Zabbix is a distributed monitoring solution that can monitor Blackboard Learn. It collects various service quality metrics like uptime, response time, and failure rate to notify administrators of issues and help with troubleshooting. Blackboard uses Zabbix to monitor operations data, perform scalability analysis, and ensure server infrastructure stability. A Zabbix template suite is available to easily monitor Learn applications, Java, Linux, Windows, Tomcat, cache, and ActiveMQ components.

1. How to Turn the Lights
on Your Blackboard
Learn with Zabbix
Noriaki Tatsumi
Manager, Performance Engineering
Blackboard, Inc.

2. What’s Zabbix?
http://www.zabbix.com/
• Distributed monitoring solution
• GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2
• Alerts, advanced monitoring, trend analysis, data
visualization, actions, RC, JSON API
• Stores data away from production
• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• SQLite
• Oracle / IBM DB2
2

3. What can Zabbix do for you?
3

4. Cannot replace J.A.R.V.I.S. for Ironman
4

5. Collect service quality metrics
• Uptime
• Response time
• Failure rate
5

6. Notify you when there’s an issue
• Be the first to know about down time
• Identify problems before the users report
• Get alerted for potential security attack
6

7. Troubleshoot your environment
• Reduce/eliminate guess work during root cause
analysis
• Minimize time to identify problem
• Measure improvement after introducing a fix
7

8. Plan sysadmin tasks
• Identify optimal maintenance window
• Hardware projection
8

9. Measure success
• Institution goals (ex. user adoption)
• Brags
9

10. Explore data
• Monitor anything!
10

11. Why Zabbix and not another monitor like Nagios?
• Requires smaller effort to setup
• Better UI monitoring and graphing capabilities
• Template based
• Built-in capability to monitor JMX, log files, Unix,
Windows, SNMP, database, URL, and IPMI
• Easily extensible via agents, plugins, and APIs
• Other cool features like maps, screens, slide shows
11

12. Zabbix Custom Graph
12

13. Zabbix Custom Graph
13

14. Zabbix Custom Screens
14

15. Zabbix Status of Triggers
15

16. Zabbix Custom Dashboard
16

17. Zabbix Network Maps
17

18. How does Blackboard use Zabbix?
• Monitoring and trending operations and statistical data
for SaaS solutions like SafeAssign
• Performance and scalability forensics
• Internal server infrastructure monitoring
18

19. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
• Easy to install
• Requirements
• Zabbix 2.0 and up
• Zabbix Java Gateway
• Extended Monitoring B2
• Available for download on edugarage
http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix
19

20. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
• Application
• Java
• Linux / Windows
• Tomcat
• Cache
• ActiveMQ
20

21. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Application
• Statistics
• Sessions (active, inactive)
• Users &Courses (available, unavailable)
• Assessment attempts / hour
• Database connection pool usage
• Security
• Config changes in conf/ folder & system registry database table
• Creation of privileged accounts, Logins from unexpected terminal
• Command-line authentication tool usage
21

22. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Application - Sessions
22

23. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Application - Security
23

24. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Java
• Heap space memory usage
• Eden space memory usage
• Tenured space memory usage
• Survivor space memory usage
• Non-heap space memory usage
• GC collection count
• GC collection time
• Threads usage
• OutOfMemoryError, StackOverflowError
24

25. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Java
25

26. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Java
26

27. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Linux/Windows
• Processor load average
• CPU utilization
• Memory usage
• Network usage
• Disk usage
• File descriptor usage
27

28. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Linux – Processor Load Average
28

29. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Linux – CPU Utilization
29

30. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Linux – Disk IO
30

31. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Linux – Memory
31

32. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Tomcat
• Request processor
• Average processing time
• Requests per minute
• Errors per minute
• Thread pool
• Busy
• Current
• Max
32

33. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Tomcat
33

34. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Tomcat
34

35. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Cache (SP10 and above)
• Hit ratio
• Misses
• Hits
• In memory hits
• On disk hits
35

36. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Cache (SP10 and above)
36

37. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
ActiveMQ
• Broker
• Consumer count
• Message count
• Memory usage
• Enqueue/Dequque count
• Queue
• Enqueue/Dequeue count
• Consumer count
• Producer count
37

38. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Data sampling and retention
• Sampling interval
• 30 ~ 3600 (1 hour)
• History (raw data)
• 7 days ~ 14 days
• Trend (min, max, avg)
• Stats: 5 years
• Others: 3 months
38

39. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite
Deployment
1. Download at http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix
2. Install Monitoring Extension B2 for statistics and
security data
3. Upload the templates via Zabbix GUI
4. Deploy agents using the provided script
5. Add hosts and apply the templates in Zabbix via GUI
39

40. Zabbix server deployment options
• Compile from source
• VMware / VirtualBox (.vmdk)
• Open virtualization format (.ovf)
• Live CD/DVD (.iso)
• Preload ISO
• USB stick / hard disk image
• Xen guest
40

41. Zabbix Best Practices
• Define an objective for each item you’re monitoring
• Don’t sample data more than required
• Don’t keep history and trend data longer than
necessary
• Use percentile line on charts where applicable
• Graph all functions (min, avg, max) to indicate outliers
• Don't create triggers that gets ignored
• Self monitor Zabbix server
• Have a maintenance and a backup/restore plan
41

42. Check out Zabbix!
• http://www.zabbix.com
• http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix
42