A Zabbix Believer

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• A Zabbix Believers Story

Jayesh Thakrar Chief Architect, Mikoomimaking
enterprise monitoring virtual
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• Topics
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Comparison Nagios v/s Zabbix
• 3. Zabbix Architecture Overview
• 4. Zabbix Browser based GUI
• 5. Mikoomi Open-source Value-Add
  Agents Consulting Services

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• Introduction

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How It All Began..

• Needed to monitor IT systems - 24x7
• Are applications, web servers, databases and
  other services up?
• Needed insight into performance
• Visibility into current and historical
  performance and load
• Quantifying, charting and trending of load,
  performance and utilization
• Tool for HelpDesk (Level-1 Support)

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Choices Commercial Players
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Choices Nagios Derivaties
www.groundworkopensource.com
www.shinken-monitoring.org
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Choices Other Open Source
http//www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.
htmlcontents
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• Top Contenders Nagios Zabbix

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Nagios Brief Overview

• Pros
• Popular and well-known
• Basis for many other open source systems
• Template-based and object oriented inheritance
• Based out of Minneapolis, US
• Boost (?) by RedHat announcementhttp//www.nagios
  .org/news/77-news-announcements/230-nagios-is-redh
  ats-standard-alerting-system

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Nagios Brief Overview

• Cons
• Requires significant effort for setup
• Setup, admin and configuration text file based
• Monitoring data stored in single flat file (or
  via pipe into database)
• High I/O on data file from monitoring and UI
• Configuration change require reload
• Primitive graphing and monitoring UI

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Zabbix Brief Overview

• Pros
• Agent and agent-less monitoring
• SNMP support
• Template based
• Scalable, distributed architecture
• Built-in UNIX, log-file, SNMP and URL monitoring
• Easy to extend with plug-ins or agents
• Active development
• Database based monitoring data storage
• Thresholds and alerting separate from monitoring

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Zabbix Brief Overview

• Pros
• Multiple items or attributes per monitored entity
• Different items of an entity can be monitored by
  different mechanisms
• Can define alerts based on comparison of current
  item value with historical values, averages, etc.
• Can build dependencies between monitored entities
• Pre-canned (template-based) graphs as well as
  ad-hoc graphs on any monitored item
• User-defined maps, screens and slide-shows

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Convinced that N to Z is more than Just a 90
rotation ??
Nagios to Zabbix
N
Z
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• ZabbixArchitecture Overview

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Zabbix Distributed Architecture
External monitoring data collectors
Zabbix OS Agents
Zabbix Node (Central)
Zabbix Server
Web Server
Zabbix Distributed Nodes
Zabbix Database
External Scripts
Proxy Servers or Proxy Agents
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Inside the Zabbix Server
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Zabbix OS Agent

• OS-level agents for most popular platforms
• Linux
• AIX, HP-UX, Solaris
• MacOS
• Windows
• OS agents can run external programs to complement
  / enhance monitoring

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Zabbix Monitoring Approach

• Templates
• Define new or modify existing templates
• Contains monitoring data elements called items
• Contains thresholds (triggers) and actions on
  item
• Collection of pre-defined graphs using items
• Hosts
• Hosts monitored entitye.g. hosts,
  applications, databases, etc.
• Define new hosts and link to template
• Customize triggers and actions if necessary
• Data Collection by Server, Agent or Proxy

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Zabbix Built-in Templates
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Zabbix Template Items
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Zabbix Item Configuration
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• Zabbix Browser based GUI

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GUI Login Page
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GUI Dashboard
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GUI Dashboard Favorites
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GUI Dashboard Minimized
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GUI Menu Options
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GUI Monitoring Data Display - Tabular
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GUI Monitoring Data Display - Tabular
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GUI Monitoring Data Graphs - Adhoc
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GUI Data Graphs Pre-canned
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GUI Data Graphs Custom
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GUI Templates and Triggers
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GUI Trigger Definitions
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GUI Alert Listing
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GUI Alert Emails
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GUI User Group Administration
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GUI Group Security
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• enterprise monitoring made virtual

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About mikoomi

• Mikoomi, the company -
• Develops, distributes and supports open-source
  monitoring solutions
• Provides custom development and consulting around
  monitoring and high availability
• Strong believer in open-source as a consumer
  and as a producer

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mikoomi Products Services
MikoomiMonitoringAgents
Services Support
Mikoomi value-add
Zabbix Monitoring Framework
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mikoomi Products - Appliance

• Mikoomi Monitoring Appliance
• Appliance virtual machine template
• Contains Zabbix Ubuntu best practices
• Zabbix Best open source monitoring
• Ubuntu One of the best Linux variants
• Quick, easy flexible to deploy
• Up and running in less than 60 minutes

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mikoomi Products Agents

• Mikoomi Monitoring Agents
• Add-on monitoring capabilities for databases,
  application servers, software components, custom
  apps
• Embed deep product-specific expertise and
  monitoring best practices
• Covers key health and performance data
• Open-source makes them extensible
• Minimally intrusive on monitored entity
• Java JVM and DB2 released
• WebSphere, Tomcat, SQL Server, Oracle, ActiveMQ
  and others planned for release

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mikoomi Services

• Services
• Deployment, implementation and training
• Consulting custom development
• Develop custom monitoring for software vendors to
  help operations and monitoring of their products

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mikoomi Sizing and Capacity

• Single node (appliance) with 2 CPUs 2 GB
  memory supports monitoring a sizable IT
  environment -
• 10 20 servers
• 20 40 databases or instances
• 20 40 application instances
• Scales horizontally and vertically