Performance monitoring
One of most important uses of ZABBIX is performance monitoring. Processor load, number of running processes,
number of processes, disk activity, status of swap space, and memory availability are some of the numerous system
parameters ZABBIX is able to monitor.
ZABBIX provides a system administrator with timely information about
performance of a server. In addition, ZABBIX can produce trend graphs to help identify bottlenecks in system
performance.
Alerting users
Having performance monitoring is good, but it is almost useless without a powerful notification mechanism. With
ZABBIX, an administrator can define virtually any possible condition for a trigger, using flexible
expressions. Any time these expressions become true (or false), an alert will be emailed to any address defined
by the administrator.
External programs can be used for user-defined
notification methods such as SMS, phone notifications,
etc.
ZABBIX can predict future behaviour of monitored parameters using Least Square Algorithm. This allows user
to be notified even before system state achieves critical level.
Note: This functionality will be completed in future versions of ZABBIX
Monitoring of log files
ZABBIX can be used for centralised monitoring of log files.
Note: This functionality will be completed in future versions of ZABBIX
Integrity Checking
ZABBIX is capable of server integrity monitoring. All critical configuration files, binaries, kernel, scripts,
and web server HTML pages can be monitored by ZABBIX so that the administrator can be alerted to modifications
made to these files.
Logging services
All values of monitored parameters are stored in a database. The collected data can be used later for any purposes.
Capacity planning
Viewing trends of process load, disk usage, database activity, or other important metrics allows a system
administrator to clearly see when the next hardware upgrade should be made.
Assuring and monitoring of SLA
ZABBIX is able to monitor Service Level Agreements (SLA). It also keeps SLA-related historical data that helps to
identify and improve weak areas of an IT infrastructure.
High level view of IT resources and services
A High level service tree allows the creation of dependencies between various IT resources. Such
representation enables the following questions to be answered:
What IT services depends on availability of resource X?
Example: If processor load is too high on server A, then these IT services will be affected: Oracle server, WEB
banking, Online transaction processing, etc.
What resources specific IT service depends on?
Example: WEB portal may depend on the following resources:
- processor load on server A
- connection to ISP provider
- disk space on volume /data on server A
- availability of Oracle DB engine on server B
- speed of execution of user requests
- availability of Apache server on server C
- etc etc
Such a dependency tree helps identify weak points in IT infrastructure.
Example: If several critical services offered by IT department depends on, for example, availability of disk
space on some server, then it is time to think about distribution of the volume across different servers or
disk arrays to eliminate possible risks.
Other
- availability analysis
- graphical representation of collected information
- Network maps
- custom screens
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