza Italiana sul Software Libero (11-12 June 2010 – Cagliari, Italy)

If you happen to be in Italy and can’t make SELF, that same weekend Antonio Russo will be doing a presentation on OpenNMS at the Italian Free Software Conference. Antonio is an OGP member and a frequent contributor to the project.

O’Reilly Open Source Conference (19-23 July 2010 – Portland, OR, USA)

I’ll be returning to OSCON after a year’s absence (Dave and Matt went last year) and I look forward to this premier free and open source software event (especially since it is returning to Portland, one of my favorite places to visit). I’ll be speaking as well as attending, so drop me a note if you plan to be there.

Dev-Jam 2010 (26-30 July 2010 – Minneapolis, MN, USA)

The fifth annual OpenNMS Developer’s Conference returns to the University of Minnesota for a week of sheer OpenNMS geekdom. We take over the large Club Room at Yudof Hall to code, determine the direction of OpenNMS, socialize, etc. The schedule is made up as we go, but the focus is on both solidifying our community and making OpenNMS the de facto network management application platform. Everyone with an interest in OpenNMS is welcome, especially if an immersive week with fellow geeks appeals to you. It’s one of my favorite times of the year.

There are a couple of other events coming up but since they haven’t yet been confirmed I left them off. I’ll post more as time gets closer.

The reason? Ten years ago the OpenNMS Project was registered as project 4141 on Sourceforge (become a fan on Facebook).

Not many open source projects can claim 10 years, and I am both delighted and humbled that our community has not only allowed OpenNMS to survive but to thrive.

To celebrate, we threw a little party. Here’s a picture:

Back row:

Jay Aras (MA, USA), Donald Desloge (NC, USA), Brad Miesner (NC, USA), Mike Davidson (NC, USA), Me (NC, USA), Brian Weaver (NC, USA), David Hustace (NC, USA), Matt Brozowski (NC, USA), Jeff Gehlbach (GA, USA)

Laptops:

Alex Finger (France), Craig Miskell (New Zealand), Bill Ayres (OR, USA)

iMacs: Matt Raykowski and Mike Huot (MN, USA), Johan Edstrom (CO, USA), Antonio Russo (Italy), Alejandro Galue (Venezuela), Klaus Thielking-Riechert (Germany), DJ Gregor (OH, USA)

Front Row:

Seth Leger (NC, USA), Ben Reed (NC, USA) and Larry Karnowski (NC, USA)

It is truly a nationwide and worldwide effort (it was hard to pick a time for the picture, as it was Tuesday evening for the Europeans and Wednesday morning for Craig).

As I have often mentioned, I didn’t start OpenNMS, so it was nice to have Brian Weaver, the original architect of the product, come out for the day. He told me that the project started on 1 July 1999, so it is actually several months older, but as we have a firm date on Sourceforge I figured we’d stick with that.

Also in attendance were Mike Davidson and Larry Karnowski, two of the original developers, as well as Ben Reed and Seth Leger (but the latter two work for the company now).

Here’s a picture of the gang from May of 2002, when OpenNMS version 1.0 was released. See if you can pick out the people who are still around.

In addition to beer and pizza, David’s wife made an amazing cake:

and DJ Gregor sent us, overnight, some Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream.

Yum. Here’s to the next 10.

With a commercial software product it is very difficult to determine if it is the right solution to a particular problem without buying it. With open source software, there is no licensing cost and thus it is possible to easily try it out before making a commitment to use it. Thus the focus is on usefulness and not a flyer saying “we’re the best”.

This isn’t to say that the open source world is completely free of fluff and posturing. With the prevalence of venture-backed open core companies, their ultimate goal is not the proliferation of robust open source code but to be purchased for a large multiplier. The best way for them to create perceived value is to latch on to the latest buzzword, as if to say “hey – you need a piece of this – better hurry up and buy us,” and it is a strategy that has worked well in a number of cases. I just don’t like calling it open source.

So I have been pretty quiet on the use of OpenNMS in “the cloud”. This isn’t to say that we don’t manage cloud resources, but the management challenges of cloud-based services aren’t much different than “normal” ones. The power and flexibility of OpenNMS make it as useful in the cloud as elsewhere.

In fact, one of the major players in cloud computing, Rackspace, uses OpenNMS to manage its Cloud Files system.

We are happy to announce that we are working with another major company BT (British Telecom Group) in developing a trusted cloud management platform called the Cloud Service Broker. In the words of John Gillam, Programme Director, BT Global Services:

The Cloud Service Broker TM Forum Catalyst provides an excellent opportunity to address the barriers to cloud adoption for enterprise customers. Whilst enterprises wish to lever value from the cloud, they are apprehensive over losing control, citing areas of concern such as IT Governance, application performance, runaway costs, inadequate security and technology lock-in. The CSB addresses this by matching cloud services to each enterprise’s needs, enforcing the right policies, and then showing how this can be backed up by an ongoing service level agreement. We believe developments of this nature will be of primary importance in future cloud services.

We will be presenting our work at the TMForum’s Management World conference in Nice, France, this May. In addition to BT’s offering, we will be demonstrating integration with products from Comptel, Square Hoop and Infonova in order to deliver a complete cloud services platform.