All posts by Jekaterina Petruhina

Zabbix 5 IT Infrastructure Monitoring Cookbook: Interview with the Co-Author

Post Syndicated from Jekaterina Petruhina original https://blog.zabbix.com/zabbix-5-it-infrastructure-monitoring-cookbook-interview-with-the-co-author/13439/

Active Zabbix community members Nathan Liefting and Brian van Baekel wrote a new book on Zabbix, sharing their years of monitoring experience. Nathan Liefting kindly agreed to share with us how the idea for Monitoring Cookbook was born and revealed the main topics covered.

Hi Nathan, congratulations on writing the book. Welcome to the Zabbix contributor community! First, introduce yourself. What is your experience in Zabbix?

Thank you, I’m very proud to have the opportunity to work with Brian van Baekel on this book and very grateful for the work our publisher Packt has put into it as well. My name is Nathan Liefting. I work for the company Opensource ICT Solutions, where I’m a full-time IT consultant and certified Zabbix Trainer.
My first introduction to Zabbix was back in 2016. We were in the process of upgrading a Zabbix 2 instance to the newly released Zabbix 3.0. As a Network Consultant, I was immediately very intrigued by the monitoring system and its capabilities in terms of customization compared to other monitoring solutions.
Since then, I’ve always worked with Zabbix, and when I was working for Managed Service Provider True in Amsterdam, I set up a new Zabbix setup to migrate from the old monitoring solution.

How did you have the idea for the book?

That’s a good question. You might know Patrik Uytterhoeven from Openfuture BV. He wrote the Zabbix 3 cookbook for Packt. Patrik was kind enough to recommend Brian and me to write the new Zabbix 5 cookbook, and from there on out, we started work on it.

Who is your reader? Who would benefit from the book primarily?

The book is about 350 pages, and of course, we can’t explain everything Zabbix has to offer in that page count. So we focus the cookbook on Zabbix beginners that would like to get on that intermediate level. We detail basic topics like data collection with different methods and more advanced topics like the Zabbix API and database partitioning.

I am convinced that the book contains a recipe for everyone that works with Zabbix, and it’s basically a foundation of knowledge that anyone could fall back on. See it as your starter field guide into professionally working with Zabbix.

Do readers need any prior skills in monitoring with Zabbix to master the new knowledge as efficiently as possible?

Definitely not. We detail everything from installation to how to monitor and more advanced topics. Start at chapter 1 with no knowledge about Zabbix whatsoever, and you can read the book. If you think a recipe is about something you already know, simply skip it and read the next one. We wrote the recipes to be as independent of each other as possible, so beginners and more advanced users can get used to the book.

Could you tell us about the content of the book? What information does it provide?

I would like to say everything is covered, but that would be a dream scenario. The book grasps the surface of almost everything you need to know to work professionally with Zabbix. If you know Zabbix, you know it’s possible to write 100 pages about triggers alone. Of course, this would be counterproductive for starters. We kept the recipes graspable for beginners, with valuable information for more advanced users.
Some topics we go over are:

  • Zabbix setup and how to use it
  • Setting up the different Zabbix monitoring item types
  • Working with triggers and alerts
  • Building structured templates according to best practice
  • Visualizing data with graphs, dashboards, etc.
  • Zabbix host discovery and low-level discovery
  • Zabbix proxies
  • Zabbix integrations with media like Microsoft Teams and Slack
  • Zabbix API and custom integrations
  • Upgrading components, database partitioning, and performance management
  • Zabbix in the cloud

There are now many online resources about Zabbix – forums, blogs, YouTube channels. Why did you decide to opt for the print format?

I’m a big fan of sharing resources online, don’t get me wrong. But to me, there is nothing better than an old-fashioned book to have at the ready when I need it. I can read it, and at one point, I’m thinking, “Wait! I read something that could solve our problem”.
Printed media is not dead if you ask me. In my eyes, a book is still the best way to prepare yourself for any subject in IT. But even if you don’t like printed media, we over an amazing collection of information in the old paper format as well as an eBook.

What was your Zabbix learning path? Which resources did you found the best to gather Zabbix knowledge?

Definitely Zabbix official courses. I loved those so much I couldn’t wait to get my trainer certification myself. Now that I have it, I’m providing the official training myself and sharing the Zabbix knowledge I’ve acquired over the years with others like in the book.
Of course, the amazing Zabbix community offers great ways to share knowledge, for example, the Zabbix blog. I used those as well and even templates found on the Zabbix share to reverse engineers them and see how people worked.

Where will the book be available to purchase?

You can find the book on Amazon here.

When you purchase the book, please leave a review, as this really helps us spread the word about the book. I will personally read every review, so I’d love to hear any feedback on the book to improve later revisions and new releases.
If you’re reading this after purchasing, thank you very much for the support. I hope you enjoy the work.

Do you have any further plans for new books?

I’ve just finished writing this book, and it is a significant impact on personal time. I will definitely consider writing another book, but for now, I’ll focus on sharing content for Opensource ICT Solutions and on my personal website. Besides IT engineering, I also like to create other content, like my photography work, which I share on this website.

Thank you 2020: Results, Achievements, and Plans

Post Syndicated from Jekaterina Petruhina original https://blog.zabbix.com/thank-you-2020-results-achievements-and-plans/13184/

2020 was not an easy year, but it challenged and taught us a lot. Let’s sum up the past year’s results together and make some plans for the next one.

Going online

Despite the worldwide lockdown and the entire team’s inability to work from the office, Zabbix continued to evolve and get better. The Zabbix 5.0 release was the first release to be done remotely – without the usual cake and “family” celebration on release day in our cozy office kitchen. Version 5.2 also followed remotely, with the already familiar online celebration in Zoom.

Unexpectedly we had to change the vector of planned activities. In January 2020, we expected to hold ten conferences in different countries of the world. But in reality, due to the pandemic and the restrictions it caused, we were only able to have a few: Zabbix Conference Benelux 2020, Zabbix Conference China 2020, and Zabbix Conference Japan 2020.

In 2020, we were going to have the biggest Zabbix Summit ever – the 10th-anniversary event. But plans changed, and instead, we held our first online Zabbix Summit. Given the unusual format of a traditional Zabbix Summit – it turned out very successful and proved the online version also could be sustainable.  We are grateful to all the speakers and guests who supported us and joined the event.

We can say that 2020 was all about online events. We start a good tradition to hold Zabbix meetups online and received positive feedback from the community. Thanks to our partners’ support, online meetups have been held not only in English and Russian but also in Czech, Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, and Polish. We will continue this tradition for sure, providing our users worldwide to learn Zabbix, share their experience, and meet co-thinkers. Remember that we always record the meetups for you to have access to presentations when it is required. Recordings are available on our website’s event section under each event.

Conquering the world

One of the most important events of 2020 for Zabbix was the opening of the office in Brazil. The software and professional services are now even more accessible to Latin American users thanks to language localization and the branch office’s closeness. We are happy to be part of one of Zabbix’s most active communities worldwide and being able to cooperate on a much greater level. We have expanded our Latin American branch with new Zabbix professionals, partners, and initiatives during last year.

We are also proud of making Zabbix more reachable for different language users – with our Latin American office, we opened Zabbix Spanish and Portuguese web page and thanks to our active partners – also German site. Now we are working on more languages to make our open source solution even more open.

As for the overall results, we can share with you some statistics

Our integration team has been very active over the past year and has released many useful templates. In total, their efforts resulted in 42 new templates and 20 new Webhook integrations.

Zabbix partnership network has also grown. Zabbix Partnership program creates a worldwide network of trustful and highly skilled companies ready to provide immediate technical assistance and become an accessible intermediary between you and the Zabbix team. This network has now grown by 40+ partners worldwide, resulting in around 200 partners for now.

In the past year, we rethought the professional training program and expanded it with extra training – one-day courses for in-depth study of one specific topic. These courses differ from the rest of the program by having no requirements. You can get extra knowledge about monitoring with Zabbix without Zabbix certification. Four additional training courses are available now, but we are working on the next topics to provide you.

Note that we have already published many training sessions for this year, so now is an excellent time to choose and book the courses and timing that suit you best. Don’t forget to use the filter – you can quickly sort courses by language, level, and location (online or on-site).

Speaking of statistics for last year, thanks to the Zabbix team and partners’ efforts, there were 203 training sessions in total. Altogether, 1,214 official Zabbix certificates were awarded to the training attendees who successfully mastered the material and passed the exam.

But education doesn’t end with training. Webinars are an excellent opportunity to learn different aspects of Zabbix for free. Note that we have also added the ability to watch recorded sessions at your convenience. And we also want to remind you not to forget to use the filter to navigate between sessions. We cover many topics in many different languages, and we want to make sure you don’t miss out on learning the material. Last year we hosted 245 webinar sessions (including 55 sessions held by Zabbix partners worldwide), and we hope it was beneficial for our community.

A sneak peek to 2021

So what can we expect from Zabbix in the new year of 2021? Lots of things! We are not going to stop and continue to work hard. The Zabbix software development roadmap is available on our website. Feel free to explore the features we are working on right now! We will continue to hold meetups, covering complex technical issues. As for the Zabbix Summit 2021, we are also planning to have it online in October 2021. The first experience was a success, so why not strengthen the achieved result. And as for other news, keep an eye on our updates here on the blog, social media, and newsletter. We have an exciting year ahead of us, so let’s make the most of it!

 

Zabbix Summit Online 2020: Remote Experience of Sharing Knowledge and Being Together

Post Syndicated from Jekaterina Petruhina original https://blog.zabbix.com/zabbix-summit-online-2020-remote-experience-of-sharing-knowledge-and-being-together/12526/

Zabbix Summit 2020 was supposed to be the greatest Zabbix event of the decade – we planned to celebrate the 10th anniversary Zabbix Summit. But the very different 2020 circumstances intervened, and we had to adjust to the new reality and shift our focus. It so happened that in 2020 we held not the tenth anniversary but the first online Zabbix summit.


Available for everyone

When it was evident that the on-site event is not an option, we made a decision – the event should be available for everyone, and we made it free of charge. The other task was to manage the timing so that Summit would be available for attendees from all over the globe. We managed it efficiently by making the event as long as it was necessary to be convenient for users from Japan and China, Europe, and the USA and Latin American Region. Yes, it was quite a long day for Zabbix Team. However, we achieved what we were aiming for – about 8000 Zabbix enthusiasts from worldwide joined the Zabbix Summit live stream. This year, it became available to have extensive speeches from all regions, because the traveling issue was solved.

We made the most of the focus on the recently released Zabbix 5.2. And of course, we left enough place for use cases and professional tips as well. If, for some reason, you couldn’t join us on October 30, you are always welcome to watch the speeches in the record.

 

Traditionally every Zabbix Summit delivers an option to attend hands-on workshops. Due to the online format, it was possible to run more workshop sessions than in previous years, and attendees could join as many sessions as they wanted. Moreover, the workshops have been recorded and now are available on the Zabbix website.

Summit fun

Every Zabbix Summit is all about networking and fun. Let’s be honest, this unofficial part means a lot for the community along with the agenda. Unfortunately, we couldn’t meet in person this time and have fun all together at parties. Still, the community chat in Telegram made it clear – there are no boundaries for you guys to keep in touch, discuss ideas, and communicate. You made the networking part exist this year, and we are delighted and grateful for seeing such enthusiasm, activity, and interest in Zabbix. We provided the Summit attendees opportunity to communicate with the Zabbix Sales and Technical team, get acquainted with the event’s sponsors, and ask the questions via special Zoom rooms, and it worked well. Even though there were hundreds and hundreds of thousands of kilometers between the visitors of the event, there was a feeling that it happens here and now – with an audience full of interested people looking for opportunities to learn new things and help others.

What about next year?

Well, we think positive, however, stay realistic. Thus Zabbix Summit 2021 will also be held online.

If you care for better further events organized by Zabbix, we encourage you to fill out this post-Summit survey. It will help us understand what we have to improve to make Zabbix Summit Online 2021 even more generous. 

PS: Take a break and look at some behind the scenes photos – how the Zabbix Summit 2020 looked from the inside.