Zabbix 4 Network Monitoring: Monitor the performance of your network devices and applications using the all-new Zabbix 4.0

Cover
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Getting Started with Zabbix
Technical requirements
The first steps in monitoring
Zabbix features and architecture
Installation
Choosing the version and repository
Hardware requirements
Installing from the packages
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)/CentOS
EPEL
The Zabbix repository
Ubuntu/Debian
Installing from source
The server and agent
Software requirements
Downloading the source
Compilation
Dash or underscore
Initial configuration
Creating and populating the database
Starting up
Verifying the service's state
The web frontend
Prerequisites and setting up the environment
Using the web frontend configuration wizard
Step 1 – welcome
Step 2 – PHP prerequisites
Step 3 – database access
Step 4 – Zabbix server details
Step 5 – summary
Step 6 – writing the configuration file
Step 7 – finishing the wizard
Step 8 – logging in
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 2: Getting Your First Notification
Exploring the frontend
The user profile
Monitoring quickstart
Creating a host
Creating an item
Introducing simple graphs
Creating triggers
Configuring email parameters
Creating an action
Information flow in Zabbix
Let's create some load
Basic item configuration
Monitoring categories
Availability
Performance
Security
Management
Efficiency
Item types
How items can be monitored
Using global search
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 3: Monitoring with Zabbix Agents and Basic Protocols
Using the Zabbix agent
Passive items
Cloning items
Manually querying items
Active items
An active agent with multiple servers
Supported items
Choosing between active and passive items
Item scheduling
Simple checks
Setting up ICMP checks
Connecting all of the pieces
Key parameter quoting
Positional parameters for item names
Using mass update
Value mapping
Units
Custom intervals
Flexible intervals
Custom scheduling
Copying items
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 4: Monitoring SNMP Devices
Using Net-SNMP
Using SNMPv3 with Net-SNMP
The engine ID
Authentication, encryption, and context
Adding new MIBs
Polling SNMP items in Zabbix
Translating SNMP OIDs
Dynamic indexes
SNMP bulk requests
Receiving SNMP traps
Using embedded Perl code
Filtering values by received data
Filtering values by originating host
Debugging
Handling the temporary file
SNMP Trap Translator (SNMPTT)
Using a custom script
Filtering the traps
Custom mapping
Database lookups
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 5: Managing Hosts, Users, and Permissions
Hosts and host groups
Host inventory
Editing inventory data manually
Populating inventory data automatically
Host maintenance
Creating maintenance periods
Collecting data during maintenance
Not collecting data during maintenance
Maintenance period options
One-time only maintenance
Daily maintenance
Weekly maintenance
Monthly maintenance
Ad hoc maintenance
Users, user groups, and permissions
Authentication methods
Creating a user
Creating user groups
Permissions and maintenance
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 6: Detecting Problems with Triggers
Triggers
The trigger-and-item relationship
Trigger dependencies
Constructing trigger expressions
Preventing trigger flapping
Checking for missing data
Triggers that time out
Triggers with adaptable thresholds
Triggers with a limited period
Relative thresholds or time shift
Verifying system time
Human-readable constants
Customizing how triggers are displayed
Triggering severities
Triggering display options
Event details
Event generation and recovery expression
Using event tags for correlation
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 7: Acting upon Monitored Conditions
Actions
Limiting conditions when alerts are sent
Additional action conditions
Complex conditions
Dependencies and actions
Media limits for users
Sending out notifications
Using macros
Sending recovery messages
Escalating once a threshold is reached
Runner analogy
Using scripts as media
Integrating with issue management systems
Bugzilla
Computer Associates Unicenter Service Desk Manager
Atlassian JIRA
Remote commands
Global scripts
Configuring global scripts
Reusing global scripts in actions
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 8: Simplifying Complex Configurations with Templates
Creating a template
Linking templates to hosts
Handling default templates
Changing the configuration in a template
Macro usage
User macros
Using multiple templates
Unlinking templates from hosts
Using mass update
Nested templates
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 9: Visualizing Data with Screens and Slideshows
Configuring and sharing dashboards
Configuring the dashboard
Sharing our dashboard
Screens
Dynamic screens
Additional screen elements
Templated screens
Slide shows
Showing data on a big display
Challenges
Non-interactive display
Information overload
Displaying a specific section automatically
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 10: Advanced Item Monitoring
Log file monitoring
Monitoring a single file
Filtering for specific strings
Monitoring rotated files
Alerting on log data
Event tags
Extracting part of the line
Parsing timestamps
Viewing log data
Reusing data on the server
Calculated items
Quoting in calculated items
Referencing items from multiple hosts
Aggregate items
Aggregating across multiple groups
User parameters
Just getting it to work
Querying data that the Zabbix agent doesn't support
Flexible user parameters
Level of the details monitored
Environment trap
Things to remember about user parameters
Wrapper scripts
When not to use user parameters
External checks
Finding a certificate expiry time
Determining certificate validity
Sending in the data
Using an agent daemon configuration file
Sending values from a file
Sending timestamped values
SSH and Telnet items
SSH items
Telnet items
Custom modules
Value preprocessing and dependent items
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 11: Automating Configuration
LLD
Network interface discovery
Automatically creating calculated items
Automatically creating triggers
Automatically creating graphs
Filtering discovery results
Filesystem discovery
Introducing the LLD JSON format
Including discovered graphs in screens
Custom thresholds with user macro context
CPU discovery
SNMP discovery
Creating custom LLD rules
Reimplementing CPU discovery
Discovering MySQL databases
Global regular expressions
Testing global regexps
Usage in the default templates
Network discovery
Configuring a discovery rule
Viewing the results
Reacting to the discovery results
Uniqueness criteria
Active agent auto-registration
Auto-registration metadata
Summary
Further reading
Chapter 12: Monitoring Web Pages
Monitoring a simple web page
Creating a web-monitoring scenario
Other scenarios and step properties
Alerting on web scenarios
Logging into the Zabbix interface
Step 1 – checking the first page
Step 2 – logging in
Step 3 – checking login
Step 4 – logging out
Step 5 – checking logout
Authentication options
Using agent items
Getting the page
Checking page performance
Extracting content from web pages
Extracting content using the HTTP agent
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 13: High-Level Business Service Monitoring
Deciding on the service tree
Setting up IT services
Creating test items and triggers
Configuring IT services
Sending in the data
Viewing reports
Specifying uptime and downtime
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 14: Monitoring IPMI Devices
Getting an IPMI device
Preparing for IPMI monitoring
Setting up IPMI items
Creating an IPMI item
Monitoring discrete sensors
Using the bitwise trigger function
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 15: Monitoring Java Applications
Setting up the Zabbix Java gateway
Monitoring JMX items
Querying JMX items manually
What to monitor?
JMX discovery
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 16: Monitoring VMware
Technical requirements
Preparing for VMware monitoring
Automatic discovery
Available metrics
The underlying operation
VMware LLD configuration
Host prototypes
Summarizing default template interaction
Server operation and configuration details
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 17: Using Proxies to Monitor Remote Locations
Active proxies and passive proxies
Setting up an active proxy
Monitoring a host through a proxy
Proxy benefits
Proxy limitations
Proxy operation
Proxies and availability monitoring
Method 1 – last access item
Method 2 – internal proxy buffer item
Method 3 – custom proxy buffer item
Setting up a passive proxy
Tweaking the proxy configuration
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 18: Encrypting Zabbix Traffic
Overview
Backend libraries
PSK encryption
Certificate-based encryption
Being our own authority
Setting up Zabbix with certificates
Concerns and further reading
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 19: Working Closely with Data
Getting raw data
Extracting from the frontend
Querying the database
Using data in a remote site
Diving further into the database
Managing users
Changing existing data
Finding out when
The when in computer language
Finding out what
Performing the change
Using XML import/export for configuration
Exporting the initial configuration
Modifying the configuration
The XML export format
Scripting around the export
Importing modified configuration
Generating hosts
Importing images
Starting with the Zabbix API
Simple operations
Obtaining the API version
Logging in
Enabling and disabling hosts
Creating a host
Deleting a host
Creating a value map
Obtaining history and trends
Issues with the Zabbix API
Using API libraries
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 20: Zabbix Maintenance
Internal monitoring
New values per second
Zabbix server uptime
Cache usage
Internal process busy rate
Unsupported items and more problems
Counting unsupported items
Reviewing unsupported items
Internal events and unknown triggers
Backing things up
Backing up the database
Restoring from a backup
Separating configuration and data backups
Upgrading Zabbix
General version policy
Long-term support and short-term support
The upgrade process
Minor version upgrade
Upgrading binaries
Upgrading the frontend
Major-level upgrades
Database versioning
Gathering data during the upgrade
The frontend configuration file
Compatibility
Performance considerations
Who did that?
Exploring configuration file parameters
Zabbix agent daemon and common parameters
Zabbix server daemon parameters
Summary
Questions
Further reading
Chapter 21: Troubleshooting
Introduction
Common issues
Installation
Compilation
Frontend
Backend
Locked out of the frontend
Monitoring
General monitoring
Monitoring with the Zabbix agent
User parameters
SNMP devices
IPMI monitoring
ICMP checks
Problems with simple checks
Problems with zabbix_sender and trapper items
General issues
Triggers
Actions
Discoveries and autoregistration
Troubleshooting Zabbix
The Zabbix log file format
Reloading the configuration cache
Controlling running daemons
Runtime process status
Further debugging
Chapter 22: Being Part of the Community
Community and support
Chatting on IRC
Using the Zabbix Wiki
Using the Zabbix forum
Filing issues on the tracker
Meeting in person
The Zabbix summit
Local communities
Following the development
Getting the source
Daily snapshots
Accessing the version-control system
Looking at the changesets
Translating Zabbix
Commercial support options
Assessment
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Index