Zabbix 4.2: Extending Zabbix monitoring with RESTful microservices

There are a few ways one can gather custom metrics with Zabbix, for example, via user parameters or Zabbix sender protocol. While either method can work for simple metrics, creating a more wholesome approach (with data collectors, persistent connections etc) and interfacing it with Zabbix may not be as trivial.

With the HTTP agent item Zabbix can natively connect to RESTful web services, but the new pre-processing options, “Check for error” and the “Custom on fail”, take it a big step further. This allows us to create web services that can be directly used by Zabbix. To demonstrate we will create a very simple MySQL monitoring web service, returning the number of active and maximum connections.

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Implementation of Zabbix. Pre-conference interview with Gerhard Pegel.

Every Zabbix event is all about sharing knowledge, discussing ideas, asking the right questions and, of course, learning from real use cases. We’ve reached out to Gerhard Pegel, one of the speakers at Zabbix Conference Benelux, for his take on this.

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Zabbix Summit’18. How It Was.

First week of October this year ended with a very special event – the Zabbix Summit, taking place in a Zabbix hometown, Riga, Latvia.

Being an 8th conference in Riga in a row, the Zabbix Summit gathered a record number of participants – 350 IT professionals from more than 40 countries. And we all had a lot of things to talk about – to discuss, to teach and to learn from each other, sharing Zabbix expertise and monitoring challenges.

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Introducing Speakers of Zabbix Summit 2018, part 3

There is only 1 week left to join the biggest Zabbix event! Visit our Summit page to learn all the benefits this event brings to the attendees, explore the content diversity and choose workshops to attend and practice Zabbix.

Today we would like to present Shawn Cai, a DevOps Team Manager of China Merchants Bank. At the Summit, he will focus on full-stack monitoring in DevOps environment via Zabbix.

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Introducing Speakers of Zabbix Summit 2018, part 2

Little over a month is left until we will meet you at the biggest Zabbix event – Zabbix Summit 2018.

This year we have put together a very diverse agenda, and with only 2 weeks left to register, we encourage you to get acquainted with our speakers to find out about their speeches and ideas, and decide on why you really should join the Zabbix Summit this year.

Today we would like to present Wolfgang Alper, a true Zabbix expert and CEO at IntelliTrend GmbH. At the Zabbix Summit, Wolfgang will talk about Zabbix power in the field of IoT.

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Introducing Speakers of Zabbix Summit 2018, part 1

In a month and a half we will meet you at the biggest Zabbix event, happening for the 8th year in a row, and from now on called – Zabbix Summit 2018.

You will witness practical examples of what Zabbix is capable of, gain hands-on experience through workshops run by the Zabbix Team, and have a chance to get Zabbix certified. Only 4 weeks left to register!

To give you a small preview on the agenda that awaits you, we are offering you insights in the minds of people stepping on the stage of our event and sharing their vision, experience and knowledge.

Today we would like to present Lukas Macura, a Network and Cyber Security Expert and Open-Source “extremist”, as he calls himself. He is a CTO at the Foresight CyberTM, where Zabbix is an integral part of the company’s internally built Foresight Cyber Platform, delivering cyber security managed services to company’s clients.

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Zabbix 3.4 – Dynamic Maps

Zabbix 3.4 impressed with its graphical, easy-to comprehend and improved way to access all the gathered data resulting in more interactive, dynamic and visually pleasing network monitoring.

For sure it’s an obvious sign the product moves ahead in terms of more advanced interface, and the use of SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) instead of a meanwhile outdated raster file format is a good example of the positive changes.

Let’s have a look at all the map improvements in detail with some practical examples:

    • SVG image is a candy for the eyes comparing to a raster one. What catches attention first are smooth and softened edges of the background shape. Text legibility is also affected positively by way of using a modern and stylish font;
    • Zooming doesn’t affect the quality of this type of images, letters remain readable, and no fuzzy edges experienced;
    • The use of SVG images gives a possibility to copy-paste required data for further data analysis, so no more unnecessary memorizing required:

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Zabbix Rocking It Out at Events of 2017

Always trying to be closer to our users, we actively take part in various IT expos, conferences and meetups all over the world. Throughout the year we’ve spread Zabbix knowledge, attracted new users, met our fans, discussed the future of Zabbix with our partners and revealed tips for the best practices on managing your monitoring tasks.

Let’s have a quick overview of what we’ve experienced this year!

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Using Macros for Time Periods Management

Let’s continue to cover the innovations of Zabbix 3.4, shall we? This time, we’re going to talk about the use of macros in update intervals and other time periods.

  • Couple of Words about Macros
  • History Update and Storage Intervals
  • Usage Scenarios
    • Update Intervals and Collected Data Storage Time
    • In Low-Level Discovery
    • Where Else?
  • So…
 

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Z Meetup/MeatUp #1. Genesis.

Once upon a time somebody said: “Let there be light!”, and our first Z Meetup was born. We took some time off from the enterprise-level challenges and tried to figure out more crucial things like Chinese or Italian food? Pink or blue light? Cats or dogs? In the end it turned out to be Chinese, pink and cats. We like feeling at home, so we made ourselves comfortable next to the red carpet (you see, we love red things – carpets, apples and hats) and were ready.

Ready to explore, dive into the ocean of shared knowledge, and we proved our own hypothesis by taking very consistent, deliberate, subjective and beer-secured  steps – not only dogs, but also we are smarter than we thought (as to the dogs we recommend a book by Stanley Coren “The Intelligence for Dogs”, as to Zabbix we recommend any of the books here).

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