Zabbix Performance Tuning

Luciano Alves

• Verlag: Packt Publishing
• Jahr: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781783987641
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Computer Science
• Thema: System Administration

Zabbix Performance Tuning

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Table of Contents

Zabbix Performance Tuning

Credits

Foreword

About the Author

Acknowledgements

About the Reviewers

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Free access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Evolution of Zabbix

Starting our journey

Choosing the right tool

The first wrong step with Zabbix

Getting started with Zabbix

Good practice

Simplifying Zabbix

Challenges in Zabbix

List of don'ts

Starting a Zabbix deployment without planning

Use of default templates

Use of default database settings

The beginning of the real challenge

Summary

2. Zabbix and I – Almost Heroes

After starting Zabbix – the initial steps

The natural growth

Beyond infrastructure

The Internet of Things wave

Everyone knows about Zabbix

Improvements in Zabbix

Talking about performance

Summary

3. Tuning the Zabbix Server

Item types and performance issues

Zabbix data types and SQL fields

Active items – a forgotten option

Triggers

Trends and history storage time

History tables

Trend tables

Caches and buffers

Can default templates be the villains?

DBSyncers – the unknown bottleneck

Summary

4. Tuning the MySQL Database

Comparisons between databases

The main configuration parameters

innodb_buffer_pool_size

innodb_buffer_pool_instances

innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit

innodb_flush_method

innodb_log_file_size

innodb_io_capacity

tmpdir

Tuning for reading or writing

Summary

5. Tuning the Frontend

The usual complaints

Differences between web servers

The main configuration parameters

Compression in Apache

Compression in lighttpd

Compression in Nginx

Testing compression

Other alternatives

Summary

6. Adjusting the Storage

Choosing between shared and local storage

Configuring the storage for performance

Small, medium, or large environments?

What do I need for my environment?

Summary

7. Tuning the Operating System

Linux distributions and Zabbix

The necessary adjustments in the Kernel

User-level FD limits

Kernel-level FD limits

Changing swap behavior

Changing IO schedulers

The network parameters

Summary

8. Doing the Extra Work

Dividing the components

Specifying the hardware for each component

Partitioning tables

Summary

9. Using the Zabbix Proxy

The Zabbix proxy and Zabbix performance

The first steps with the Zabbix proxy

The firewall settings

Hardware for the Zabbix proxy

Summary

10. Monitoring the Health of Zabbix

The Zabbix queue

Server and proxy internal items

Database performance items

Summary

11. The Next Challenge

Identifying the sponsors of Zabbix

The demands in business areas

Developing dashboards

Zabbix reports

IT services or SLA reports

Summary

Index

Zabbix Performance Tuning

Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing

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Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

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First published: June 2015

Production reference: 1250615

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78398-764-1

www.packtpub.com

Credits

Author

Luciano Alves

Reviewers

Gabriele Armao

Jean-Jacques Martrès

Renjie Yao

Acquisition Editor

Reshma Raman

Content Development Editor

Adrian Raposo

Technical Editors

Tanmayee Patil

Shiny Poojary

Copy Editor

Vikrant Phadke

Project Coordinator

Kinjal Bari

Proofreader

Safis Editing

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Graphics

Jason Monteiro

Production Coordinator

Melwyn D'sa

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

Foreword

Zabbix performance tuning is an important topic when it comes to the use of Zabbix to monitor a large number of network devices. I think most Zabbix users have experienced performance-related issues in some way or the other. These can be because of non-optimal configuration parameters of the Zabbix server or proxy, use of default settings for MySQL, the PostgreSQL configuration, or other reasons.

This book is quite unique. It focuses only on performance-related topics, and does so extremely well. Luciano is one of the most knowledgeable and active Zabbix users and community members. The first time I met him was in Brazil in 2008, and I was impressed by his deep understanding of Zabbix's internals and the great ideas that he always has. He has a unique combination of real-world experience and a strong technical background.

Regardless of how you use Zabbix and the size of your deployment, this book will give you enough information to be confident that Zabbix will deliver the level of scalability you need.

Read it; you won't be disappointed!

Alexei Vladishev

Creator of Zabbix

About the Author

Luciano Alves is Brazilian. He lives in the city of Porto Alegre in southern Brazil. He has been a Zabbix evangelist since 2007. Since 1994, he has been working to support the ICT infrastructure using his expertise in targeting and monitoring platforms. Luciano has had Zabbix professional certifications since 2008, and in 2012, he became one of the first official instructors outside of Zabbix SIA. He has trained over 200 professionals from different countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Chile, Spain, and Colombia) to work with the Zabbix monitoring platform.

He is the founder of Unirede Soluções Corporativas, one of the main global partners of Zabbix SIA and currently the only premium partner in all of the Americas. Luciano is also a speaker at open source events, always talking about Zabbix. Besides this, he is a moderator of the official Zabbix forums in Portuguese and Spanish, and has worked on the translation of the official documentation into Portuguese.

Acknowledgements

No doubt, this book would not have been possible without the support of the competent technical body of Unirede Soluções Corporativas. These brave warriors were indispensable, discussing and supporting the testing and proof of concepts that were performed to support the content of several chapters. Then, there is also a special mention for Mr. Alisson Oliveira and Mr. Thiago Melo, who have ...