This document provides an overview and summary of the Zabbix monitoring software. It discusses Zabbix concepts like checks, triggers, and actions. It also covers Zabbix installation, requirements, performance, and provides links to Zabbix resources. The presentation aims to explain how Zabbix works and encourage discussion about experiences using Zabbix.

1. FredLUG/20111029 ZABBIX Title About FOSS Concepts Demo Links

2. FredLUG | 20111029 ZABBIX Welcome and Thanks Zabbix Seriously, Monitoring Can Be Your Friend and Even (sorta') Fun Jamie Duncan Title About Zabbix Concepts Demo Links Story Home

3. FredLUG/20111029 ZABBIX Title About Zabbix Concepts Demo Links Me Zabbix Jamie Duncan 5AM Solutions ( www.5amsolutions.com )

4. Richmond, VA

5. Founder, RVaLUG ( www.rvalug.org )

6. RHCE

7. CSM

8. Etc. Today 5AM

9. FredLUG/20111029 Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net NO! ZABBIX Title About Zabbix Concepts Demo Links Me Zabbix Zabbix (Zabbix SIA) Started in 2001

10. Zabbix SIA formed in 2005

11. Alexei Vladishev, founder/CEO

12. Community: ~20,000

13. Downloads: ~500 daily

14. First Conference 10/2011

15. Big in Europe, Japan and S. America

16. Not a 70's Scandinavian Rock Band

17. No Marketing or Official Presence in North America (1 reseller in WV?) Today 5AM

18. FredLUG/20111029 Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Me Zabbix Today Discussion & Comments HIGHLY ENCOURAGED

19. How my company (typical small company) came to use Zabbix

20. Zabbix basics (including Pros & CONS)

21. Q&A including a real, live Zabbix Server Today Zabbix 5AM

22. FredLUG/20111029 Image: http://www.5amsolutions.com ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Requirements Comfort with application stack

23. No New Languages!

24. “ Do More With Less”

25. FOSS

26. Do 1 thing. Do it well.

27. Hooks. Hooks. More Hooks

28. Lots of Community Zabbix 5AM Zenoss Nagios

29. FredLUG/20111029 Image: Jacob Feisley | www.feisley.com ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Requirements Comfort with application stack

30. No New Languages!

31. “ Do More With Less”

32. FOSS

33. Do 1 thing. Do it well.

34. Hooks. Hooks. More Hooks

35. Lots of Community Zabbix 5AM Zenoss Nagios

36. FredLUG/20111029 Image: nagios.com ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Requirements Comfort with application stack

37. No New Languages!

38. “ Do More With Less”

39. FOSS

40. Do 1 thing. Do it well.

41. Hooks. Hooks. More Hooks

42. Lots of Community Zabbix 5AM Zenoss Nagios

43. FredLUG/20111029 Image: zabbix.com ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Comfort with application stack

44. No New Languages!

45. “ Do More With Less”

46. FOSS

47. Do 1 thing. Do it well.

48. Hooks. Hooks. More Hooks

49. Lots of Community Zabbix 5AM DevOps Footprint Zabcon

50. FredLUG/20111029 Installation Binary packages maintained in EPEL and Canonical Universes Database Agnonstic* Highly Distributed Setups possible ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

51. FredLUG/20111029 Dependencies Server and Agent written in Pure C – no funky libs GUI is PHP – requires a few packages (bcmath, mbstring, db-specific connectors, etc.) ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

52. FredLUG/20111029 Network Amazingly Light: Example: Linux server with 50-60 items checked at varying intervals == ~2k/sec of consistent traffic ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

53. FredLUG/20111029 GUI Light: The GUI has been worked on for several years and scales pretty well now with high user loads. ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

54. FredLUG/20111029 Database Big Time: The database is extremely read/write heavy. The only part of Zabbix that is a poor candidate for virtualization for production environments. ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

55. FredLUG/20111029 Zabcon A command shell for Zabbix written in Ruby. Written by Andrew Nelson (@nelsonab) http://trac.red-tux.net/wiki/zbx_api/zabcon Example: get host show=[hostid, host, ip, error, port] Host result set +--------+---------------+-----------+-------+-------+ | hostid | host | ip | error | port | +--------+---------------+-----------+-------+-------+ | 10017 | ZABBIX Server | 127.0.0.1 | | 10050 | +--------+---------------+-----------+-------+-------+ 1 rows total ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Fit & Finish Zabbix 5AM Zabcon DevOps Footprint

56. FredLUG/20111029 Checks The information that populates the database. Individual measurements made by Zabbix. Examples: tcp ping to a monitored host free space on /var on a monitored host SNMP check result of a custom script executed on a remote host CPU 5 min. load average ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

57. FredLUG/20111029 Passive Checks “A regular check is initiated by ZABBIX server, it periodically sends requests to an agent to get latest info. The agent is passive, it just processes requests sent by server.” -Alexei ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

58. FredLUG/20111029 Active Checks “An active check works the following way. ZABBIX agent connects to ZABBIX server to get list of all checks for a host. Then it periodically sends required information to ZABBIX server. Note that ZABBIX server does not initiate anything. ZABBIX agent does all active work. This doesn't require polling on server side, thus it significantly (1.5x-2x) improve performance of ZABBIX server.” -Alexei ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

59. FredLUG/20111029 Other Checks Passive methods that other applications use to gather information from a server: SNMP icmp echoes IPMI access Port Scanning ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

60. FredLUG/20111029 Web Checks Can access / interact with web sites to determine health and availability Can check for proper HTTP Response codes (200 OK) Can pass POST or GET variables, logging in / evaluating functionality Can handle HTTPS Basic Auth / Windows IIS Auth Measures response times and download speeds for each step of a check. ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

61. FredLUG/20111029 Triggers Fancy On/Off Switches {Template_Linux:system.hostname.diff(0)}>0 Literal Translation: “the diff between the last value and the current value of system.hostname is greater than 0”. Proper Translation: The hostname on “Template_Linux” has changed. ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

62. FredLUG/20111029 Actions Are triggered (typically) when a trigger flips to “on”. Can become very complex, evaluating against multiple triggers, time of day, etc. Can act only for certain groups and certain types of communications. Can execute remote actions on servers on command (eg restart service) The bridge between Zabbix and Users. ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Checks Zabbix 5AM Triggers Actions

63. FredLUG/20111029 ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links LIVE! Zabbix 5AM

64. FredLUG/20111029 Zabbix – http://www.zabbix.com Zabbix Forums - http://www.zabbix.com/forum/ Zabcon - http://trac.red-tux.net/wiki/zbx_api/zabcon @zabbix #zabbix @jamieeduncan http://lostinopensource.wordpress.com [email_address] ZABBIX Title About Concepts Demo Links Thanks Zabbix 5AM