A Zabbix Believers

Story

Jayesh Thakrar
Chief Architect, Mikoomi
making enterprise monitoring virtual

Mikoomi, 2010
Slide 1
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

Mikoomi, 2010
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Introduction

Mikoomi, 2010
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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.html#contents
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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 announcement
http://www.nagios.org/news/77-news-announcements/230-nagios-is-redhats-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

Mikoomi, 2010
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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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Nagios to Zabbix

N Z
Convinced that N to Z is
more than Just a 90
rotation ??
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 Zabbix
Architecture
Overview
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Zabbix Distributed
Architecture
External monitoring data collectors

Zabbix OS
Zabbix Node (Central) Agents

Web Server Zabbix Server

Zabbix
Distributed
Nodes

Zabbix Database External Scripts

Proxy Servers or
Proxy Agents

Mikoomi, 2010
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Inside the Zabbix Server
Zabbix Server Processes

Pollerwatchdog
Processes pinger
Poller Processes

housekeeper
Poller Processes db_config_syncer
Poller Processes

alerter
Poller Processes db_data_syncer
Poller Processes

poller
Poller Processes nodewatcher
Poller Processes

Pollerhttppoller
Processes timer
Poller Processes

Pollerdiscoverer
Processes Pollerescalator
Processes

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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 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
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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

Mikoomi, 2010
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mikoomi Products &
Services

Mikoomi Services Mikoomi

value-
Monitoring & add
Agents Support

Zabbix Monitoring Framework

Mikoomi, 2010
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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

Mikoomi, 2010
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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

Mikoomi, 2010
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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

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