First, let me say that my only association with Zabbix is that I use their product. I'm a "regular user" like everyone else here. When we were searching for a performance monitoring tool, we evaluated several commercial and open source offerings. We found Zabbix to be the best fit for our needs.
I work for a large retail company with a large IT infrastructure. For the past 2 years we have been doing a POC with Zabbix, starting out in 2008 with a 1.4.x version. At version 1.6 we started monitoring a small percentage of our production servers.
We quickly saw the value and the potential of Zabbix. We purchased the Platinum support package and began putting the Zabbix production infrastructure into place. 1 App server, 1 DB server (SAN storage) and 12 globally located proxies (Not counting our dev and test setups)
We engaged Zabbix Professional services to implement our 1.6.6 --> 1.8.2 upgrade. Not that we didn't have the talent in our company to achieve the upgrade, but we wanted it to be "just right" and wanted it tuned like a Ferrari. Who better to do it than the people who built it?
We will now be going from monitoring 200 hosts in 1.6.6 to monitoring around 3,000 with 1.8.2 on Win, AIX, Solaris, Linux and HP-UX.
I was a bit skeptical about the DB conversion. I have a lot of work into my graphs and screens and to lose any of that data or formatting would have been sickening.
I can tell you I am not disappointed in any way with the upgrade. Zabbix staff completed the migration in about 4 hours, including testing and initial tuning. Graph and screen rendering is lightning fast in this version... something that has been lacking in previous versions, IMO. The functionality introduced in 1.8.2 has really taken this to the next level from an administrative point of view. Performance of the Zabbix infrastructure itself has a notable improvement. Zabbix staff will re-evaluate tuning after the setup has been operational for awhile and make any fine-tuning adjustments as needed.
It will take some time for me to discover all the new functionality of 1.8.2, but everything I have seen so far shows that this tool has grown leaps and bounds from when we started out with version 1.4. Even 1.6.6 --> 1.8.2 has some major improvements that has really make this a top-notch tool. I am stumbling onto some enhancements that just make me say "wow, that's awesome!" when I find them. Guess I should really take some time now and read the "What's new in 1.8.2" section.
Obviously, not everyone has the luxury to be able to procure a Zabbix support package or use their professional services, but as someone who has experienced what they have to offer in these areas, I highly recommend them.
In the last 2 years I have opened no less than 50 support issues. Many of these basically came about when testing going into 1.8.2 and pre 1.8.3.
Their support practices and ethics are superb. As long as you do your part in providing them with enough information to investigate the issue, they will diligently work to provide you a solution and then ask if that solution is OK with you. It is very much an interactive and collaborative effort, and I think that is something that has fallen by the wayside for some other companies.
Don't get me wrong, 1.8.2 isn't perfect, but it is a damn fine performance monitoring tool, and in my opinion, the best one that is out there.
Now if I can just get a clock to place on my screens to tell me the time on remote hosts...
Jeff
I work for a large retail company with a large IT infrastructure. For the past 2 years we have been doing a POC with Zabbix, starting out in 2008 with a 1.4.x version. At version 1.6 we started monitoring a small percentage of our production servers.
We quickly saw the value and the potential of Zabbix. We purchased the Platinum support package and began putting the Zabbix production infrastructure into place. 1 App server, 1 DB server (SAN storage) and 12 globally located proxies (Not counting our dev and test setups)
We engaged Zabbix Professional services to implement our 1.6.6 --> 1.8.2 upgrade. Not that we didn't have the talent in our company to achieve the upgrade, but we wanted it to be "just right" and wanted it tuned like a Ferrari. Who better to do it than the people who built it?
We will now be going from monitoring 200 hosts in 1.6.6 to monitoring around 3,000 with 1.8.2 on Win, AIX, Solaris, Linux and HP-UX.I was a bit skeptical about the DB conversion. I have a lot of work into my graphs and screens and to lose any of that data or formatting would have been sickening.
I can tell you I am not disappointed in any way with the upgrade. Zabbix staff completed the migration in about 4 hours, including testing and initial tuning. Graph and screen rendering is lightning fast in this version... something that has been lacking in previous versions, IMO. The functionality introduced in 1.8.2 has really taken this to the next level from an administrative point of view. Performance of the Zabbix infrastructure itself has a notable improvement. Zabbix staff will re-evaluate tuning after the setup has been operational for awhile and make any fine-tuning adjustments as needed.
It will take some time for me to discover all the new functionality of 1.8.2, but everything I have seen so far shows that this tool has grown leaps and bounds from when we started out with version 1.4. Even 1.6.6 --> 1.8.2 has some major improvements that has really make this a top-notch tool. I am stumbling onto some enhancements that just make me say "wow, that's awesome!" when I find them. Guess I should really take some time now and read the "What's new in 1.8.2" section.
Obviously, not everyone has the luxury to be able to procure a Zabbix support package or use their professional services, but as someone who has experienced what they have to offer in these areas, I highly recommend them.
In the last 2 years I have opened no less than 50 support issues. Many of these basically came about when testing going into 1.8.2 and pre 1.8.3.
Their support practices and ethics are superb. As long as you do your part in providing them with enough information to investigate the issue, they will diligently work to provide you a solution and then ask if that solution is OK with you. It is very much an interactive and collaborative effort, and I think that is something that has fallen by the wayside for some other companies.
Don't get me wrong, 1.8.2 isn't perfect, but it is a damn fine performance monitoring tool, and in my opinion, the best one that is out there.
Now if I can just get a clock to place on my screens to tell me the time on remote hosts...
Jeff
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