Pandora FMS and eHorus - a great integrated network monitoring and SaaS cloud-based remote management system

eHorus integration in Pandora FMS web interface (Processes vie)

After playing around with the usual network monitoring tools, all of them impressive (Nagios, PRTG, Zabbix, Zenoss), I have settled down on Pandora FMS for a few years to monitor hobbyist servers in SANYALnet Labs. With solid agent-based real-time performance monitoring and alarming capabilities and an impressive "recon" task with automatic network hierarchy discovery and visual network mapping features, Pandora FMS has been serving me very well.

After a recent upgrade to the latest Pandora FMS distribution, I discovered it supports seamless integration with the eHorus cloud-based remote management system (SaaS) for total command and control of my network nodes right from inside the Padora FMS web interface as well as the eHorus portal internet web-site.

The steps to deploy eHorus and the required registration form and agent downloads are described pretty well at the eHorus web-site. The free tier allows up to 10 nodes and one concurrent user - quite enough for a hobbyist environment like mine.

I started off by registering an account at the eHorus portal and installing the CentOS 7 64-bit eHorus agent on my Dell PowerEdge R710 virtualization host that runs a bunch of SANYALnet Labs hobbyist nodes.

I downloaded and installed the eHorus agent for 64-bit CentOS 7 following these instructions.The only change I made to the /etc/ehorus/ehorus_agent.conf file is to substitute my real eHorus userid in the "#eh_user USER" parameter in the config file.

	#############################################################################;
	# eHorus agent configuration file.
	# (c) 2015 Artica Soluciones Tecnologicas
	#############################################################################
	# Addes of the ehorus_cmd server (Windows only).
	cmd_address 127.0.0.1
	# Port of the ehorus_cmd server (Windows only).
	cmd_port 41120
	# Run as a daemon/win32 service.
	daemon 1
	# Address of the eHorus server.
	#eh_address hub.ehorus.com
	# Port of the eHorus server.
	#eh_port 8080
	# Address for local connections. By default the same IP address the agent uses
	# to connect to the eHorus server is used.
	#eh_local_address
	# Certificate file for SSL local connections.
	#eh_local_cert
	# Certificate key for SSL local connections.
	#eh_local_key
	# Port for local connections.
	#eh_local_port 80
	# eHorus Hash (generated by Provisioning Server)
	#eh_hash EH_HASH
	# eHorus Key
	#eh_key EH_KEY
	# eHorus user
	#eh_user USER
	# Log file (log to stdout by default).
	#log_file /var/log/ehorus_agent.log
	# Passphrase used to access the agent from the eHorus client.
	#password secret
	# Address of the provisioning server.
	prov_address switch.ehorus.com
	# Port of the provisioning server.
	prov_port 443
	# Address of the VNC server.
	vnc_address 127.0.0.1
	# Port of of the VNC server.
	vnc_port 5901
	# Set to 1 to suppress error messages.
	quiet 0
	# Storage directory for file uploads and downloads.
	storage_dir /home
	# Log messages verbosity level. 0 does not print log and 9 prints all logs
	verbose 3
	# Proxy server address
	#proxy_address 127.0.0.1
	# Proxy server entry port
	#proxy_port 3186
	# User for proxy authentication.
	#proxy_user
	# Passphrase for proxy authentication.
	#proxy_pass
	# Timeout in seconds for a user session. The connection will be closed after <session_timeout> seconds of inactivity.
	session_timeout 300
	# Set to 1 to only send IP and OS to directory server.
	#disable_info 1
	# Way to connect to a section (always or disable)
	access_terminal always
	access_display always
	access_processes always
	access_services always
	access_files always
	access_share always
	# Permits delete files remotely from the client.
	enable_file_delete 1
	# File system encode (UTF-8 by default)
	#encoding UTF-8
	#############################################################################
	# Advanced settings. Do not change unless you know what you are doing!
	#############################################################################
	# Block size in bytes for network read operations.
	block_size 16384
	# Timeout in seconds for network operations.
	timeout 5
	# WebSocket ping frames will be sent to the eHorus server every ping_interval
	# seconds.
	ping_interval 300
	# Max payload size for network write operations.
	max_payload_size 524288

view raw ehorus_agent.conf (CentOS 7) hosted with ❤ by GitHub

I then enabled and started the ehorus_agent_daemon using the systemctl command.

# systemctl enable  ehorus_agent_daemon
# systemctl start ehorus_agent_daemon
# systemctl status  ehorus_agent_daemon
● ehorus_agent_daemon.service - LSB: eHorus Agent startup script
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/ehorus_agent_daemon; bad; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Fri 2018-10-05 23:55:20 UTC; 2h 13min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
   CGroup: /system.slice/ehorus_agent_daemon.service
           └─20940 /usr/bin/ehorus_agent -f /etc/ehorus/ehorus_agent.conf

Oct 05 23:55:18 dell-poweredge-r710.sanyalnet.lan systemd[1]: Starting LSB: eHorus Agent startup script...
Oct 05 23:55:19 dell-poweredge-r710.sanyalnet.lan ehorus_agent_daemon[20908]: 2018-10-05 23:55:19 [log][2] WARNING: no pas...t!
Oct 05 23:55:20 dell-poweredge-r710.sanyalnet.lan ehorus_agent_daemon[20908]: eHorus Agent is now running with PID 20940
Oct 05 23:55:20 dell-poweredge-r710.sanyalnet.lan systemd[1]: Started LSB: eHorus Agent startup script.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

Checking the eHorus web portal, I could now see my server:

eHorus Portal (internet web site) with one server

eHorus provides the following options for command and control of configured servers:

• Terminal
• Desktop,
• Processes
• Services
• Files.

eHorus Node Details Screen at Web Portal

eHorus integrates with Pandora FMS enabling seamless monitoring and control facilities for nodes from right inside the Pandora FMS web UI. Here is an example of a eHorus terminal window inside a Pandora FMS web session:

 eHorus terminal inside Pandora FMS

I will gradually deploy eHorus remote management agents on some of my other nodes. Unfortunately, the eHorus agent is not available for OpenVMS VAX or Alpha, Solaris, AIX, NetBSD and similar unusual operating systems that I play around with.