Centreon

Centreon
Name	Centreon
Developer	Centreon
Released	2005
Programming language	PHP, C, Perl, JavaScript
Operating system	Linux
Genre	Network monitoring, IT monitoring, Infrastructure monitoring
License	Open source / Proprietary

Centreon Centreon is an open-source and commercial IT infrastructure monitoring platform originating from France that aggregates metrics, events, and logs to provide unified visibility across servers, networks, applications, and cloud services. It integrates with a wide range of monitoring engines, telemetry systems, and orchestration tools to deliver alerting, dashboards, and reporting for operations teams. Its ecosystem connects to many vendors, projects, and standards in the observability and IT operations domains.

History

Centreon began as a spin-off from work around the Nagios ecosystem and was influenced by projects like MRTG, RRDTool, Cacti, and Icinga. Early development involved contributors active in communities around Debian, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and Ubuntu distributions. Over time Centreon aligned with commercial efforts comparable to companies such as Zabbix SIA, SolarWinds, Datadog, Inc., New Relic, Inc., and Dynatrace LLC. The project evolved alongside standards and initiatives from organizations like the Open Monitoring Distribution community, the Linux Foundation, and efforts in the Free and Open Source Software movement. Key milestones mirrored industry changes prompted by platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform as cloud-native monitoring became central to operations. Centreon’s roadmap and governance involved stakeholders from integrators, system administrators familiar with Systemd, SNMP, JMX, and service management teams aligned with practices from ITIL frameworks.

Architecture and Components

Centreon’s architecture separates the presentation layer, processing engines, and data storage, interacting with systems like MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and time-series stores inspired by InfluxDB patterns. The platform commonly runs on distributions such as CentOS Stream, Debian GNU/Linux, Ubuntu Server, and integrates with configuration management systems including Ansible, Puppet, Chef (software), and orchestration tooling like Kubernetes. Monitoring engines include compatibility with Nagios Core plugins, adapters for Sensu, and collectors interfacing with Prometheus exporters. For visualization and analytics, Centreon interoperates with dashboards and charting technologies influenced by Grafana Labs and libraries such as D3.js and Chart.js. The component model exposes APIs compatible with RESTful design and authentication approaches like OAuth 2.0 and LDAP directories from vendors such as Microsoft Active Directory and OpenLDAP.

Features and Functionality

Features encompass availability and performance checks using protocols including SNMP, ICMP, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, and POP3. Event correlation and notification integrate with messaging platforms and services such as PagerDuty, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Twilio, and Email systems hosted on Postfix or Exim. Reporting capabilities support scheduled exports and dashboards similar to offerings from Splunk and Elastic NV solutions, while role-based access control maps to directory services and single sign-on flows with SAML 2.0. Service discovery works alongside cloud provider APIs like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and Google Operations (formerly Stackdriver), and also with virtualization managers such as VMware vSphere and KVM. Integration with incident management and ticketing systems includes connectors for ServiceNow, Jira (software), and OTRS. Data retention and storage optimization draw on archiving techniques used by RRDTool and time-series paradigms seen in Prometheus and TimescaleDB.

Deployment and Integration

Typical deployments occur on virtualization and cloud platforms such as VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Amazon EC2, and container orchestration via Kubernetes. Automation of deployment leverages images and recipes for Vagrant, Docker, and infrastructure as code models with Terraform. Integration patterns follow CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, and GitHub Actions to manage configuration-as-code and plugin lifecycle. Backups and high-availability designs borrow practices employed by Corosync and Pacemaker clustering, while logging pipelines commonly forward events to ELK Stack components including Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Security and compliance integrations reference standards from ISO/IEC 27001 and regulatory regimes such as GDPR where log retention, anonymization, and audit trails matter.

Licensing and Editions

Centreon is offered in multiple editions combining open-source components and commercial modules, reminiscent of dual-licensing approaches used by projects like Red Hat Enterprise Linux and companies such as SUSE. Editions provide tiers of functionality comparable to licensing models from Oracle Corporation and Microsoft Corporation enterprise suites, where advanced features, enterprise support, technical training, and professional services are sold under subscription agreements. The open components align with permissive or copyleft licenses seen in the GNU General Public License family and Apache-style licenses found across the Free Software Foundation and Apache Software Foundation ecosystems, while proprietary modules are governed by commercial contracts and service-level agreements with customers such as managed service providers and large enterprises.

Reception and Adoption

Centreon has been adopted by telecommunications operators, managed service providers, and enterprise IT organizations alongside adopters of Cisco Systems gear, Juniper Networks infrastructure, and storage vendors such as Dell EMC and NetApp. Analysts and comparison reports position it among peers like Icinga, Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, and Nagios XI for medium-to-large environments. Case studies often reference deployments integrated with Oracle Database, Microsoft SQL Server, SAP SE landscapes, and public sector entities operating under procurement frameworks similar to those used by European Commission agencies. Training and certification programs for operators draw on curricula familiar to practitioners of ITIL and observability practices championed by groups including the Observability Practitioners Association.

Category:Network monitoring software