Zabbix Monitoring

Platform

Presented By Majid Ettehadi

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Why we need monitoring?
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Why we choose Zabbix?
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Zabbix introduction
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Zabbix features overview
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Zabbix architecture overview
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Zabbix notification
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Use cases and solutions

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 Monitoring
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Cost of downtime is high
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Hard to manage
nontransparent environment
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Record state and events of
system (history)
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Keep track of system
resources

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 Monitoring Tools - Nagios Core
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Free and open source
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Run under Linux and other Unix variants
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Monitoring supported through SSH or SSL encrypted
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Available data graphing plugins
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Have different agents for different types of monitoring
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Monitoring and alerting:
– Network services (SMTP, POP3, HTTP, NNTP, ICMP, SNMP, FTP, SSH)
– Host resources (processor load, disk usage, system logs) on a
majority of network operating systems, including Microsoft Windows
– Any hardware (like probes for temperature, alarms, etc.) which have
the ability to send collected data via a network

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 Nagios Core vs Zabbix
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Zabbix has a web configuration, while Nagios uses text files.
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Zabbix has graphs and stats collection via SNMP or custom
agent. Nagios don't.
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Zabbix is resource hungry. It uses a data base to store all the
stats and configuration and this can grow exponentially
depending on the number of hosts you are monitoring. Nagios
works very fast and normally will not require the ammount of
resources
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Once the Zabbix agent is installed , most of the resource
monitoring is automatically added (Minimum configuration
needed)
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Zabbix has auto discovery
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Zabbix has native JMX support

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Monitoring Tools - Prometheus (1)
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Free and open source
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Originally built at SoundCloud!
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Have multi-dimensional data model with time series
data identified by metric name and key/value pairs
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Have flexible query language to leverage this
dimensionality
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Pushing time series is supported via an intermediary
gateway
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Targets are discovered via service discovery or static
configuration
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Multiple modes of graphing and dashboarding support

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Monitoring Tools - Prometheus (2)

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Prometheus vs Zabbix

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 Monitoring Tools – PRTG (1)
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Not available in Iran!
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Free version is very limited (only 100 Sensors)!
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Monitor network, servers, websites and applications
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PRTG can scan network segments by pinging
defined IP ranges. This way PRTG will automatically
recognize a wide range of devices and systems and
create sensors from predefined device templates.
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Bandwidth monitoring (SNMP and WMI, Packet
Sniffing, NetFlow, IPFIX, jFlow, and sFlow)

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Monitoring Tools – PRTG (2)

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 PRTG vs Zabbix
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PRTG has better automatic network and
device discovery
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PRTG has better GUI/Web intuitive
interface
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PRTG has network and topology maps
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PRTG has bandwidth and netflow
analysis (sFlow, jFlow, IPFix, etc)
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PRTG has native mobile App

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 Monitoring Tools - Other
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SolarWinds
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Spiceworks
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Netrdata
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Icinga
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LinreNMS
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You tell me!

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 Zabbix
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NAME: ZABBIX SIA
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FOUNDER,OWNER & CEO: Alexei Vladishev
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ESTABLISHED In 2005
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STRUCTURE
– Zabbix SIA is a limited liability company registered in the Republic of Latvia
– SUBSIDARIES: Zabbix Japan LLC – registered in Japan, 100% of belongs to
Zabbix SIA
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MISSION: To create top-quality open source monitoring platform of
choice for solving real needs of users backed by the excellent level of
commercial services
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STRATEGY:
– Stay Open Source
– Concentrate on enterprise-level companies, while continue to be the best
solution for small and medium Companies

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 Supported Platforms
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Linux
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IBM AIX
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FreeBSD
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NetBSD
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OpenBSD
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HP-UX
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Mac OS X
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Solaris
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Windows: all desktop and server versions since 2000
(Zabbix agent only)

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 Zabbix Features (1)
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Data gathering
– Availability and performance checks
– Support for SNMP (both trapping and polling), IPMI, JMX, VMware monitoring
– Custom checks
– Gathering desired data at custom intervals
– Performed by server/proxy and by agents
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Flexible threshold definitions
– You can define very flexible problem thresholds, called triggers, referencing
values from the backend database
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Highly configurable alerting
– Sending notifications can be customized for the escalation schedule, recipient,
media type
– Notifications can be made meaningful and helpful using macro variables
– Automatic actions include remote commands

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 Zabbix Features (2)
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Real-time graphing
– Monitored items are immediately graphed using the built-in
graphing functionality
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Web monitoring capabilities
– Zabbix can follow a path of simulated mouse clicks on a web site
and check for functionality and response time
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Extensive visualisation options
– Ability to create custom graphs that can combine multiple items
into a single view
– Custom screens and slide shows for a dashboard-style overview
– Reports
– High-level (business) view of monitored resources

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 Zabbix Features (3)
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Historical data storage
– Data stored in a database
– Configurable history
– Built-in housekeeping procedure
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Easy configuration
– Add monitored devices as hosts
– Hosts are picked up for monitoring, once in the database
– Apply templates to monitored devices
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Use of templates
– Grouping checks in templates
– Templates can inherit other templates

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 Zabbix Features (4)
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Network discovery
– Automatic discovery of network devices
– Agent auto registration
– Discovery of file systems, network interfaces and SNMP OIDs
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Fast web interface
– A web-based frontend in PHP
– Accessible from anywhere
– You can click your way through
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Zabbix API
– Zabbix API provides programmable interface to Zabbix for mass
manipulations, 3rd party software integration and other purposes.

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 Zabbix Features (5)
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Permissions system
– Secure user authentication
– Certain users can be limited to certain views
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Full featured and easily extensible agent
– Deployed on monitoring targets
– Can be deployed on both Linux and Windows
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Binary daemons
– Written in C, for performance and small memory footprint
– Easily portable
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Ready for complex environments
– Remote monitoring made easy by using a Zabbix proxy

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 Zabbix Architecture (1)
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Server
– Zabbix server is the central component to which agents report availability and
integrity information and statistics. The server is the central repository in
which all configuration, statistical and operational data are stored.
– Written by C
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Database storage
– All configuration information as well as the data gathered by Zabbix is stored
in a database.
– Supoorts: MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, IBM DB2
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Web interface
– For an easy access to Zabbix from anywhere and from any platform, the web-
based interface is provided. The interface is part of Zabbix server, and usually
(but not necessarily) runs on the same physical machine as the one running
the server.
– Written by PHP

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 Zabbix Architecture (2)
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Proxy
– Zabbix proxy can collect performance and availability data on behalf of Zabbix
server. A proxy is an optional part of Zabbix deployment; however, it may be very
beneficial to distribute the load of a single Zabbix server.
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Agent
– Zabbix agents are deployed on monitoring targets to actively monitor local
resources and applications and report the gathered data to Zabbix server.
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Data flow
– In addition it is important to take a step back and have a look at the overall data
flow within Zabbix. In order to create an item that gathers data you must first create
a host. Moving to the other end of the Zabbix spectrum you must first have an item
to create a trigger. You must have a trigger to create an action. Thus if you want to
receive an alert that your CPU load it too high on Server X you must first create a
host entry for Server X followed by an item for monitoring its CPU, then a trigger
which activates if the CPU is too high, followed by an action which sends you an
email. While that may seem like a lot of steps, with the use of templating it really
isn't. However, due to this design it is possible to create a very flexible setup.

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Zabbix agent modes

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Notifications & Automatic actions
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Delivery methods
– by e-mail, by SMS, by Jabber, by Ez texting
and using a custom alertsript

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 Zabbix use cases
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Monitor server resources
– CPU, Memory, Swap, Disk, Network
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Monitor services
– NTP, Network, HTTP, FTP, MySQL, …
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Web Monitoring
– By Web scenarios
– Check Availablity, Responce Time, etc of a Website
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Monitor Applications
– Containers, Custom scripts, ...
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Monitor hardwares and network nodes

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Thank You

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