As we might expect, databases are the heart of the data layer, and Zenoss Core stores data in three types of databases. The Collection layer funnels device information to ZenHub, which in turns stores the data in the appropriate place, as seen in the following illustration.
Events are stored in a MySQL database. Zenoss Core generates Events when an established threshold is crossed, such as a server outage or high memory usage. Events trigger actions, such as e-mail or pager alerts.
Time series performance data gets stored in a Round Robin Database (RRD). A RRD differs from a linear database, such as MySQL, in that it's circular—which means the size does not increase over time. Data is stored in a first in, first out basis, which implies that monitoring data is consolidated and eventually lost over time. RRDtool provides Zenoss Core with the ability to log and graph performance data.
The third database deployed by Zenoss is a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). The CMDB is an Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standard for managing the configuration, relationship, and change history of the IT environment, which creates a detailed model of the network. Zenoss uses a Zope Object Database (ZODB) to house the CMDB.