The Enterprise class Monitoring Solution for Everyone

WWW.ZABBIX.COM

Zabbix 3.0 Training

Certified Specialist

Day 1
WWW.YOURCOMPANY.COM
 GETTING STARTED

Facilities

Introduction
Background/company
Experience with CLI Unix like systems
Experience with Zabbix
Experience with other monitoring solutions
Current Zabbix deployments

Questions at any moment encouraged

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 2
 DAILY SCHEDULE

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

10.00-11.30 Zabbix 3.0 09.00-11.30 Zabbix 3.0 09.00-11.30 Zabbix 3.0
Certified Specialist Certified Specialist Certified Specialist
11.30-11.45 Break 11.30-11.45 Break 11.30-11.45 Break
11.45-13.00 Zabbix 3.0 11.45-13.00 Zabbix 3.0 11.45-14.00 Zabbix 3.0
Certified Specialist Certified Specialist Certified Specialist
13.00-14.00 Break 13.00-14.00 Break 14.00-15.00 Break and Q/A
session
14.00-15.30 Zabbix 3.0 14.00-15.30 Zabbix 3.0
Certified Specialist Certified Specialist 15.00-16.00 Advanced
Topics
15.30-15.45 Break 15.30-15.45 Break
16.00-17.50 Certification
15.45-17.50 Zabbix 3.0 15.45-17.50 Zabbix 3.0
and presentation of
Certified Specialist Certified Specialist
certificates

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 3
 AGENDA
Day 1

About
Architecture Installation
Zabbix

Data Problem
Items
collection detection

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 4
ABOUT
US
Zabbix is an enterprise level
Open Source
monitoring software

Product facts
Supports virtually all platforms
and methods of monitoring
Scaling to Large Environments

Distributed monitoring

Pro active monitoring

6
 True Open Source,
no proprietary addons,
"professional" or "enterprise" versions

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 7
 HISTORY OF ZABBIX

Product idea Zabbix SIA Zabbix USA

Company Est. LLC Est.

199 8 200 5 201

5
200 201
4 2

First stable Zabbix Japan

version release LLC Est.

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 8
 VERSIONS TIMELINE
1.0alpha1 (2001)
1.0 (2004)
1.1 (2006)
1.4 (2007)

Escalations, Zabbix Proxy,

2008 LDAP Auth., Dashboard,
1.6 Maintenance

API, Configuration Cache, 2009

Passive Zabbix Proxy, IBM
DB2, Calculated Items 1.8

LLD, Multi named Host,

2012 Java Gateway, JMX,
Automatic Inventory,
2.0 SNMP trap monitoring

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 9
Improved performance, VMware 2013
monitoring, Loadable modules,
Templates for web monitoring,
Automatic database upgrade 2.2

Ad hoc graphs, LLD

2014 improvements, SNMP bulk,
Discovery for CPU, Frontend
2.4 improvements

New web interface, Trend 2016

prediction, Encryption, SMTP
auth., Scheduling for items,
LLD improvements, Value
mapping and trends via API
3.0

NOW

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 10
COMPANY FACTS

Established in 12 April,
2005 in Riga, Latvia.

Privately held,
no investors behind
Locations
Headquarters: Riga, Latvia
Subsidiaries: Tokyo, Japan
New York, USA

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 11
MISSION & AIMS

Our Mission
Focus on development and
providing commercial services
for Zabbix Software

Aims and principles

Develop an exceptional monitoring platform
Listen to our users and our community
Be driven by technology and user needs

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 12
 HISTORICAL DETAILS
Employees Downloads

35 1400000

32

30 30 1200000
29

25 1000000

22

20 800000

17

15 600000
13

10 10 400000

5 200000
4
2
1
0 0
2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 13
TOP 10 DOWNLOADS 2015

Country Total
United States 434,971
United Kingdom 193,038
China 68,604
Brazil 61,218
Russia 47,197
Japan 21,100
Germany 18,987
Poland 15,095
France 11,246
Ukraine 6,889

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 14
 REASONS TO MONITOR

Hard to manage non-transparent

environment

Cost of downtime is high

Minimize business impact

Know if your service is reachable

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 15
 FUNCTIONALITY OF ZABBIX

Data gathering Problem detection

and alerting
Gathered using various Gathered data can be compared to
methods, including SNMP, thresholds and alerts sent out
native agents, IPMI and using different channels like email
others or SMS

Data storage Visualization

Once we have gathered the Humans are better at
data it doesn't make sense to distinguishing visualized data,
throw it away, so we will especially when there is huge
often want to store it for later
amounts of data
analysis

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 16
 DIFFERENT APPROACHES

Agent-less monitoring Monitoring with agents

ICMP ping Passive agents
HTTP, SSH, IMAP, SMTP, SNMP, Zabbix Agent, IPMI
other services Active agents
Remote commands using SNMP traps, Zabbix Agent

Telnet and SSH

Centralized monitoring Distributed monitoring

All configuration and Reduce network load
management is done on one
central Zabbix server Survive link downtime

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 17
ARCHITECTURE
 WHAT IS ZABBIX?

Zabbix is a software solution for monitoring

performance and availability of IT infrastructure
(but not limited to that)
Network devices
OS resources
Middleware
Applications
Services
Anything

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 19
KEY PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPMENT

Keep things simple (KISS)

Be efficient: use as few system

resources as possible (memory/CPU
usage)

Very high performance and high

quality product

Low number of third-party

dependencies

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 20
 IMPORTANT DECISIONS

Frontend
Open and customisable
Everything is stored in a relational database
C language for server, proxy and agent
The best performance
The lowest footprint and resource usage
Linux agent uses less than a megabyte of RAM
(736K on 64bit; excluding shared libraries)
Can be used in embedded environment
SQLite, very small footprint

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 21
 BASIC ARCHITECTURE

Frontend

Database Server

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 22
 DISTRIBUTED COMPONENTS

Frontend

Database Server

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 23
FUNCTIONALITY
 FUNCTIONALITY 1
Real-time monitoring
Performance monitoring Encryption (certificate, PSK)
Availability monitoring IT services / SLA monitoring
Integrity monitoring Hierarchical IT Services
Real-time SLA reporting
Flexible notification conditions
Flexibility
Alerts (email, SMS, Jabber)
Easily extensible agent
Trend prediction Any notification methods
Future value Server runs on any Unix platform
Time Zabbix sender

Visualization Pro-active monitoring

Automatic execution of remote
Graphing commands
Mapping Manually executable commands
User-defined views (screens) Aggregate monitoring
Filterable dashboard Monitoring for a group of hosts

Alerting (email, SMS, Jabber)

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 25
 FUNCTIONALITY 2
High-performance native agents Web monitoring
Network discovery VMware monitoring
Active agent auto-registration Performance improvement
techniques
Inventory
Data buffering on agent side
Automatic collection Caches on server side
Web frontend for configuration User group setting
(drag'n'drop maps/screens etc)
Regular expression builder
Authentication
IPv6 support
Native
IPMI monitoring
LDAP based
Maintenance
HTTP authentication
UTF8
Escalations
API
Unlimited number of levels
ODBC monitoring
Zabbix proxy
Java gateway (direct JMX
Active/passive monitoring)

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 26
 SERVER AND
FRONTEND
INSTALLATION
 ZABBIX SERVER REQUIREMENTS

Operating Additional
Database
Week 01 Week 03

system libraries

Linux MySQL
Week 02 SNMP: NET-SNMP
Solaris MySQL forks Web: libcurl
AIX PostgreSQL SSH: libssh2
HP-UX Oracle IPMI: OpenIPMI
FreeBSD SQLite Jabber: lib-iksemel
OpenBSD IBM DB2 VMware: libxml2
ODBC: unixODBC
Encryption: OpenSSL
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 28
 WHAT'S RECOMMENDED

Hardware Database engine

Multi-core 64bit CPU MySQL with InnoDB engine

Operating system Why MySQL?

Linux Open source
Most widely used backend

Distribution – Distribution and

what's mostly used DB choice
RedHat, CentOS, SUSE, Use what you are familiar
Debian, Ubuntu with

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 29
INSTALLING SERVER FROM PACKAGES
● RHEL/CentOS
Install Zabbix Server
# rpm -ivh http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.0/rhel/\
7/x86_64/zabbix-release-3.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

# yum install zabbix-server-mysql

or
# yum install zabbix30-server-mysql

● OpenSUSE/SLES
# zypper install zabbix-server-mysql

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 30
 INSTALLING SERVER:
ALTERNATIVE WAY (SOURCES)

Configure and compile

# ./configure --help

# ./configure <parameter1> <parameter2> …

# make install

Example:
# ./configure --enable-server --with-mysql --with-net-snmp ...
# make install

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 31
 CREATING DATABASE
Install MySQL Server
# yum install mysql-server

Create Zabbix database and user

# mysql
mysql> create database zabbix character set utf8 collate utf8_bin;
mysql> grant all privileges on zabbix.* to zabbix@localhost \
identified by 'M35s#ShtCL';

Load files
●
# cd /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql-3.0.0
# zcat create.sql.gz | mysql -uroot -p zabbix

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 32
FINALISING SERVER INSTALLATION

Configure Zabbix server

# vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf
DBHost=localhost
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=M35s#ShtCL

Start Zabbix server

# service zabbix-server start

or

# systemctl start zabbix-server

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 33
 FRONTEND REQUIREMENTS

Component Requirement
Apache, lighthttpd, nginx
Back-end
Any other with support of PHP
Mozilla
Chrome
Browser Safari
MS Internet Explorer
Opera

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 34
 FRONTEND - PHP REQUIREMENTS

Component Requirement
PHP version 5.4.0 or higher
PHP database php-mysql, php-sqlite, php-pgsql, php-
support sqlora, php-ibm_db2
php-bcmath, php-gd 2.0, php-net-socket,
PHP modules php-mbstring, PNG/JPEG/FreeType support,
php-xml, php-gettext, php-ldap
Some distributions might split out PHP core
Other
features in packages like php5-ctype, php-
requirements
session or php5-xml/php5-dom

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 35
 PHP CONFIGURATION

Component Requirement
PHP memory limit 128 MB
PHP post max size 16 MB
PHP upload max filesize 2 MB
PHP max execution time 300 seconds
PHP max input time 300 seconds
Europe/Riga
PHP Timezone America/Chicago

http://php.net/manual/en/timezones.php

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 36
 INSTALLING FRONTEND FROM
PACKAGES

RHEL/CentOS
# yum install zabbix-web-mysql

OpenSUSE/SLES

# zypper install zabbix-phpfrontend

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 37
 INSTALLING FRONTEND:
ALTERNATIVE WAY (SOURCES)
From the source
# cp -a frontends/php <htdocs>/zabbix

Common <htdocs> locations:

/usr/local/apache2/htdocs
/srv/www/htdocs
/var/www/html
/var/www

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 38
FRONTEND: CONFIGURATION WIZARD
Access frontend with a web browser:
<DNS or IP>/zabbix

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 39
 FRONTEND CONFIGURATION:
ALTERNATIVE WAY

# cp conf/zabbix.conf.php.example conf/zabbix.conf.php

Edit the new file

$DB["TYPE"] = "MYSQL";
$DB["SERVER"] = "localhost";
$DB["PORT"] = "0";
$DB["DATABASE"] = "zabbix";
$DB["USER"] = "zabbix";
$DB["PASSWORD"] = "M35s#ShtCL";
$ZBX_SERVER = "localhost";
$ZBX_SERVER_PORT = "10051";
$ZBX_SERVER_NAME = "";

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 40
 AGENT
INSTALLATION
AGENT AVAILABILITY

ZBX

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 42
 INSTALLING AGENT

Install Zabbix Agent Often pre-compiled

# yum install zabbix-agent Configure and compile
sources
Configure zabbix_agentd.conf
Server
ServerActive
Hostname

Start Zabbix Agent

# service zabbix-agent start

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 43
 INSTALLING WINDOWS AGENT

Install as a Windows service

cmd> zabbix_agentd.exe --config \
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Zabbix agent\zabbix_agentd.conf" --install

Run agent

cmd> zabbix_agentd.exe --start

Sample config: zabbix_agentd.win.conf

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 44
 PRACTICAL SETUP

Install MySQL server

Install Zabbix Server, Frontend and Agent
Create Zabbix DB
Configure Zabbix server
Configure Frontend
Start web server, Zabbix server and agent

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 45
 ZABBIX DEFINITIONS
Component Requirement
Host Any network attached device having IP or DNS name
Host Group Logical grouping of hosts
Item Source of information / metric
Trigger Logical expression representing problem condition
A set of entities (items, triggers, etc) ready to be
Template
applied to one or several hosts
Application Grouping of items in a logical group
Event Element state change
A flexible set of conditions
Action
Automatically executed set of operations
Different types: notification, remote command,
Operation
add/remove host, template linkage

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 46
 TRYING THEM TOGETHER
Host Action
Item Trigger Event Condition

Item Trigger Event Condition

Item Event Operation

E-mail, SMS Operation

Item
Restart service, start server

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 47
 REAL LIFE EXAMPLE
E-mail server E-mail server problems
Mail queue length If e-mail server is affected
If problem is critical
If not working time
Mail queue
exceeds 100 Send SMS to postmaster

Queue exceeded 100

at 2015.12.31 20:45 Zabbix server
Host Trigger Condition Operation Mail queue on e-mail
server: 248
Item Event Action Actual course taken

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 48
 ZABBIX
INTERFACE
 BASICS
Five menu levels Global search
Monitoring List selection and mass
Inventory updates
Reports Special user: Guest
Configuration
Administration Unauthorized user, used for
login
Permissions depend on Full-screen mode for many
user type views (special icon)
Normal user: Monitoring, Inventory and
Reports
Theming, language selection
Zabbix Administrator: Monitoring,
Inventory, Reports and Configuration
Zabbix Super Administrator: Monitoring,
Inventory, Reports, Configuration and
Administration

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 50
 DASHBOARD
Consists of two parts
● Favorites
● High level statistics

Rearrange widgets

Hide/Show panels

Filter by hostgroup,
maintenance,
trigger severity
and name

Show
Unacknowledged
triggers
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 51
GLOBAL ALARMS
Per user (can't be set by
admin)
Timeout
Play sound once/10 sec/forever
Different sounds depending on
severity
Snooze/mute

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 52
 DATA
COLLECTION
ALL LEVELS OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 54
 WHAT'S A HOST?

Host is the device you wish to monitor

Examples:
Server
Switch
UPS
Application
Database
Website
...anything
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 55
HOSTS

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 56
 HOST PROPERTIES
Name Other tabs:
Visible name ● Templates
Groups ● IPMI
New group ● Macros
Interfaces - IP (recommended) / DNS ● Inventory
● Agent
● SNMP
● JMX
● IPMI

Monitored by proxy
Status

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 57
HOST INTERFACES

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 58
 PRACTICAL SETUP

Create "Training servers" host group in the frontend

Create a new host
Use your VM name as host name
Put it in the "Training servers" host group

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 59
 HOST CONFIGURATION VIEW

Host filter

Links to entity configuration

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 60
 MASS EDITING FOR HOSTS

Configuration → Hosts

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 61
 WHAT IS HOST AVAILABILITY?

Availability is kept for 4 different types of checks

separately:
Zabbix passive agent
SNMP
JMX
IPMI

Error messages are preserved for each

Calculated by server internally
Shown in the list and host properties

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 62
 HOST AVAILABILITY STATUS

Zabbix server will set the host availability icon to gray:

● there are no enabled items on the corresponding interface
● host is set to be monitored by proxy, a different proxy or by server
● host is monitored by a proxy that appears to be offline
● host is disabled

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 63
 HOST GROUPS

Many hosts can belong to one

group

Host can belong to any number of

groups

Groups are used for permissions

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 64
ITEMS
 WHAT'S AN ITEM?

Item defines a metric which you would like to monitor

Examples:
CPU utilization
DB status
Temperature in a server room
Number of users online for an application
...anything

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 66
 ITEMS

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 67
 ITEM TYPES
Zabbix agent IPMI
Polled by Zabbix server JMX
Aggregate
Zabbix agent (active) grpsum["MySQL
Processed by Zabbix agent Servers","vfs.fs.size[/,total]","last", "0"]
Can be cached External check
Agent-less checks (simple) script[parameters]
Performed by Zabbix server SSH
SNMP agent/trapper Password and key authentication
All SNMP versions are supported supported
Zabbix trapper Telnet
Used with Zabbix sender Database
Internal Calculated
Zabbix health last("vm.memory.size[free]")+
last("vm.memory.size[buffers]")

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 68
 Z
ZABBIX AGENT
CHECKS
 COMMUNICATIONS

JSON based protocol

1.0, 1.1: very simple protocol
1.4: XML
1.6+: JSON

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 70
 PASSIVE VS ACTIVE CHECKS

Passive (pull)
Active (push)

10050 Passive
Server
10051 Active

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 71
 DATA FLOW
Request: CPU load

Response: 1.95 Passive

Listen port: 10050

Request: List of checks

Server Response: CPU load,

Diskspace...

Listen port: 10051

Free diskspace on / : 13GB
Active
CPU load : 4.32
Buffer
Fan 5 RPM : 3524

CPU 1 temperature : 34 Higher performance

More secure

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 72
 PASSIVE VS ACTIVE -
IDENTIFICATION
Passive
IP address / DNS name

Active
Explicitly set Hostname
HostnameItem if Hostname unset
system.hostname by default

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 73
 Active agent Is
Send
has to figure out Hostname Yes
the host name set ? Hostname value

No

Is
Send
HostnameItem Yes
set ? HostnameItem result

No

Send
system.hostname result

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 74
 ITEM KEY

General syntax: key[parameter1,parameter2,parameter3]

Must be unique per host
Flexible / non-flexible (net.tcp.listen[631] / agent.ping)
Use $1, $2…$9 in the item name to refer to the first,
second… ninth parameter of the item key

Use quotes
system.swap.size[/proc/swaps,free]
vs
system.swap.size["/proc/swaps,free"]

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 75
 ITEM KEY IN MORE DETAILS

Free form string for SNMP & IPMI (OID & IPMI sensor matters)
Quote parameters (proc.mem["httpd",apache,sum])
Quick reference in the frontend
See Zabbix manual for the list of supported keys

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 76
INTERFACES FOR ITEMS

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 77
 ITEM UNITS

Units
For numeric data only
If set, K/M/G/T/P/E/Z/Y prefix fill be added:
● 5242880 B -> 5 MB
Special processing for:
● B, Bps, unixtime, uptime
● Unit blacklist for %, ms, RPM, rpm

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 78
 ITEM PRE-PROCESSING

Store value Data type

Store as is: no changes of Decimal, octal, hex, boolean
received value

Delta (speed per second): Multiplier

calculate as (value-prevvalue)/
(time-prevtime) Calculated as value * multiplier
Use 0.125 to divide by 8

Useful for monitoring counters

Delta (simple change): calculate
as (value-prevvalue)

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 79
 VALUE MAPPING
Used almost everywhere in the frontend and for notifications
Support of string values
Administration → General → Value mapping

Example: Monitoring → Latest data

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 80
 CHANGES STORED DATA OR NOT?

Do not change stored data Change stored data

(value stored as-is) Data type
Units Store value
Value mapping Multiplier

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 81
 FLEXIBLE INTERVALS

Allows to override default item interval

If multiple flexible intervals overlap, smallest time is used
Default delay of 0 can be used together with a flexible
interval to emulate scheduling on a specific time of day

Be aware: not supported as agent active check

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 82
 EXECUTION AT A SPECIFIC TIME

Allows to check items at specific times

Examples:
wd1-5h9 - every Monday till Friday at 9:00
h9m/30;h10 - execute at 9:00, 9:30, 10:00
h9-10m10-40/30 - execute at 9:10, 9:40, 10:10, 10:40
md1wd1h9m30 - every 1st day of each month at 9:30 if it is Monday

Be aware: not supported as agent active check

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 83
HISTORY, TRENDS AND HOUSEKEEPER

Free disk space on /tmp

hh:mm.ss Value
History
Raw data
18:00.01 12.23 6 values
18:10.01 12.23
18.20.00 12.21
18:30.03 12.50
18:40.00 12.07
Aggregated
1 x AVG
Trends
18:50.02 11.58 1 x MIN
1 x MAX
1 x COUNT
Housekeeper

/dev/null
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 84
 ITEM CONFIGURATION FILTER
Find items from multiple hosts

Find unsupported items

Further drill down by subfilter

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 85
 MASS EDITING FOR ITEMS

Configuration → Hosts → <Host> → Items

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 86
 PRACTICAL SETUP

Create three items on the host:

"Incoming traffic on eth0" (bytes per second)
"Outgoing traffic on eth0" (bytes per second)
"CPU load"

Make sure that the items receive data

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 87
 LATEST DATA

Performance data for a

selected server/group
Simple graphs
Plain text information
Config details

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 88
 APPLICATIONS

Group of items
One application, many items
One item, many applications

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 89
SIMPLE GRAPHS

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 90
 OVERVIEW
Performance data for a group of servers
Displays problems
Quick navigation to Graphs and Plain text data

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 91
 COMMON ITEM KEYS
Area Suggested key
Availability agent.ping
Network
net.if.in/out[interface]
performance
Remote services net.tcp.service[service,<ip>,<port>]
Processes proc.num[<name>,<user>,<state>,<cmdline>]
Disk space
vfs.fs.size[fs, <mode>]
availability
Memory availability vm.memory.size[<mode>]
Host name system.hostname[<type>]
system.cpu.load[]
CPU load/utilization
system.cpu.util[]

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 92
 PROBLEM
DETECTION
 WHAT IS A TRIGGER?

Trigger is a problem definition

Examples:
CPU utilization is too high
Host is unreachable using ICMP
Database is down
Application is not running
...anything

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 94
TRIGGER DEFINITION
Name
Expression
Events generation
Description
Severity
URL
Enabled
Dependencies

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 95
 TRIGGER EXPRESSION SYNTAX

Syntax:
{host:key.function(param)}=0
{zabbix:system.cpu.load.min(300)}>10

Operators
- + / * < > = <> >= <= or and

Refer to items from many hosts

{host1:item.fun(5m)}>10 and {host2:item.fun(5m)}>5
and {host3:item.fun(5m)}<3

Zabbix makes decisions based on all information available: latest and history

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 96
 TRIGGER FUNCTIONS
Functions:
min, max, avg, last, diff, count, delta, time, etc
See Zabbix manual

Parameters:
<str> - normal parameters
{zabbix:system.cpu.load.min(10m)}>5
#<num> - number of checks
{zabbix:system.cpu.load.min(#10)}>5

Supported suffixes: s, m, h, d, w

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 97
 LESS SENSITIVE TRIGGER
EXPRESSIONS

For example, use:

min(10m) > 5 for CPU load
min(#10) > 5 for CPU load
max(10m) = 0 for availability check

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 98
 ANALYSE HISTORY

{server:system.cpu.load.min(10m)} > 5

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 99
 TRIGGER EXPRESSION EDITING
Classic

Constructor

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 100
EXPRESSION TESTING

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 101
 TIPS AND TRICKS
No data for a period of time
No ping from agent within 5 minutes:
{host:agent.ping.nodata(5m)}=1

"Fuzzy" trigger, when? ?

Server is unreachable
After trigger expression update
If Zabbix is unable to calculate trigger expression

Check for time difference

fuzzytime() function

Macros for trigger name

{HOST.NAME}
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 102
 USER MACRO FUNCTIONALITY
Easier maintenance – one template and:
different item key parameters
net.tcp.service[ssh,{$SSH_PORT}]
different trigger expression values
{server:system.cpu.load[,avg1].last(0)} > {$CPU_LOAD}

Overwrites upstream – priority:

Global macro
Host macro {$CPU_LOAD}=5
Template macro
Global macro
Template macro
Syntax: {$CPU_LOAD}=20
{$NAME}
Host macro
{$CPU_LOAD}=1

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 103
 DEPENDENCIES BETWEEN TRIGGERS
Avoid notifications
Define dependencies between Web page down
Network devices
Applications
Resources
… anything NFS server down
Multiple levels
Host → Switch 1 → Switch 2
Multiple dependencies
Host → Router1 Router down
Host → Router2
ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist
WWW.ZABBIX.COM 104
 PRACTICAL SETUP

Create a new trigger on the host:

"CPU load too high on <macro>"
Use macro in the trigger name to display the host name
Use "cat /dev/urandom | md5sum" command to test it

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 105
 STATUS OF TRIGGERS

Shows status of triggers and Triggers can be expanded to

events show events
Events can be acknowledged If trigger has an active
dependency it is not shown
Can filter by min severity, age,
name, application and host
inventory

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 106
BULK ACKNOWLEDGMENT

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 107
 OVERVIEW
Status of a group of servers
Different colors for different trigger severities
Blinking on change
Quick navigation to Events and Graphs

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 108
 MORE TRIGGER EXAMPLES

CPU load is too high and less than 100 users online:
{host:system.cpu.load.last()}>5 and {host:users.last()}<100

The "passwd" file was changed:

{host:vfs.file.cksum[/etc/passwd].diff()}>0

Someone is downloading a large file from the Internet

{host:net.if.in[eth0,bytes].min(5m)}>512M

ZABBIX 3.0 Certified Specialist

WWW.ZABBIX.COM 109
QUESTIONS?

The Enterprise class Monitoring Solution for Everyone

WWW.ZABBIX.COM
TIME FOR A BREAK :)