Cover -- Copyright -- Credits -- About the Authors -- About the Reviewers -- www.PacktPub.com -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Deploying Zabbix -- Defining the environment size -- Zabbix architectures -- Zabbix installation -- Prerequisites -- Setting up the server -- Setting up the agent -- Installing and creating the package -- Configuring the server -- Installing the database -- Starting up with Daemon -- Some considerations about the database -- Sizing of the database -- Some considerations about housekeeping -- Web interface -- Web wizard - frontend configuration -- Capacity planning with Zabbix -- The observer effect -- What to monitor -- Define a baseline -- Load testing -- Forecasting the trends -- Summary -- Chapter 2: Distributed Monitoring -- Zabbix proxies -- Deploying a Zabbix proxy -- Understanding the flow of monitoring data with proxies -- Zabbix nodes -- Understanding the flow of data with nodes -- Deploying a node -- Proxies versus nodes -- Disadvantages of nodes -- Choosing between proxies and nodes -- Security considerations -- No network configuration -- Network isolation -- Simple tunnels -- Secure Shell -- Stunnel -- A full-blown VPN -- Summary -- Chapter 3: High Availability and Failover -- Understanding high availability -- Understanding the levels of IT service -- Some consideration about high availability -- Automating the switchover/the failover with a resource manager -- Replicating the filesystem with DRBD -- Implementing high availability on a web server -- Configuring HTTPD HA -- Understanding Pacemaker and STONITH -- Pacemaker - is Quorum really needed? -- Pacemaker - the stickiness concepts -- Pacemaker - Apache/HTTPD configuration -- Configuring the Zabbix Server for high availability -- Database high availability -- Clustering of PostgreSQL -- Mirrored logical volume with LVM and DRBD.

Prerequisite tasks to start with DRBD on LVM -- Creating a DRBD device on top of the LVM partition -- Enabling resource in DRBD -- Defining a primary device in DRBD -- Creating a filesystem on a DRBD device -- Pacemaker cluster - integrating DRBD -- Enabling the DRBD configuration -- Pacemaker - the LVM configuration -- Pacemaker - configuring PostgreSQL -- Pacemaker - the network configuration -- Pacemaker - the final configuration -- Cluster configuration - the final test -- DRBD performance and optimizations -- DRBD efficient synchronization -- DRBD enabling online verification -- DRBD - some networking consideration -- Summary -- Chapter 4: Collecting Data -- Gathering items as raw data -- Understanding the data flow for Zabbix items -- Understanding Zabbix trapper items -- Data flow overview -- Database monitoring with Zabbix -- Delving into ODBC -- Installing database drivers -- MySQL ODBC drivers -- PostgreSQL ODBC drivers -- Oracle ODBC drivers -- UnixODBC configuration files -- Compiling Zabbix with ODBC -- Database monitor items -- Some considerations about the ODBC SQL query -- Zabbix JMX monitoring -- Considering some JMX security aspects -- Installing a Zabbix Java gateway -- Configuring Zabbix JMX -- JMX keys in detail -- Issues and considerations about JMX -- Zabbix SNMP monitoring -- SNMP queries -- SNMP traps -- The snmptrapd process -- perl trap handler -- Web pages monitoring -- Authenticating on web pages -- Logging out -- Aggregated and calculated items -- Aggregated items -- Calculated items -- Summary -- Chapter 5: Visualizing Data -- Graphs -- Analyzing simple graphs -- Analyzing custom graphs -- Reviewing all the graph properties combinations -- Visualizing the data through maps -- Creating your first Zabbix Map -- Some important considerations about macros and URLs -- Finally inside the map -- Selecting elements.

Playing with macros inside maps -- Visualizing through screens -- Creating a screen -- Dynamic elements -- Visualizing the data through a slide show -- Controlling centre slides and the big display challenge -- Some consideration about slides on a big display -- Automated slide show -- IT services -- Configuring an IT service -- Summary -- Chapter 6: Managing Alerts -- Understanding trigger expressions -- Selecting items and functions -- Choosing between seconds or number of measurements -- Date and time functions -- Trigger severity -- Choosing between absolute values and percentages -- Understanding operations as correlations -- Managing the trigger dependencies -- Taking action -- Defining an action -- The {EVENT.DATE} and {EVENT.TIME} macros -- The {INVENTORY.SERIALNO.A} and friends macros -- The {NODE.ID} and {NODE.NAME} macros -- Defining the action conditions -- Choosing the action operations -- Steps and escalations -- Messages and media -- Remote commands -- Summary -- Chapter 7: Managing Templates -- Creating templates -- Adding entities to a template -- Using macros -- User defined macros -- Linking templates to hosts -- Nesting templates -- Combining templates -- Discovering hosts -- Low-level discovery -- Summary -- Chapter 8: Handling External Scripts -- External checks -- Script's placement -- Going deep into external checks -- Inside the script -- General script writing rules -- Some consideration about external checks -- The UserParameter -- The flexible UserParameter -- Some considerations about UserParameters -- Sending data using zabbix_sender -- The new script -- Writing a wrapper script for check_ora_sendtrap -- Pros and cons of dedicated script server -- Working with Zabbix protocols -- The Zabbix get protocol -- The Zabbix sender protocol -- An interesting undocumented feature -- Using clock properties in JSON items.

Zabbix Agent protocol -- Some more possible responses -- Communicating with Zabbix -- Implementing Zabbix sender in Java -- Implementing Zabbix sender in Python -- Some considerations about agent development -- Summary -- Chapter 9: Extending Zabbix -- Exploring the Zabbix API -- Authenticating through the API -- Using the PyZabbix library -- Synchronizing templates across different nodes -- Mass operations -- Redistributing hosts to proxies -- Adding or updating users -- Exporting data -- Extracting tabular data -- Creating graphs from data -- The Graphviz suite of programs -- Creating a trigger dependency graph -- Summary -- Chapter 10: Integrating Zabbix -- An overview of Request Tracker -- Setting up RT to better integrate with Zabbix -- Creating a custom queue for Zabbix -- Customizing tickets - the links section -- Customizing tickets - ticket priority -- Customizing tickets - the custom fields -- Connecting to the Request Tracker API -- Setting up Zabbix to integrate with Request Tracker -- Creating RT tickets from the Zabbix events -- Summary -- Index.