At the core of Zenoss is the Standard Model. The standard model is a detailed description of all the devices Zenoss manages and their relationship to your business or other important groupings. Because of the high degree of information in the model there are several ways that information can be added. First is through auto discovery. This is the primary way that information is added to the model. Zenoss auto-discovery is very flexible and can use several different transports. The model can also be populated though the web UI or through Zenoss' external APIs. Version 2.0 adds discovery locking which allows auto-discovered information to be tightly integrated with manually added information.

The model is used to drive the monitoring elements of the Zenoss system which will be described throughout the rest of this document.