Zabbix is used all over the world - in standard IT infrastructure monitoring and also in some not so common environments. In this talk we will look at some common uses of Zabbix, as well as at some slightly strange environments. A brief update on the latest improvements for Zabbix will be provided as well.

1. Zabbix
Not-so-common use
and
Constant improvement

2. Main functionality
Agentless
Native agent
Visualisation
Alerting
Data storage
Web monitoring

3. Distributed monitoring
Zabbix proxy

4. True opensource
Open
Core

5. Weather forecast

6. Longer period forecast

7. Monitoring translations

8. Caching induced problems

9. Translator statistics

10. Translators graphed : zalex_ua

11. User behaviour

12. Daily stock value

13. Change in kroner

14. More stocks

15. Speed traps

22. SERPRO
● Government institution in Brazil
● Zabbix – aggregating solution

25. Self-monitoring

26. SVN branch freeze status

29. What have we improved?

30. Looking back
First time here in 2009, since then...
● 1.8 2009-12 API, passive proxies
● 2.0 2012-05 LLD, Java gateway
● 2.2 2013-11 A thousand papercuts
● 2.4 2014-09 Maintainability

31. 2.2

32. Process status

33. Web monitoring: templates
Web template
Website 1 Website 1

34. Web monitoring: content extraction
Page 1 Session ID Page 2

35. Logfile content extraction
Fr Feb 07 2014 11:07:36.6690 */ Thread Id 1400 (GLEWF) large result
buffer allocation - /Length: 437136/Entries: 5948/Client Ver: >=10/RPC
ID: 41726453/User: AUser/Form: CFG:ServiceLevelAgreement
log[/path/to/the/file,large result buffer allocation.*Entries: ([0-9]+),,,,1]

36. VMware monitoring
MAGIC
● Point Zabbix at VMware API
● It discovers vSpheres
● It discovers virtual machines
● (and monitors them)

37. Various improvements
● Web monitoring
● Length limits increased
● Improved filters in the frontend
● Validation

38. More caching
● Never (almost) check last value only
– avg(5m)
– ...and hammer the database
● “value cache” to the rescue

39. 2.4

40. Ad-hoc graphing

41. Flexible agent filtering
● Discover:
– network interfaces
– file systems
● by type
● by mountpoint
– CPUs
– ...extend

42. ...by the way, Zabbix agent
● Native on many platforms
● More than 70 different things built-in

43. Web monitoring
● Custom headers
● SSL auth

44. Standards, baby
ISO 8601

45. My favourite 2.4 feature
● Changing loglevel runtime
● ...for individual processes
● ...and also ability to dump web scenario details
● ...and the same for VMware monitoring

46. Upgrade policies
● No database changes in one major release
● All old agents supported

47. SERIOUS BUG

49. Try it out
Virtual appliance – latest version, OpenSUSE

50. Friendly community
IRC: #zabbix on Freenode
Forum: http://www.zabbix.com/forum
Blog: http://blog.zabbix.com

51. #zabbix popularity

52. Comparing IRC channels
Users in IRC channel
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Zabbix
Nagios

53. Question time
External photos (cc-licensed) by:
– NATS Press Office
– J. Michel
– Dave Wilson Cumbria
– Veni