A Zabbix Believer’s Story…… Jayesh Thakrar Chief Architect, Mikoomi making enterprise monitoring virtual

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

Introduction

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)

Choices: Commercial Players

Choices: Nagios & Derivaties www.groundworkopensource.com www.shinken-monitoring.org

Choices: Other Open Source http://www.slac.stanford.edu/xorg/nmtf/nmtf-tools.html#contents

Top Contenders: Nagios & Zabbix

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 announcement http://www.nagios.org/news/77-news-announcements/230-nagios-is-redhats-standard-alerting-system

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

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

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

Convinced that N to Z is more than Just a 90° rotation ?? Nagios to Zabbix N Z Convinced that N to Z is more than Just a 90° rotation ??

Zabbix Architecture Overview

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

Inside the Zabbix Server Poller Processes watchdog housekeeper alerter poller httppoller pinger db_config_syncer db_data_syncer nodewatcher timer discoverer escalator Zabbix Server Processes

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

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 entity e.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

Zabbix: Built-in Templates

Zabbix: Template Items

Zabbix: Item Configuration

Zabbix Browser based GUI

GUI: Login Page

GUI: Dashboard

GUI: Dashboard – Favorites

GUI: Dashboard – Minimized

GUI: Menu Options

GUI: Monitoring Data Display - Tabular

GUI: Monitoring Data Display - Tabular

GUI: Monitoring Data Graphs - Adhoc

GUI: Data Graphs – Pre-canned

GUI: Data Graphs – Custom

GUI: Templates and Triggers

GUI: Trigger Definitions

GUI: Alert Listing

GUI: Alert Emails

GUI: User & Group Administration

GUI: Group Security

enterprise monitoring made virtual

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

mikoomi Products & Services Mikoomi Monitoring Agents Services & Support Mikoomi value-add Zabbix Monitoring Framework

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

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

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

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