Let’s check out together the features and improvements related to the new Pandora FMS release: Pandora FMS 760.

What’s new in the latest Pandora FMS release, Pandora FMS 760

NEW FEATURES AND IMPROVEMENTS

New histogram graph in modules

Added the ability to display a histogram graph for modules. This graph is exclusive for Boolean modules or for modules that have their criticality thresholds defined, it is very useful to see crash periods.

Alert templates with multiple schedules

The possibility of including several schedules for the execution of both module alerts and events is incorporated. With this new feature, different time slots can be generated within the same day or week, where alerts can be generated.

New Zendesk integration plugin

A Zendesk integration plugin has been added to the module library. Thanks to this plugin you may create, update and delete tickets from this system from the terminal or from Pandora FMS.

New inventory plugin for Mac OS X

Just as there were inventory tools for Linux and Windows, you may use this tool to obtain inventory in Mac OS X. You may get information on CPU, Memory, Disks and Software installed on machines of that OS.

New mass deletion section in the Metaconsole

With the latest changes in the process of combination and centralization in the Metaconsole, it was necessary to start including mass operations in it. For now, deleting and editing agents from the Metaconsole have been included.

New internal audit view in the Metaconsole

As part of the continuous improvements to Pandora FMS Metaconsole, the internal audit feature that already existed in the node has been added to supervise the accesses to the Metaconsole, as well as some of the actions carried out from it.

Forcing remote checks on Visual Consoles

In order to carry out a real-time monitoring control in the visual consoles, a button has been generated to be able to force the remote checks that are included in the visual consoles, just as it can be done from the detailed view of a node.

New alert macros

The following alert macros have been added to be able to include more details in the notices:

• _time_down_seconds_
• _time_down_human_
• _warning_threshold_min_
• _warning_threshold_max_
• _critical_threshold_min_
• _critical_threshold_max_

Support for MySQL8 and PHP8

We have included support to be able to use MySQL8 without any type of modification or previous adjustment. We are also preparing the console to work on PHP8 due to the PHP7.4 support time ending on 28th Nov 2022. 

Support for OS RHEL 8.x, RockyLinux 8.x, AlmaLinux 8.x

Due to recent changes to what was our base system so far (CentOS), we have decided to use RockyLinux 8 and AlmaLinux 8, as well as continue to support RHEL8 as the base OS. We recommend to all our users who have to migrate from other unsupported Linux versions (such as Centos6) to do so to one of these systems. However, we will continue to provide installers in RPM and Tarball format that can be used to run Pandora FMS on such systems.

KNOWN CHANGES AND LIMITATIONS

• New installations using ISO have been removed. From now on, the default installer will be the online installer, which, by means of a single command, prepares and installs the entire system from a Linux RHEL8, Rocky Linux or Alma Linux OS.

• Pandora FMS integration with the new plugin library has been improved, in order to use the new plugin library you need to be updated to version 760.

Resources

Download the release note 

Pandora FMS plugin library

Pandora FMS Online Community

I want to learn more!

Our Trial

We love uploading this kind of post to our blog. Articles in which we boast about our work and where all the effort of our team throughout the year comes to light. Because yes, we are rewarded once more, Pandora FMS is proclaimed winner in several categories in the SourceForge Awards.

• Award in the Community Leader category
• Award in the Community Choice category
• Award in the Open Source Excellence category
• Award in the category Users Love us
• SourceForge Favorite

No more and no less than five awards, including the Open Source Excellence 2022 award, possibly one of the most desired and disputed in the industry in this specific sector. 

Pandora FMS wins the Open Source Excellence 2022 award

As a message to the world from this podium, we want to make clear that it is an honor to know that these awards are only given to selected projects that have reached significant milestones in terms of downloads and participation within the SourceForge user community.

A great achievement to keep in mind, since Pandora FMS, one of the most complete monitoring software on the market, has been considered for these awards from more than 500,000 open source projects throughout the whole SourceForge platform. 

“We are very proud of what our team at Pandora FMS is achieving.  An effort of our entire workforce, users and customers that makes Pandora FMS better every day. This award is a recognition of our entire career and shows that Opensource is still alive and that we are one of the leading and pioneering projects in Europe”, states with satisfaction, Sancho Lerena, founder and CEO of Pandora FMS.

SourceForge is an open source software community devoted especially to helping open source projects be as successful as possible. Currently the platform has about 502,000 Open Source projects in progress, more than 2.6 million downloads per day and a community of 30 million monthly users, who search and develop open source software, and who, from now on, will be able to find the badges achieved by Pandora FMS within its projects page in SourceForge. 

As many of you already know, Pandora FMS is a very comprehensive monitoring solution: cost-effective, scalable and covering most infrastructure deployment options. Find and solve problems quickly, no matter if you come from on-premise, multi cloud or a mix of both. A flexible solution that can unify data display for full observability of your organization. With more than 500 plugins available you may control and manage any application and technology, such as SAP, Oracle, Lotus, Citrix, Jboss, VMware, AWS, SQL Server, Redhat, Websphere and a long etc. A flexible tool able to reach everywhere and unify data display to make management easier. Ideal for hybrid environments where technologies, management processes and data are intertwined. And now, moreover, backed and rewarded by the wide expert community of SourceForge.

How have we come so far?

Let’s go back a little. Pandora FMS is licensed under GNU GPL 2.0 and the first line of code was written in 2004 by Sancho Lerena, the company’s current CEO. At that time, free software was in full swing and the Free Software Foundation in Spain had an active group of which Sancho was a part.

In those days there was no Github, but there was something that united us all: SourceForge. From the beginning of the current century this platform served to unify and enhance thousands of developers who wanted to share their creations with users around the world. Pandora FMS was there from its inception in 2004, although initially it was not called that, but “Pandoramon.” 

*If you are curious about our beginnings, you may read this article about our history.

As of this date, there are several thousand free version users who download Pandora FMS updates through their update system and use it daily. 

Pandora FMS has been uploading every release with its corresponding source file for over 18 years, every day to its Sourceforge project and we are very proud to say that not only do we continue to believe in it, but we have not stopped doing so in almost twenty years of history.

Beyond code, we believe in the power of community, sharing, and growing together. That is why we maintain a very extensive documentation of more than 1000 pages in four languages: Spanish, English, French and Russian. 

Our community website includes a system of forums, an extensive knowledge base with more than 500 articles and a blogh more than 1,900 articles translated into four languages.

Of course, we also offer a wide range of professional services and commercial versions of our software. But, as Stallman himself said:

“Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.” 

Now yes, after all that has been said, we invite you to check that freedom is much more than a slogan. Thank you again for this award. And don’t take too long, join us!

Do you already know what tasks the QA department performs? Would you like to discover what each QA tester does on a daily basis? You don’t know what the hell we’re talking about but you’re intrigued and can’t stop reading because my prose is enigmatic and addictive? Well, you’ve come to the right place! We’ll tell you how our QA department manages so you can learn what yours does without having to ask. Read on and don’t forget to propose me for the Nobel Prize for literature when the time comes!

Do you already know what tasks the QA department performs?

Starting with the functions of the department, QA is in charge of testing Pandora FMS and making sure that we offer the best possible quality to our clients and the community. It is an extremely complex task because Pandora FMS is very large and it could be said that chaos theory is well applied, since inserting an “&” character in a form field can cause a report that had nothing to do with it to fail. So be careful, any day your building could burn for the wrong character! From Pandora FMS we recommend hiring only professionals

Currently, our QA team is made up of Daniel Ródriguez, Manuel Montes and Diego Muñoz, although from time to time, colleagues from other departments support them to carry out specific tests. They are thick as thieves. They always sit together at company dinners and share a bottle of Beefeater after dinner.

QA Tester Team 

Daniel Rodríguez, “The beast (QA) of Metal”

Works together with the Support and Development Departments. He is devoted to testing new features and finding possible bugs to help improve the product. He loves sci-fi movies and metal:

“My duties as department head are mainly to manage and supervise the work of the department, design and improve test plans, carry out manual tests and coordinate communication with the rest of the departments.”

Manuel Montes

is from Madrid and began as part of the Development department, although he later joined the QA team. He loves cycling when the weather allows it, watching movies, reading and going for a walk with his family

“In addition to manual tests, we carry out automatic tests with technologies such as Selenium Webdriver and Java to interact with the browser, Cucumber with Gherkin language so that the tests to be carried out are somewhat more understandable for less technical colleagues and, in turn, serve as documentation, and Allure to generate reports with the results of said tests.”

Diego Muñoz, “The Gamer Alchemist”

is a QA tester, although he also helps the Support team, solving different problems for customers. He is from Huelva and although he has lived there all his life, he has no accent, which he boasts about. His hobbies range from watching movies, to video games, listening to music and watching series:

“Every piece of code that is implemented in Pandora FMS goes through my hands or through those of one of my colleagues, who judge if the changes work correctly or have any errors. We also sometimes suggest alternative ways to present features to developers or to solve the bugs that we have been able to find. In addition, in the days prior to the product release, we review the whole console in all its Metaconsole, Node and Open variants, once again making sure that the code introduced in the new version works as well as possible.”

The importance of the QA department

From the QA department, an average of 180 tickets are generated per release and, as you know, we present 10 releases a year. This adds up to more than 1,800 tickets annually, how cool is that? Sometimes it is a heinous job, because it involves throwing back the work of a Development colleague, and also difficult because it is impossible to see everything, and when a problem explodes in a client’s environment, it attracts all eyes. Although QA work has little visibility and can be very thankless, it is fundamental to the success of everyone’s work and the final product.

If you want to find out more about our departments out of curiosity or for the simple fact that this way you can find out more about yours, you can request it in the comments box, one of our busy social networks or by post, which is a little bit outdated but should totally come back. Scented letters and vermilion sealing wax. There can’t be anything more romantic!