Glossary

action

The process of sending a one-way message (notification) to a receiving application.

action service

A service that provides tools for responding automatically to changes in your environment.

anchor card

The primary area of a Smart View page.

The anchor card displays graphs of the most important metrics of the anchor entity over a range of time.

anchor entity

The primary subject of a Smart View page, shown in the anchor card.

API Client

A named object for managing authentication keys for Zenoss API clients.

For more information, see Authentication keys for Zenoss API clients.

Collection Zone

A set of collectors and an interface for managing devices.

collector

A named group of Collection Zone services that gather availability, performance, or model data about devices.

Collectors use generic protocols (ICMP, SNMP) or customized protocols (API calls) to gather data.

dashboard

A grid of tiles that displays key indicators of a set of entities over a range of time.

For more information, see Dashboards (Zenoss Cloud) or Collection Zone dashboards.

dashboard scope

The set of entities a dashboard includes, defined by a query. The query combines sources of data with optional filters.

Synonym: scope

dashboard tile

A customizable visualization of one or more key performance or availability indicators.

Synonym: tile

data source

(Collection Zone) A query that uses a specific protocol to request one or more metrics from a device or application.

For example, to gather system uptime from a Linux host, an SNMP data source requests a specific OID, and an SSH data source runs the uptime command.

destination

The target of an action; the receiving application of a one-way message (notification).

device

(Collection Zone) A physical or virtual system, or local or cloud infrastructure, from which a Collection Zone gathers availability, performance, and model data.

Example systems include servers, routers, storage systems, and switches. Example infrastructures include Amazon Web Services, VMware vCloud, and Microsoft Azure.

device class

(Collection Zone) The base set of properties that characterize a group of devices. A device may belong to only one device class.

Device class properties identify the data to collect and the protocol for collecting data.

device component

(Collection Zone) Resources that belong to a specific device or processes that run on a specific device.

For example, file systems, applications, and network interfaces.

dimension attribute

An entity attribute that contributes to uniquely identifying an entity.

The value of a dimension attribute cannot change.

discovery

(Collection Zone) The process of identifying device components.

The results of discovery are used to populate the model.

effective entry

An effective entry is the working dictionary entry that you want to use in Zenoss Cloud instead of the default entry that is provided by Zenoss.

When you customize a default entry, your customized entry becomes the effective entry. Likewise, when you create a new entry for a metric, entity, or event field that has no default, your new entry becomes the effective entry for your organization.

For more information, see Dictionary service.

entity

An object that represents any discrete system, process, or feature for which Zenoss Cloud gathers or is sent time series data.

event

A structured record of a notable change in the state of a resource that is sent to the event processing service.

External events are solicited (for example, through ZenPacks) or unsolicited (through SNMP traps or syslog). Internal events are created in response to failed pings, threshold evaluations, and other occurrences.

event class

(Collection Zone) A named set of properties that define a category of events, and a set of event rules.

event occurrence

A specific episode of the condition represented by an event.

event policy

(Cloud) A rule that you create in Event management to help you manage your system's event ingest. It typically consists of a query to target a specific set of events and a Javascript expression to change the format of those events.

event rule

(Collection Zone) A Python expression that the event processing service uses to determine whether to change the class of an event.

For more information, see Event mapping and transforms.

graph

A diagram of the relationships among data points, thresholds, or both, over a specific period of time.

key metric

A metric that is modeled by the anomaly detection service.

For more information, see the list key metrics.

metadata

One or more properties associated with an entity, metric, or event.

metadata attribute

Any entity attribute that is not a dimension attribute.

The value of a metadata attribute can change.

metric

A measurement that quantifies an entity property or phenomenon.

Example metrics include input/output operations per second (IOPS), CPU utilization, network interface throughput, and the amount of free space on a block device.

metric field

Metric fields are the attributes and metadata which may appear on any metric. When Zenoss receives metrics from sources other than collections zones, such as APIs and OpenTelemetry collectors, it is also receiving extra metadata with those metrics, such as attributes. We call those attributes metric fields.

As a Zenoss administrator, you can use the metric fields dictionary to add user-friendly labels to these machine generated attributes on metrics. Keep in mind that the metric fields dictionary differs significantly from the metrics dictionary. While the metrics dictionary provides detail and context for a given metric name, the metric fields dictionary describes the fields (or attributes) that accompanied a metric, not the metric itself.

For more information, see Dictionary service.

model

The determinate characteristics of an entity, including its relationships with other entities, if any.

monitoring template

(Collection Zone) A named object that associates data sources, thresholds, and graph definitions with a device or device component. For devices, a monitoring template also includes a device class.

Monitoring templates define what and how to monitor, and how to present data points.

multifactor authentication

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), also known as Two-Factor Authentication or 2FA, provides an extra layer of protection to help guard against cybersecurity threats. In addition to the standard credentials of a username and password at login, MFA requires an additional security code generated dynamically on another device.

For more information on Zenoss and MFA, see Log in to Zenoss Cloud.

notification

(Zenoss Cloud) A one-way message sent by the action service.

(Collection Zone) A named object that associates one or more triggers with an action. Example actions include sending email to a list of recipients and running a command.

See also: action, destination, trigger, rule

OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open source, observability framework that helps IT teams collect, process, and export telemetry data, such as traces, metrics, and logs. OTel provides a standard format for capturing and exporting telemetry data from cloud-native applications and infrastructure.

For more information about telemetry data in Zenoss Cloud, see Graph tile and Dictionary service.

organizer

An implicit or explicit way to group devices.

Device classes are implicit organizers. Explicit organizers enable arbitrary groupings of devices and device components in the Collection Zone interface.

For more information, see Organizers.

primary metric tile

On Smart View pages, the first metric tile on the anchor card.

For more information, see Primary metric tile.

priority

The priority of an entity indicates the degree of importance of that entity to your organization. Priority provides a relative measure of importance, such as "Low" or "High", to help you narrow down a large set of entities.

For more information, see Inventory.

production state

The operational status of an entity in the monitored environment. For example, it tracks whether an entity is fully operational (“Production”) or if it is currently in maintenance (“Maintenance”). Zenoss uses the production state of an entity to determine whether the entity is monitored or not. For Collection Zone (CZ) data, Zenoss uses production state to determine if it should collect data from the monitored entity.

For more information, see About production states.

An entity that has a dependency relationship with another entity.

rule

A combination of one or more triggers, one or more destinations, and a customized message.

scope

A query that defines the set of entities that a dashboard includes. The query combines sources of data with optional filters.

Synonym: dashboard scope

site availability monitoring

Continuous monitoring of web application uptime and responsiveness.

For more information, see Site Availability Monitor.

series

One or more data points in a specific time range; typically, metric data points.

Smart View

An AI-assisted tool for investigating the root cause of infrastructure or application issues, whether minutes or months past.

For more information, see Smart View.

Smart View tile

A visualization in Smart View of an entity, events, or the data points of a metric.

streaming data

Entity, metric, or event data that is sent to Zenoss Cloud without a Collection Zone.

For more information, see About streaming data.

threshold

(Collection Zone) A named object that specifies the boundary value and comparison operator for the data points of a metric.

Collection Zone services consider thresholds when metric data is received and create events when a data point satisfies one or more comparisons.

tile

A rectangular area of a Smart View or dashboard.

trigger

(Zenoss Cloud) A set of criteria that identify conditions in your environment.

(Collection Zone) A named set of rules (Boolean expressions) that the event processing service uses to examine events.

See also: action, destination, rule, notification

uptime

The percentage of time that a website is online and accessible to users over a given time period, such as hourly, daily, or monthly. You can monitor uptime of sites using site availability monitoring.

view

A virtual table defined by one or more queries.

Views are used in data warehouse services like Google BigQuery.