All posts by Michael Kammer

Providing Best-in-Class Security with Heather Diaz of fTLD Registry

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/providing-best-in-class-security-with-heather-diaz-of-ftld-registry/28585/

As the Vice President of Compliance and Policy at fTLD Registry Services, Heather Diaz is a security expert with over a decade of experience in ensuring the legal, compliance, and strategic alignment of the top-level domains .Bank and .Insurance. She is a compliance and ethics professional and leads the policy and security compliance functions at fTLD.

We sat down with her to learn more about how Zabbix makes her job easier, why she appreciates the inherent flexibility of our solutions, and how she works with our team to help make sure fTLD’s domains are as secure as they can possibly be.

Can you give us a bit of background on fTLD and what it does? What makes your business proposition stand out?

fTLD Registry is the domain authority for .Bank and .Insurance – the most trusted and exclusive domain extensions for banks, insurers, and producers. Our mission is to offer these industry-created and governed domains a shield against cyberattacks and fraud, delivering peace of mind with website and email security.

Since 2011, fTLD Registry has collaborated with experts in cybersecurity, domain security, and the banking and insurance sectors to develop Security Requirements that mitigate cyber threats such as phishing, spoofing, cybersquatting, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Why is monitoring especially important for fTLD?

Security monitoring is a key value for .Bankers (banks who have switched to .Bank) and our .Insurance customers as well. They receive reporting from our customized Zabbix monitoring system whenever security vulnerabilities are detected. This ensures we provide proactive compliance security monitoring, which allows them to address any findings and keep their .Bank and .Insurance websites and email channels secure.

Are there any specific points you were looking to address with a new monitoring approach?

fTLD has continued to enhance our security requirements for .Bank and .Insurance to address new and evolving cybersecurity threats and provide more secure and trusted online interactions for the financial services sector and their customers. We do this by partnering with Zabbix’s security experts and engineers to make sure our security requirements and monitoring continue to provide best-in-class domain security for .Bank and .Insurance.

Can you please share any business or operational areas that have seen improvements since implementing Zabbix?

Our compliance area has enjoyed having time to engage with .Bank and .Insurance customers to educate them about how to address any security vulnerabilities, as the Zabbix system takes care of sending notifications and warnings to our customers. Not only that, the Zabbix system gives us a dashboard with easy-to-interpret metrics, the ability to generate ad-hoc reporting, and with a number of important data elements integrated, such as customer contact information and their domain status (e.g., live), so our team can always have secure employee access to security monitoring data no matter where in the world we are working. Here are just some of the external interfaces, Agent2 plugins, and custom notifications we developed together with the Zabbix team.

External interfaces:

  • ICANN CZDS (to get a list of zones)
  • Whois (to get zone and registrar details)
  • CRM (to get a list of verification contacts)
  • Marketing system (to get a list of additional zone details)
  • Subdomain discoverer (to discover zone records)

Agent2 plugins

  • DNSSEC plugin (for DNSSEC-related checks)
  • Nameservers plugin (to perform nameserver-related checks)
  • Certificate plugin (to validate TLS ciphers and certificates)
  • Port check plugin (to check what ports are open and verify the security of opened ports)
  • DMARC/SPF plugin (to check presence and validity of DMARC and SPF records)
  • Web redirect plugin (to check validity of HTTP headers and redirects)

Notifications

  • Media types to send compliance reports

Is there anything else you’d like to share about Zabbix and our capabilities?

Zabbix is a great partner for security monitoring, as they’re willing to develop new features to provide a service that meets our exacting business requirements and their support is highly responsive. Most solutions come as they are. With Zabbix, we were able to customize and adapt their solution when new needs came up. My favorite feature is how we provide automated reporting to our customers and key stakeholders – it’s all automated and handled by the Zabbix platform.

The post Providing Best-in-Class Security with Heather Diaz of fTLD Registry appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Reducing Alert Noise with Birol Yildiz

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/reducing-alert-noise-with-birol-yildiz/28643/

Zabbix Summit 2024 is almost here, and we’re giving you a sneak peek into what you can expect to see on our main stage this year via a series of short interviews with a few of the eminent speakers who will grace us with their presence. First up is Birol Yildiz, the CEO and Co-founder of ilert GmbH and a man who is deeply passionate about keeping alert noise and fatigue to a minimum.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and the journey that led you to ilert GmbH.

My journey in the tech industry began with a deep passion for creating solutions that simplify and improve the lives of IT professionals. Before co-founding ilert GmbH, I spent over a decade working in various IT roles, ranging from software development to operations. I noticed that while monitoring systems were becoming increasingly sophisticated, the process of alert management and incident response was lagging behind.

This gap inspired me to create ilert, a platform focused on bridging that divide by optimizing alerting processes and reducing response times. Our goal at ilert has always been to empower teams with the tools they need to stay ahead of incidents, ensuring that their systems run smoothly and efficiently.

How long have you been using Zabbix? What kind of Zabbix-related tasks are you involved in on a daily basis?

Zabbix has been an integral part of ilert since 2018, when we first developed one of our early integrations with the platform. Recognizing its popularity among our customer base, we enhanced this integration in 2020, transforming it into a native integration and solidifying our partnership with Zabbix as a technology partner. Since then, Zabbix has become one of the most popular integrations within ilert.

On a daily basis, my involvement with Zabbix includes overseeing the continued optimization of our integration, ensuring that it meets the evolving needs of our users. I work closely with our development and support teams to identify and implement improvements based on user feedback and the latest developments from Zabbix.

Can you give us a few clues about what we can expect to hear during your Zabbix Summit presentation?

Alert fatigue has long been a significant challenge for the DevOps community, often leading to decreased efficiency and increased stress among professionals. In my presentation, we will explore innovative strategies that leverage AI to mitigate alert noise.

I’ll be discussing how to maximize the efficiency of your incident response process by leveraging Zabbix with advanced alerting and on-call management tools like ilert. I’ll share insights on reducing alert fatigue, improving incident response times, and ensuring that critical alerts reach the right people at the right time.

This talk will be particularly valuable for DevOps engineers looking to optimize their alert management systems and reduce the cognitive load caused by alert fatigue. Zabbix administrators will find it insightful, especially if they are interested in integrating advanced AI techniques into their monitoring workflows to achieve better performance and reliability.

Moreover, AI and machine learning enthusiasts will gain practical knowledge about applying AI in IT monitoring and alerting, making this session a comprehensive resource for anyone looking to advance their alert management strategies.

Reducing alert noise is something that’s on almost everyone’s wish list, but was there any particular incident or aspect of your professional life that made you want to focus on this topic?

Absolutely. There was a specific incident early in my career that left a lasting impact on me. We were using a monitoring system that generated a significant number of alerts, most of which were non-critical. One weekend, a critical issue was buried in a flood of low-priority alerts, leading to a delayed response and significant downtime for the business.

This incident underscored the importance of not just having a monitoring system in place but ensuring that it was configured to minimize noise and prioritize what truly matters. That experience drove me to focus on creating solutions that help teams filter out the noise and respond quickly to what’s really important, which is a core principle behind ilert’s offerings.

Are there any other similar issues that you can envision tackling with Zabbix?

Yes, beyond reducing alert noise, there’s a lot of potential in enhancing the collaboration between teams during incidents. For example, automating incident communication and resolution processes is an area where I see great value. By integrating Zabbix with incident management platforms like ilert, teams can not only reduce noise but also streamline communication, ensuring that the right people are involved at the right time and that resolution steps are clear and actionable.

Another area is optimizing the way multiple on-call teams work together using Zabbix and incident response platforms like ilert. In many organizations, different teams are responsible for specific sets of host groups in Zabbix, and it’s crucial that each team only receives alerts for the services they are directly responsible for. These are just a few examples of how we can continue to evolve our approach to incident management in conjunction with Zabbix.

The post Reducing Alert Noise with Birol Yildiz appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What’s in Store at Summit ‘24?

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-in-store-at-summit-24/28649/

October means different things to different people – it’s springtime in the Southern Hemisphere, autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and Summit time if you’re a member of the Zabbix community! Summit time, of course, means the biggest of all Zabbix events, gathering the global Zabbix community in one place to have fun together and learn as much as we can from each other. Zabbix Summit 2024 will take place on October 3-5 in Riga at the Radisson Blu Hotel Latvija. Keep reading to find out more about what you can expect this year.

All new main stage presentations

During Zabbix Summit 2024, you’ll be able to catch a variety of presentations from top industry thought leaders. You’ll learn all about the latest Zabbix features, explore use cases from multiple industries, check out the latest integrations, and have the chance to get your questions answered during live Q&A sessions.

The Summit agenda will feature speeches on nearly any Zabbix-related topic that you can imagine, but this year we’ll also have a fresh focus on the potential of artificial intelligence, with presentations on topics like “New Approaches to Reduce Alert Noise with Zabbix and AIOps” and “Leveraging AI for Synthetic Web Monitoring” as well as a more business-focused group of speeches covering topics related to open-source integration and Zabbix for MSPs.

Hands-on learning in Zabbix Summit workshops

Zabbix Summit workshops are the ideal place to put the theory you learn during presentations into practice. You can check out the latest features and use cases in action, while performing a variety of real-world tasks under the guidance of workshop hosts and their assistants – many of whom are also featured presenters at this year’s Summit.

All you’ll need to do is bring your own laptop – depending on the topic covered in the particular workshop, an SSH client and a web browser may also be required. All workshop sessions will take place on the morning of October 5 (Day 2 of the Summit) and will begin at 10AM.

Zabbix Certified Training sessions and exams

Do you have a lifetime of monitoring experience, but are too shy to let everyone know it? When you attend Zabbix Summit 2024, you’ll be able to prove your skills as a Zabbix specialist or professional by taking part in Zabbix Certified Training sessions and exams. If you’re looking for more specific topics to dive into, the following one-day courses will also be held from October 2 through October 4:

  • Automation and Integration with Zabbix API
  • Advanced Problem and Anomaly Detection with Zabbix
  • Advanced Zabbix Data Pre-Processing
  • Advanced Zabbix SNMP Monitoring

If you don’t mind extending your stay in Riga just a bit longer (and seriously, why would you?), you’ll also be able to take the full Zabbix Certified Specialist or Professional courses scheduled for October 9-13. Please remember that you can choose more than one training course, and it’s possible to attend the courses (without the 10% Summit discount) even if you’re not attending the Summit.

You can sign up for all training sessions and exams here.

The Zabbix Summit Feedback and Testimonial corner

Just as at last year’s Summit, you’ll be able to share your Zabbix story with the rest of the Zabbix community at our Feedback and Testimonial corner. Sharing a testimonial or leaving a review will give you a chance to collect a piece of exclusive Zabbix Summit 2024 merchandise!

Exclusive items, cool new designs, and unique gadgets at our merchandise shop

Speaking of merch, you’ll be pleased to know that not only will exclusive Zabbix Summit merchandise be available at a special stand throughout the event, but we’ll also have an online platform that will allow you to pre-order your merchandise and pick it up at the Summit. We’ve got 5 exclusive new t-shirt designs, 4 fresh sock designs, brand-new beanies, and the usual assortment of gadgets, hoodies, and other merch that our fans have come to know and love – most of which has also gotten a new look for this year’s Summit as well.

Three incredible Zabbix Summit 2024 networking events

There’s a lot to take in and consider at a Zabbix Summit, but don’t worry – we’ve also made sure to give you plenty of time to network with your fellow Zabbix fans by organizing three big events that you won’t want to miss!

  • The Zabbix Summit 2024 welcome event will be held at the famous National Library of Latvia – or as Latvians call it, “The Castle of Light.” You’ll enjoy tasty beverages, delicious food, and a guided tour of the library as you mingle with fellow Zabbix enthusiasts and industry experts, making this the perfect way to kick off this year’s Summit.
  • You’ll want to prepare yourself for a truly unforgettable experience as the Zabbix Summit main event unfolds. We’re sure that you’ll find Riga’s famous Fantadroms Concert and Event Space to be the ideal place to forge valuable connections with like-minded professionals – while indulging in a unique array of culinary delights, refreshing beverages, and great music.
  • After all that, we’ll send you on your way with a closing event that will be the perfect grand finale to a Summit that you won’t soon forget! Located in the heart of Old Riga, Burzma is a food hall that spans 1,500 square meters across the entire fourth floor of a bustling shopping mall. With stunning rooftop views to inspire your dining experience, Burzma offers 10 restaurants and a bar serving up a diverse range of culinary delights.

A chance to see where the magic happens during our Open-Door day

In what has become a popular tradition, Zabbix will host an Open-Door day on Thursday, October 3 from 1PM to 3PM local time. You’ll be able to chat with Zabbix team members, tour our headquarters, and take part in a fun activity designed to help you learn more about Zabbix.

Booths galore!

As usual, the Zabbix team will have multiple booths in the conference hall where you can meet our engineers and developers and get your questions answered by the people who know best. Our Summit sponsors will have booths of their own as well, where you can enjoy a unique opportunity to interact with them on a personal level and get the lowdown on the solutions they offer.

Special events for support customers

All Zabbix support customers are invited to meet our team at a special Zabbix client lunch on October 3 at 14:00 (EEST), with the exact location to be announced at a later date. What’s more, Enterprise and Global support customers are also invited to the Zabbix roadmap Q&A session with Zabbix CEO and Founder Alexei Vladishev on October 5 at 10AM. You’ll learn about our software development plans and be able to raise questions or make suggestions based on your experience – definitely an opportunity you won’t want to miss!

Which Zabbix Summit ticket is right for you?

If you want to enjoy the full Zabbix Summit experience (conference, accommodation, food, even airport transfers), the Full Participation ticket package is definitely for you.

For loyal users who have contributed so much to our product over the years, the Zabbix Fan package is definitely the way to go – it includes everything you’ll get with the Full Participation package, plus a special official fan package that will guarantee you bragging rights in your office once you return from Riga.

If you’re only there for the sessions, the Hall only pass is ideal. If you enjoy both learning and networking with our team and enthusiasts from around the world, we think you’ll find the Hall and Networking pass to be perfect for your needs.

Want to bring a friend or partner along to the summit? No problem — get a Zabbix Summit Travel Companion pass for them so you can stay together and attend networking events, while we handle the rest of their Riga experience.

The Companion pass includes 3 nights’ accommodation in the Radisson Blu Latvija hotel (in the same room as the Summit attendee), 3 breakfasts, and 3 networking events, but that’s not all – we’ll also include an exclusive tour of Riga on October 4 with an English-speaking guide.

The tour features a visit to the Ethnographic Open-Air Museum of Latvia, and runs from approximately 10AM to 4PM, including lunch and some workshop activities at the museum. You can learn more about the museum here.

Visit this page to sign up for the ticket package of your choice.

Livestreaming on YouTube

We hope to see you soon in Riga, but if you can’t make it, don’t worry – as in previous years, we’re going to be livestreaming the speeches on our YouTube channel! Stay tuned for more details.

The post What’s in Store at Summit ‘24? appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Open-Source Security: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/open-source-security-the-zabbix-advantage/28523/

At Zabbix, we’ve championed the open-source movement, with its emphasis on openness, transparency, and cooperation, from day one. Because of this, prospective customers and partners often have questions about the security of our product – the fear being that open-source software is somehow less secure than proprietary software.

In this post, we’ll provide a bit of background regarding how open-source software works, explain why fears about the security of open-source software are largely unfounded, and provide an overview of how the Zabbix team works to make sure that our product is as secure as it can possibly be.

A short open-source primer

At its most basic, open-source software is code that is available for anyone to modify and share in either its original or modified forms. It lets developers share their work without the restrictions of a proprietary license. The open-source movement is based on collaborative development and encourages the creation of high-quality software by tapping into the creativity and enthusiasm of a global community of developers.

Zabbix itself is an open-source solution covered by the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3). The Zabbix source code is readily available and can be redistributed or modified – anyone with a great idea can create their own version of Zabbix. Apart from Zabbix, many well-known and widely used software solutions have emerged from the open-source movement, including Mozilla’s Firefox browser, the WordPress content management system, VLC Media Player, and the Linux operating system.

Open-source software and security

Data security is an issue that unites every company (and therefore every potential partner or client). Developers are constantly on the lookout for solutions that follow up-to-the-minute data and application security best practices in order to reduce risk and give users the most secure experience possible.

A common debate among both users and developers is whether open-source software is secure enough when compared to closed source alternatives. The good news is that there are massive efforts underway to help make sure that the open-source community is as safe as possible.

The Linux Foundation’s Community Health Analytics Open Source Software (CHAOSS) is a project that’s focused on creating a standard set of metrics and software to help define open source community health, and its GrimoireLab tool in particular makes it much easier for open-source projects to analyze and report their community health metrics.

Opinions vary regarding what makes for a truly secure environment, but quite possibly the biggest security advantage of open-source software is its transparency.

If you see something, say something

Open-source code is available for anyone to review, modify, and distribute. “Hold up,” you may be thinking – “If someone can see the whole code, can’t they just take advantage of a vulnerability if they see it?” The answer is that someone could certainly exploit a vulnerability, but because everybody can also see the code, there’s a far higher probability that someone else has also noticed the vulnerability in question and taken steps to correct it.

With open-source code, it’s usually much easier to get in touch with the developers and report issues directly to them than it is with a closed source project. This means a faster resolution of most security issues. Not only that, because the public is often allowed and encouraged to submit code improvements directly to the developers, anyone could submit the code to fix a vulnerability as a part of them reporting an issue. This leads to rigorous security scrutiny, with many eyes on the code, identifying and reporting vulnerabilities.

Think of it as the equivalent of a “neighborhood watch” program, in which organized groups of civilians devote themselves to crime and vandalism prevention within a neighborhood, ultimately making it safer and more secure for everyone.

No “waiting game” for updates

With standard closed source (or proprietary) software, users are completely at the mercy of the companies behind the software when it comes to getting software updates. Updates and fixes for high-profile closed source applications usually involve a great deal of complicated planning, and if there’s no budget or resources available, users might go months or even years before they see a new update, whether there are glaring security flaws or not.

Open-source solutions are also more agile when it comes to iterating and releasing new versions. This is down to any number of reasons, including the fact that open-source software has more eyes on the source code at any given time, plus a community-driven interest in making the product as good as it can be.

The Zabbix advantage

At Zabbix, we’ve long benefited from the inherent security advantages of being open-source. Because we’re enterprise-level open-source software, we’ve been able to adopt a “best of both worlds” approach that combines the flexibility and community policing of open-source with the knowledge that only a dedicated team of in-house security experts and robust security policies can provide.

If a member of our community notices a security vulnerability, the best way to make sure that it gets fixed as quickly as possible if for them to create a new issue in the Zabbix Security Reports (ZBXSEC) section of the public bug tracker, describing the problem (and a proposed solution if possible) in detail. This helps us make sure that only the Zabbix security team and the reporter have access to the case.

At that point, the Zabbix Security team reviews the issue and evaluates its potential impact. The team then works on the issue to provide a solution, creating new packages and making them available for download. Clients with support agreements are informed about security vulnerabilities that have been addressed and fixed, and given a window of opportunity to upgrade before the issue becomes known to the public. After that, a public announcement for the community is made.

Another potential security risk involves complex dependencies on other open-source libraries, where each dependency can introduce vulnerabilities if not properly managed. A perfect example of this is 2023’s repojacking attack on GitHub, in which a critical vulnerability in an open-source repository led to the exposure of over 4,000 other repositories.

To minimize the possibility of these supply chain attacks, we use tools that can generate an SBOM (Software Bill of Materials), which is basically a list of ingredients that make up software components. This makes it easy to keep track of each individual ingredient and take appropriate actions in the event of a red flag. What’s more, the fact that our clients are the sole owners of their data eliminates another potential source of security issues – unlike with other software vendors, there is no risk of an attacker accessing systems running Zabbix.

As an additional line of defense, we work with HackerOne, the world’s leading platform for ethical hackers, to maintain a Zabbix-specific bug bounty program that challenges the world’s most elite ethical hackers to find the weak spots in our code and let us know about them in time to fix them. We’re proud of the way that our community has done their part to help us make Zabbix as secure as possible, and we’re confident that with a few refinements we can pay out even more bug bounties in the future.

To learn more about the Zabbix approach to open-source security, please visit our website or get in touch with us.

The post Open-Source Security: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Case Study: Enhancing Security with Zabbix and fTLD Registry

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/case-study-enhancing-security-with-zabbix-and-ftld-registry/28415/

A top-level domain (TLD) is the part of a URL that comes after the last dot in a domain name. While most are familiar with the first TLDs of .com, .net, and .org, there are more than 1,400 TLDs. fTLD Registry (fTLD) is a global coalition of banks, insurance companies, and financial services trade associations who ensure the .Bank and .Insurance TLDs are governed in the best interests of the financial sector and their customers.

The challenge

In 2011, fTLD was formed to secure and manage .Bank and .Insurance. Due to the high risk of fraud in the financial sector, keeping domains (websites and email) secure and out of the hands of malicious actors was paramount – and that can’t be done without close, careful security monitoring. Unfortunately, fTLD was initially dependent on a monitoring solution that required manual compliance work, which made it difficult to get actionable information to its customers and partners. When they began to seek out a replacement solution, fTLD realized that Zabbix promised exactly the features they required, which prompted them to make the switch.

The solution

For every domain in .Bank and .Insurance that meets minimum technical requirements, Zabbix’s system performs multiple security compliance checks. These checks cover a range of domain security features to ensure .Bank and .Insurance websites and email services have implemented a multi-layered domain defense by way of the Security Requirements required by fTLD. Specifically, Zabbix checks and monitors for:

  • Authoritative name servers, which guarantee that the name servers for .Bank and .Insurance websites have the required security features.
  • Enhanced DNS security, which involves the proper validation of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) with strong cryptographic algorithms to prevent unauthorized changes to domain data and cyberattacks, including domain spoofing and domain hijacking.
  • Digital identity and robust encryption, which confirm TLS certificates and TLS version requirements for secure web connections and encrypts all communications for the safe and secure transmission of personal information and financial transactions.
  • Email security, which increases the deliverability of email and checks for the deployment of DMARC and SPF to protect against phishing and spoofing.

When Zabbix detects an issue, it automatically notifies involved parties, including the registrar and the customer using the domain. As a client, fTLD has access to all the security monitoring data via a custom dashboard. Zabbix puts critical compliance security monitoring information at fTLD’s fingertips, helping them make good on their promise of airtight security for banks, insurers, and producers and their customers through .Bank and .Insurance domains.

The results

Heather Diaz, Vice President, Compliance and Policy, leads the security function for fTLD and attests that:

“With Zabbix as a partner, we have peace of mind knowing that domain security is closely monitored. We can then focus on engaging with customers to help them get the full cyber benefits of using .Bank and .Insurance to protect their brand and their customer data.”

By entrusting Zabbix with security monitoring, fTLD has seen a variety of benefits, including:

  • Considerable growth in overall security compliance, as Zabbix monitoring has provided better, more accessible, and more reliable security information.
  • A tangible boost in productivity, thanks to automated customer and partner notifications.
  • A bird’s-eye view of stats across all domains as well as detailed information for individual domains.
  • Adaptive compliance security monitoring through daily checks, which help maintain a proactive defense against cyberattacks.
  • Security expertise from Zabbix to ensure that fTLD’s Security Requirements represent best practices and security measures to ensure the security of .Bank and .Insurance domains and their customers’ well-placed trust.

In conclusion

fTLD is changing the way banks, insurers, and producers around the world interact with their customers by offering trusted, verified, more secure domains. They trust Zabbix to guarantee a multi-layered domain defense strategy by alerting fTLD and its customers to detected anomalies or security issues.

To learn more about what Zabbix can do for customers in banking and finance, visit us here.

The post Case Study: Enhancing Security with Zabbix and fTLD Registry appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Zabbix 7.0 – Everything You Need to Know

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/zabbix-7-0-everything-you-need-to-know/28210/

After plenty of breathless anticipation, we’re proud to announce the release of the latest major Zabbix version – the new and improved Zabbix 7.0 LTS. This release is the direct result of user feedback and delivers a variety of improvements, including cloud-native Zabbix proxy scalability, website transaction monitoring, improved data collection speed and scalability, new dashboard widgets, major network discovery speed improvements, new templates and integrations, and more!

Without further ado, let’s take a whistle-stop tour of what you need to know:

Synthetic end-user web monitoring

Busy enterprises can now monitor multiple websites and applications by defining flexible multi-step browser-based scenarios. 7.0 LTS also makes it easy to capture screenshots of the current website state, collect and visualize website performance and availability metrics, extract, monitor, and analyze web application data, and get alerts when issues are discovered.

Zabbix proxy high availability and load balancing

When it’s time to expand, Zabbix 7.0 LTS makes it easy to scale a Zabbix environment, guaranteeing 100% availability with automatic proxy load balancing and high availability features, including the ability to assign hosts to load-balanced proxy groups and seamlessly scale a Zabbix environment by deploying additional proxies.

Faster, more efficient Zabbix proxies

Zabbix proxy now fully supports in-memory data storage for collected metrics. Users can choose from Disk, Memory, and Hybrid proxy buffer modes, all of which are ideal for embedded hardware. In addition, memory mode enables the support of edge computing use cases. Users can expect 10-100x better proxy performance by switching to memory or hybrid modes, depending on allocated hardware.

Centralized control of data collection timeouts

Centralizing control of data collection timeouts enables better support for metrics and custom checks, taking longer data collection time intervals. Data collection timeouts can be defined per item-type and overridden per proxy or on an individual item level. In addition, timeouts are now fully configurable in the Zabbix GUI or via Zabbix API.

Faster and more scalable data collection

Synchronous poller processes have been replaced with asynchronous pollers, which improves the speed and scalability of metric polling, particularly for agent, SNMP, and HTTP checks. The next metric can now be polled before waiting for a response from a previously requested metric, and up to 1,000 concurrent checks can now be supported per poller process.

New ways to visualize data

A variety of new dashboard widgets have been introduced, with the goal of giving users detailed information about their monitored metrics and infrastructure at a glance.

Dynamic dashboard widget navigation

Speaking of dashboard widgets, a new communication framework has also been introduced for dashboard widgets, enabling communication between widgets, allowing a widget to serve as a data source for other widgets, and dynamically updating information displayed in a dashboard widget based on the data source.

Faster network discovery

Discovering services and hosts has never been easier, thanks to support of parallelization while performing network discovery. Concurrency support allows for massive improvements in network discovery speed and simplifies host and service discovery while scanning large network segments.

Better security via enterprise-grade multi-factor authentication

Out-of-the box support of multi-factor authentication enables enterprise-grade security and added flexibility for configuring user authentication methods. Support MFA providers include time-based one-time Password (TOTP) and Duo Universal Prompt authentication.

More flexible resource discovery and management

Low-level discovery has received a variety of improvements, which enable enhanced host configuration and management flexibility when discovering hosts in complex environments, such as VMware or Kubernetes.

New templates and integrations

In response to user demand, Zabbix 7.0 LTS comes pre-packaged with a range of new templates for the most popular vendors and cloud providers.

Zabbix 7.0 training updates

All Zabbix training materials have been updated based on the new functionalities that have been added to the product since Zabbix 6.0.

Everyone is welcome to sharpen their skills, but if you’re a Zabbix 6.0 Certified Specialist or Certified Professional you can master Zabbix 7.0 LTS in just one day with our Upgrade Courses. As a 7.0 Specialist, you’ll be able to automate user provisioning with the Just-in-time (JIT) feature, monitor websites with new synthetic end-user monitoring, leverage new visualization features, and enhance the speed and performance of your data collection.

The 7.0 Certified Professional course covers proxy group configuration with high availability and load balancing, improved proxy data collection, new SNMP bulk monitoring, and enhanced host discovery for VMware, Kubernetes, and Cloud infrastructures.

We’re also happy to organize private trainings for organizations of any size, so don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Upcoming 7.0 events

If you’re looking for more information regarding Zabbix 7.0, you’re in luck! You can tune in to the “What’s new in Zabbix 7.0” webinar on June 11 at 12 PM CST or June 12 at 10 AM EEST. If you’d prefer a more hands-on approach, the following workshops are also available:

• “Zabbix Proxy High-availability and Load Balancing” (June 18, 6 PM EEST)
• “New Web Monitoring Features in Zabbix 7.0” (June 20, 6 PM EEST)

While you’re at it, feel free to explore Zabbix 7.0 LTS webinars and workshops in other languages. You can also check out worldwide events related to Zabbix 7.0 LTS, including our free in-person meetup in Riga on June 19 and Zabbix Summit 2024 this fall. 

Ready to upgrade or migrate?

With a brand-new version out, there’s never been a better time to take advantage of our upgrade or migration services. Let our team take the risk out of migrating or upgrading to 7.0, giving you the latest version at a lower cost and with minimal disruption to your organization.

Need a consultation about the latest version?

Not sure about how to get the most out of Zabbix 7.0? Our expert consultants can answer any questions related to the architecture of your infrastructure, the implementation of a back-up strategy, and your capacity planning, while providing strategic advice on which 7.0 services are right for you.

Make your contribution as a translator

The Documentation 7.0 translation project is now live, which means that you can help localize Zabbix 7.0 documentation in multiple languages. Your efforts will help make Zabbix accessible to users around the globe, and you’ll also receive a reward for your contributions. The guidelines, which contain essential information about the project, are available here.

Useful links

To see what else is in store for the future, have a look at the Zabbix roadmap.

You can find the instructions and download the new version on the Download page.

Detailed, step-by-step upgrade instructions are available on our Upgrade procedure page.

Learn about new features and changes introduced in Zabbix 7.0 LTS by visiting the What’s new in Zabbix 7.0 page.

The What’s new documentation section provides a detailed description of the new features.

Take a look at the release notes to see the full list of new features and improvements.

 

The post Zabbix 7.0 – Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Making Life Easier for MSPs: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/making-life-easier-for-msps-the-zabbix-advantage/28004/

Times have never been better for managed service providers (MSPs). The demand for remote monitoring services has skyrocketed as cloud adoption rises and working from home becomes the new standard. The number of organizations that trust MSPs with the everyday functioning of their mission-critical IT systems and processes has grown rapidly – nearly 9 out of 10 small and medium enterprises either use or plan to use MSPs to manage their infrastructure.

As a service provider, an MSP needs to be ahead of the curve at all times and adopt a constantly-shifting and evolving set of best practices for remote monitoring and management. At Zabbix, we’ve created the ultimate solution for full-stack IT monitoring, and we’ve built in features and benefits that are designed to make it as easy as possible for MSPs to provide top-quality monitoring to their clients as well. Keep reading to learn more about what makes Zabbix the ideal monitoring tool for any MSP.

There are no limits to what you can monitor with Zabbix

And when we say no limits, we mean no limits! Zabbix literally allows you to monitor anything from the frequency of a baby’s cries to the hydraulic systems on a space station. From hardware to software to middleware, VEP resources, virtual resources, and more, Zabbix is capable of monitoring millions of metrics.  As an MSP, you’re no doubt called upon to tackle anything from basic network and server monitoring to highly advanced cloud, container, and Kubernetes monitoring. Zabbix lets you keep it all under one roof and handle it with a single solution.

You can integrate Zabbix with any client’s systems

Today’s MSP needs to be able to seamlessly integrate their tools and processes with the IT frameworks and ITIL guidelines of their clients as well as their business goals, strategies, and best practices. Zabbix is designed to work with third party solutions and boasts a constantly-growing list of official integrations.

When you’re notified of a potential problem, you can easily forward your alerts to third-party ITSM, helpdesk, and messaging systems, enhance them with the additional information that Zabbix is able to collect, and freely customize the outgoing messages for different clients – just one of the areas where Zabbix stands out as an ideal multitenant solution.

Zabbix makes reporting and analysis simple

MSPs need to be able to quickly generate and share regular reports and analyses with clients, keeping them up to speed on the status, performance, and health of their infrastructure. Ideally, those reports should be clear, concise, and actionable, highlighting key metrics and insights via graphs, charts, and tables, identifying trends, and predicting potential issues. Done right, reporting can enhance service quality and position you as an ideal strategic partner.

When you make the decision to deploy Zabbix scheduled reports, you’ll get daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly overviews of the infrastructures and business services you’ve been tasked to monitor. You can also track the changes performed in your Zabbix instance with our robust and detailed built-in audit logging functionality, all of which is designed to make it as easy as possible for you to keep your clients in the loop.

Zabbix makes data easy to visualize

Much like the world around them, MSPs have become increasingly more data-driven. It’s easy to understand why – when you have critical information right in front of you, it’s easier to see trends you would have otherwise missed, which in turn helps you make better-informed decisions that can help guide you to success.

Zabbix dashboards are built to serve as visual storybooks for your business. They transform complex monitoring metrics into an engaging narrative, presenting intimidating data in an intuitive, insightful layout and making data interpretation simple.

You can customize dashboards, screens, and slideshows to easily track the status of a tenant’s infrastructure, applications, and business services. You can also leverage a wide range of dashboard widgets to aggregate, transform, and graph your data while also tracking your monitoring endpoints on geographical and network maps, identifying the status of the most critical alarms, and sorting your monitoring endpoints by resource usage.

Zabbix makes effective security management easier

When it comes to cyberattacks, MSPs are up against a constantly changing threat landscape, not to mention the challenges they face in protecting diverse, multitenant setups. With Zabbix, you can secure connections to and from your monitoring endpoints either with certificates or via pre-shared key encryption.

Multitenant MSPs can also control access to different Zabbix elements and features by creating unique Zabbix roles for your tenants while taking advantage of the native permission logic to isolate monitoring endpoints between tenants. Host groups and subgroups let you decide what your tenants can see, and encrypted agents help to secure all communication, including proxy-to-server communication.

You can also rely on encrypted communication between Zabbix components as well as flexible permissions, user authentication, and integrations with secret vaults for storing passwords and other sensitive information.

Zabbix is inherently scalable

There are no two ways about it – surviving as an MSP in today’s business environment means being able to scale. The number of customers that you support is likely to vary from year to year or even month to month. In order to add customers without compromising your level of service, you need to scale up. And if your customer base shrinks, you will probably need to decrease the size of your infrastructure and operations in order to avoid spending money on services that your business no longer needs.

By deploying Zabbix proxies and letting them collect and process data on behalf of the primary Zabbix server node, you can easily scale your Zabbix instance as your client base expands – no matter where those clients happen to be. And if you need to scale back your business for any reason, it’s a simple matter of deleting the unused proxies.

Zabbix is uniquely cost-efficient

A key benefit of Zabbix has always been that it’s open-source – there are no license fees associated with using our software, and you’re not locked into an endless, inflexible contract. Meanwhile, our extensive range of competitively-priced professional services are designed to fit the unique needs of MSPs and give you the most effective solutions as quickly as possible.

Perhaps most importantly for a multitenant MSP, Zabbix is built to run without the need for a lot of infrastructure or resources. With Zabbix, you can offer your clients more flexibility than comparable monitoring solutions while dramatically lowering the amount of hardware, CPU power, and costs involved.

Conclusion

In order to serve the constantly evolving needs of their clients, MSPs demand more flexibility and features than ever before – and this naturally extends to the monitoring solutions they choose. Rather than offer a few additional services to target MSPs, we’ve built our business with them in mind, which is why we offer a range of feature-rich technical support plans specifically for MSPs.

To learn more about what Zabbix can do for MSPs like yours, visit our website or request a demo.

The post Making Life Easier for MSPs: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What Makes a Zabbix Conference Benelux Special?

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/what-makes-a-zabbix-conference-benelux-special/27789/

Zabbix has always seen our mission as going beyond simply delivering a product. From the start, building a strong global community has created and supported a better business model, and an important part of building our community is our practice of taking our message to the places where our users, partners, and potential clients live and work.

That’s where Zabbix Conferences enter the picture. Since 2011, they’ve grown from yearly events on our home turf in Riga to multi-day extravaganzas in locations as far-flung as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Porto Alegre. There’s something about the conferences in the Benelux countries, however, that seems to boost our reach a little further and create a little more enthusiasm every time we visit.

“Zabbix Conference Benelux is a can’t-miss event for European Zabbix enthusiasts and professionals. It attracts Zabbix experts from the retail, IT, banking, and government sectors (just to name a few), and brings everyone together with a shared sense of purpose. It’s the perfect place to network with like-minded individuals and come away with plenty of inspiration for your own projects.”

– Alexei Vladishev, Zabbix Founder and CEO

There’s just something about Benelux

The politico-economic union of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg is a fascinating locale for any event – the three nations that make up the union each bring their own customs, history, language, and business culture to the mix, which creates an intriguing backdrop for any kind of business.

“A Zabbix Conference Benelux is a unique event because of the way the people of the region make their guests feel welcome and create an atmosphere of belonging, togetherness, and support.”

-Alexei Vladishev, Zabbix Founder and CEO

From our perspective at Zabbix, Benelux is home not only to a sizable community of existing clients and partners, but also an enormous pool of potential new ones. We’ve thought long and hard about what we can offer to that particular group when we make our (almost) annual pilgrimage to Benelux, so keep reading for some insight into what makes a Zabbix Conference Benelux not only special, but worth attending.

Learn from the best

Attending a Zabbix Conference Benelux is first and foremost an excellent opportunity to catch up with the very latest trends and developments in the world of IT monitoring, including Zabbix proxy high-availability and load balancing as well as automating Zabbix workflows with Zabbix API and zabbix_utils.

Our conference speakers represent a broad cross-section of industries and experiences, and they pride themselves on coming up with fresh, innovative topics – in fact, many of them share their use cases and results for the first time on our stage. What’s more, the energy and dynamics of our workshops and live Q&A sessions foster open dialogue, richer conversations, and greater innovation.

“The Zabbix Conference Benelux I attended in 2023 stands out to me because of a very informative speech by (Zabbix Trainer and Consultant at Opensource ICT Solutions) Brian Van Baekel about his experience with Zabbix in an MSP environment. On top of that, the conference was organized in the beautiful center of Antwerp, the atmosphere was very friendly as usual, and we had some fascinating events after the conference as well.” 

– Kaspars Mednis, Zabbix Chief Trainer 

Getting to know you

The world may be increasingly dominated by virtual interactions and digital connections, but there’s still something unique and special about face-to-face conferences. At Zabbix, our feeling has always been that in-person events are crucial to strengthening the bonds between our team members, our partners, and our users. A Zabbix Conference Benelux gives participants a chance to truly get in touch with the people behind our product, allowing for deeper understanding and stronger relationships, which are the foundation of all successful business collaborations.

“The year I attended (2023) I really enjoyed the overall spirit of the event, the atmosphere in Antwerp, and the opportunities to get to know the Zabbix community closer.” 

– Aleksandrs Petrovs-Gavrilovs, Zabbix Technical Support Engineer 

Drumming up new business

Attending a Zabbix Conference Benelux isn’t just about exchanging information, but also about providing attendees with opportunities for spontaneous conversations, chance encounters, and relationship-building that can lead to collaborations, partnerships, and future business opportunities for everyone involved.

Business leaders can learn about the technology and challenges of Zabbix and our partners and have a frank dialogue that helps them understand their own needs from a different perspective. And as anyone who has spent time at a Zabbix Conference Benelux can tell you, those kinds of free-flowing conversations tend to happen naturally and organically when both parties are in a friendly, welcoming environment that also happens to be just a bit outside of their home turf.

Networking and hospitality

Speaking of creating a welcoming environment, it’s impossible to underestimate how important quirky yet fun event venues and incredible hospitality are to creating an ideal event for learning and networking. Zabbix Technical Support Engineer Edgars Melveris is a veteran of Zabbix Conferences in 2020 (Utrecht, the Netherlands) and 2023 (Antwerp, Belgium). He says that it’s the combination of in-depth technical information, fascinating locales, and good times that makes a Zabbix Conference Benelux special to him.

“The National Military Museum in Utrecht really impressed me, and I also enjoyed the atmosphere and sense of community at the event venues. When it comes to conference content, (Zabbix Chief Trainer) Kaspars Mednis’ workshop on ‘New and improved SNMP bulk data collection in Zabbix 6.4’ has only become more relevant with the passage of time, and (Zabbix Trainer and Consultant at Opensource ICT Solutions) Nathan Liefting’s presentation on ‘Zabbix Native HA: Lessons Learned and Tips & Tricks’ was particularly useful to me in my role.”

-Edgars Melveris, Zabbix Technical Support Engineer

Zabbix Conference Benelux 2024 will take place in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on May 24-25. To find out more information, register to attend, or sign up as a speaker, please visit the conference page. We’re looking forward to seeing you soon!

The post What Makes a Zabbix Conference Benelux Special? appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Discover A World of Opportunity at Zabbix Meetings

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/discover-a-world-of-opportunity-at-zabbix-meetings/27684/

From the very beginning, Zabbix has been fortunate to have a large, diverse, and truly global community. Engaging with them is the key to getting the most out of Zabbix, and to that end, we introduced Zabbix Meetings in late 2022.

Zabbix Meetings are global get-togethers in locations from Stockholm to Shanghai to Sao Paulo and all points in between. They were created to serve as the first step on the journey to working with Zabbix and getting to know us better, giving Zabbix beginners a chance to learn about our capabilities directly from our team and our partners.

They’re also an opportunity for more experienced Zabbix users to learn from others, share their knowledge, and stay up to date on the latest developments in the Zabbix ecosystem – all in one event.

Whether you’re new to Zabbix or an experienced professional, we’re confident that attending a Zabbix Meeting will help you solve problems, exchange ideas, and grow your Zabbix expertise. Accordingly, here are 4 key benefits you can expect from showing up at a Zabbix Meeting near you.

Build relationships with our team members

Businesses are built on relationships, and ours is no exception. We still believe that there’s no substitute for meeting in person when it comes to building a strong culture, developing rapport with our users and partners, and connecting on a deeper level.

Attending Zabbix Meetings and getting to know our team is a great way to build trust and put some faces to names, which will allow you to know who exactly on our team you can reach out to when you’re shopping around for the best deals on support packages, when you need assistance, or when you want to collaborate on a cool new feature or project that can be a game-changer for your business.

Hear use cases that apply to your own organization

If you’re thinking about adopting Zabbix or expanding your existing Zabbix setup, it can be invaluable to learn how other companies similar to yours have tried and succeeded with it. Our use cases come from actual satisfied Zabbix users and highlight the effectiveness of a specific feature or benefit, while sharing notable results.

They’re also ideal for providing best practices that you can apply to your own industry. We can just about guarantee that no matter what you’re trying to do with Zabbix, a similar organization has already succeeded at it and would be glad to show you how they pulled it off. What’s more, seeing Zabbix-related use cases presented can also help you sell the benefits of Zabbix to stakeholders in your organization, gain buy-in, and present the implementation process.

Get direct, real-time answers to your questions

Taking part in a Zabbix Meeting is an excellent way to grow your professional network and make new business connections – we’ve created them to be the perfect place to meet a variety of like-minded industry professionals. That said, simply attending a Zabbix Meeting isn’t a recipe for success – if you’re not asking questions, you’re definitely not getting the full experience.

Asking good questions at Zabbix Meetings can help you gain valuable information and make the most of your time and the opportunity. The presentations and use cases that are the backbone of any Zabbix Meeting are detailed, in-depth, and full of technical details, so we always offer an extended Q&A session at the end of each one to make sure you walk away from the Meeting with a full understanding of all the information presented.

Learn more about what Zabbix can do for you

If you’re signing up to attend a Zabbix Meeting near you, there’s a good chance that you already know a fair amount about Zabbix and what we do. There are plenty of ways to find out the basics, including visiting our website, checking out our latest blog posts, or having a look at our famous forums.

No matter how much time you spend reading up on us, however, some information is bound to slip through the cracks. You might know about our technical support offers, but there’s no substitute for chatting with one of our support engineers about how you use Zabbix and hearing their opinion about what type of support plan best suits your specific needs.

You might also know that we offer training sessions, but that’s not the same as hearing from one of our certified trainers exactly how a Zabbix Certified training session has upskilled employees at a company just like yours and helped them save money, reduce downtime, and do things with Zabbix that they never imagined possible.

Conclusion

There’s simply no substitute for a Zabbix Meeting when it comes to learning more about what we can do for you. Have a look at our Events page to see when we’ll be in a location near you and be sure to sign up – we’re looking forward to seeing you soon!

The post Discover A World of Opportunity at Zabbix Meetings appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Keeping Remote Teams Connected: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/keeping-remote-teams-connected-the-zabbix-advantage/27551/

The popularity of remote teams may have exploded in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s not a phenomenon that’s likely to trend downward anytime soon. High-profile organizations like 3M, Dropbox, Shopify, and LinkedIn are continuing to enthusiastically embrace remote working, essentially making it the “default setting” for their employees.

The shift toward remote working is not without its challenges, however. Organizations of all sizes often have little time to set up the kind of networking infrastructure and efficient processes that make sure remote workers are just as connected and productive as their on-site counterparts. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at some of the most important network monitoring challenges that remote teams face and show how Zabbix can help you tackle them as efficiently as possible.

Infrastructure and connectivity issues

A remote network is essentially a grouping of multiple smaller network setups, each with their own set of variables that can affect performance. The differences between network system and infrastructure quality at different remote destinations can often lead to low overall network performance, which in turn makes it a challenge to provide the kind of high-speed communication needed to run the remote automation tools and software applications used by remote employees and teams.

By providing straightforward and easy-to-understand visibility into a network’s connected devices and how data moves between them, Zabbix makes it easy to automatically compare data and identify any drop in network performance.

With Zabbix, you can easily keep an eye on network routers and switches, especially internet provider and uplink ports up/down. You can also monitor network latency, the error rate on ports, the packet loss to important devices, and network utilization on important ports with net.if.in/net.if.out. Here are some example triggers:

High Network Utilization: avg(/Router ABC/net.if.in[eth0],5m)>80MB
High Packet Loss: avg(/Router ABC/icmppingloss,5m)>5
High Latency: avg(/Router ABC/icmppingsec,5m)>0.1

What’s more, Zabbix allows you to create network maps with important network devices and real-time data, as well as dashboards with maps and single item/gauge widgets, all of which makes it far easier to achieve the uninterrupted connectivity that remote teams depend on.

Staying safe

Remote locations aren’t islands that can be completely isolated from external traffic. Staying vigilant and doing everything possible to eliminate data breaches is important, and taking advantage of strong encryption methods, network scanning tools, and firewalls to protect your systems is a good start. However, using a whole suite of tools to protect security can add more difficulty when it comes to integrating and monitoring them.

With Zabbix, you can count on enterprise-grade security, including encrypted communication between components, a flexible user permission schema that can be easily applied to a distributed environment, and custom user roles with a granular set of permissions for different types of users.

Zabbix also provides native support for HTTP, LDAP, and SAML authentication (which gives you an additional layer of security and improves your user experience while working with Zabbix), the ability to restrict access to sensitive information by limiting which metrics can be collected in your environment, and the ability to track changes in your environment by utilizing the Audit log. It’s all designed to make sure that there are no compromises on the security of your data when you decide to go remote.

Scalability

As a remote organization grows and its distributed systems expand, a good monitoring solution needs to be able to grow along with it in order to prevent gaps in coverage while maintaining performance and reliability. Zabbix gives you limitless scalability in the form of Zabbix proxies, which act as independent intermediaries that collect performance and availability data on behalf of a Zabbix server. You can roll out new proxies as fast as you need them, and because Zabbix is free and open source, you don’t have to worry about additional licensing costs.

Zabbix proxies allow you to see at a glance what resources are being used on your network at any given moment, which is especially handy if, like most remote teams, you have tens or even hundreds of servers and network appliances to monitor. You can also execute remote commands in remote locations – either on the proxies themselves or on the agents monitored by the proxy, and multiple frontends can be deployed for load balancing as well as for improved security and connectivity. Proxy docker containers and cloud options are available as well, enhancing flexibility and making Zabbix ideal for any organization that spans the globe (or aspires to).

Managing multiple solutions

The legacy software and systems you use were most likely designed to work in a traditional networking model. Remote working, as we’ve seen, presents a whole new range of challenges when it comes to compatibility and support.

We’ve created Zabbix to be as easy as possible to integrate with existing systems. You can easily monitor any operating system, cloud service, IP telephony service, docker container, or web server/database backend. We provide out-of-the-box monitoring for the world’s leading hardware and software vendors, and our extensively documented API makes it easy to create workflows and integrate with other systems. In addition, you can also integrate Zabbix with the most popular helpdesk, messaging, and ITSM systems, such as Slack, Jira, MS Teams, and many others.

Not only that, Zabbix is designed to serve as the ideal monitoring solution for multi-tenant environments. It serves as a single pane of glass for your entire infrastructure, and it’s easy to visualize everything that’s happening with your network with unique maps, dashboards, and templates.

Conclusion

The days of large teams all working together under the same roof are a thing of the past – the remote working trend will only accelerate as technology improves and employees get more accustomed to working with colleagues across multiple locations. That’s why it’s of paramount importance to make sure your monitoring solution has the built-in flexibility and scalability to grow with your team and your business.

If you want to see for yourself how Zabbix can help you effectively monitor a globally distributed network, contact us.

 

 

The post Keeping Remote Teams Connected: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

The Zabbix/HackerOne Bug Bounty Program: A Year of Results

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/the-zabbix-hackerone-bug-bounty-program-a-year-of-results/27490/

As cyberattacks increase exponentially and the cost of maintaining dedicated internal security teams skyrockets, the popularity of the “bug bounty” program (which sees outside hackers paid by organizations to legally expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities) is exploding.

Organizations large and small are running programs to root out the security vulnerabilities in their products. Governments and policymakers are changing laws to make the approach easier to adopt, while private sector tech giants are also offering generous rewards – Apple alone has reportedly paid out more than $20 million via its bounty program, and the vendor offers up to $2 million to any hacker who reports a vulnerability that bypasses the protections of Lockdown Mode on its devices.

It’s an approach that dovetails perfectly with the Zabbix philosophy of “security first,” and it’s why as 2023 dawned we began working with HackerOne, the world leader in attack resistance management (ARM). ARM blends the security expertise of ethical hackers with asset discovery, continuous assessment, and process enhancement to find and close gaps in the digital attack surface.

Why HackerOne?

We knew from the start that we wanted to create a Zabbix-specific bug bounty program that would challenge the world’s best ethical hackers to find the weak spots in our cybersecurity armor – and let us know about them in time to fix them.

One of the biggest advantages of the HackerOne platform is the broad and diverse community of experts that they can call on. Adding Zabbix to HackerOne’s platform was a golden opportunity to test our security and vulnerabilities on a scale that we’d previously been unable to even imagine.

In contrast to an individual penetration test, which is the “old-school” industry standard security measure and is performed based on a pre-prepared scenario, we knew that HackerOne’s experts could discover vulnerabilities that a run-of-the-mill penetration test would never find.

At the same time, we knew that adding Zabbix to HackerOne was a bold decision that would test our faith in the security of our product. Put simply, teaming up with HackerOne was our way of confirming the quality of Zabbix and our desire to constantly improve it.

Getting started

We’ve known for a long time that HackerOne was the ideal partner for a bug bounty program, given their reputation for innovation and effectiveness. After an initial approach and agreement between HackerOne and Zabbix, it was time to consider what exactly a Zabbix bug bounty program would look like.

It was clear to everyone involved that if the reporting of vulnerabilities was to be meaningful and structured, we needed to develop new workflows that would provide a procedure for processing the received applications and handing them over for development. Another critical step was to register for the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database, where all vulnerabilities discovered in Zabbix are currently registered.

The results

We’re pleased to report that as with any successful implementation, the numbers speak for themselves:

Data for the period 01.01.2023 – 25.01.2024

Submissions

• Reports submitted: 250
• Reports triaged: 3
• Reports closed as resolved: 16
• Reports rewarded: 19

Rewards

• Total rewards: $17,300.00
• Average reward: $865.00
• Median reward: $500.00

Submissions by severity

• Critical: 29
• High: 65
• Medium, low, none: 108
• Not severe: 48

We were pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of submissions alone – not all 250 submissions were severe or even actionable, but the number shows that our community is taking to the program, spreading the word, and doing their part to help us make sure that Zabbix is as secure as we can possibly make it. The fact that we were able to “squash” several bugs that will now never get a chance to bedevil our users is just the icing on the cake.

The results are impressive, but in keeping with the Zabbix ethos of continuous improvement, we’re confident that with a few refinements we can pay out even more in 2024. After all, any money that goes toward building a better, more secure product is money well spent! We’d like to close by extending a special and heartfelt thank you to everyone who has contributed to our bug bounty program and discovered vulnerabilities – keep up the great work!

 

The post The Zabbix/HackerOne Bug Bounty Program: A Year of Results appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

5 Common Network Monitoring Mistakes (And How Zabbix Can Help You Avoid Them)

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/5-common-network-monitoring-mistakes-and-how-zabbix-can-help-you-avoid-them/27394/

Being the world’s most trusted open-source monitoring solution means that businesses of every size and description turn to us for their network monitoring needs. This gives us an inside look at how easy it is for them to suffer disruptive network failures, which usually happen thanks to relatively simple miscalculations.

Network monitoring mistakes are easy to make but often challenging and time-consuming to fix, so we’ve put together a list of five of the most common mistakes that we see users make. We’ve also shown how Zabbix’s built-in features can help prevent them when combined with our experience and expertise.

Network monitoring mistake 1: Playing defense with security threats

As technology evolves, security threats grow and mutate much faster than before. A cybersecurity team that takes a purely reactive approach to the latest round of digital threats will constantly be playing catch-up, unable to challenge network vulnerabilities and putting their entire network at risk.

Zabbix is designed to help enterprises go beyond the traditional network monitoring strategy of reacting to performance and security problems as they occur. Zabbix can, for example, trace failed logins (which are often possible hacking attempts) as well as unexpected successful logins.

If an anomaly is discovered, Zabbix uses multiple messaging channels to notify the responsible individuals in your organization about the different kinds of events occurring in your environment This allows you to discover potential threats before they happen and react to them before they become a problem.

Network monitoring mistake 2: Getting left behind when technology evolves

Networking technologies continually evolve, so monitoring technologies need to evolve with them, offering even better visibility. By failing to make use of new monitoring technologies as they’re released, companies leave themselves wide open to network problems. Employees get comfortable with tools and solutions and are often reluctant to change or upgrade, but not doing so puts your network at risk.

At Zabbix, we offer our users a quality product and a variety of support options. Every six months we release a new stable version, and each new Zabbix software release is subject to a standard life cycle and expiry date. Our life cycle specifics also help make content for all new version releases more predictable and manageable.

If you’re already using Zabbix (and we hope that you are), taking advantage of our upgrade solution is the perfect way to make sure you don’t fall behind the curve when it comes to monitoring technology. We work side by side with your team and adapt to your environment so that your upgrade gets taken care of with no disruption and in line with our best practices.

Network monitoring mistake 3: Not having the right performance data and insights

Every enterprise or business will have different network performance requirements, which in turn will require examining different performance metrics and having different performance expectations and baselines. The key is being able to separate the signal (useful performance data and insights) from the noise (everything else) so that you can properly judge your network’s behavior and take appropriate action.

Zabbix’s web UI provides multiple ways of presenting a visual overview of your IT environment. Widget-based multi-page dashboards display information in an easy-to-digest format, so even laymen can see what’s happening with the network at a glance.

Flexible graphs can display regular and aggregate data, and all display options allow you to filter and display only the data you need, at any level of granularity you may require. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for you to prioritize useful insights over all others.

Network monitoring mistake 4: Ignoring network logs

Modern networking devices generate logs that contain vital information. Network management teams can use this information to provide higher security, improved efficiency, and less downtime. Not collecting and using these logs is ignoring free information that you could use to run your network better.

Zabbix makes log monitoring easy by allowing you to collect, filter, and analyze log entries. Monitoring firewall logs with Zabbix, for example, allows you to identify things like unusual traffic patterns, blocked connections, and denied access logs. With more advanced or “smart” firewalls, you can read logs and create intrusion alerts in Zabbix.

When it comes to Windows logs, you can track the success or failure of user logins and monitor IP addresses to see whether login attempts are coming from a trusted network or not. VPN connections (source IP, multiple failed connection attempts, etc.) are also a snap to monitor with Zabbix. It’s all part of our “single pane of glass” philosophy that allows SNMP traps, logs, and other sources to all be monitored with a single tool.

Network monitoring mistake 5: Failing to plan for network growth

Simply focusing on how your network is performing now doesn’t cut it – you also need to prepare yourself for what your network might become. Any planned changes to your network need to be considered when planning out your monitoring strategies. That means projecting what the state of your network will be and considering how additions to your network might affect performance.

Zabbix is designed to be scalable to any infrastructure – our customers use it to monitor anything from smart homes to multi-tenant global business environments. And when it’s time to expand your network, you can gain an extra layer of scalability by deploying Zabbix Proxies, which allow you to collect millions of metrics from hundreds of thousands of devices, services, and applications.

Conclusion

Monitoring a modern network is a challenging task, and Murphy’s Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time) is never far from the mind of any network management professional. However, in our experience, network management teams can avoid the most common network monitoring mistakes by following the advice we’ve outlined in this post.

If you want to see for yourself how Zabbix can help you monitor your network as efficiently as possible and avoid common network monitoring mistakes, get in touch with us.

The post 5 Common Network Monitoring Mistakes (And How Zabbix Can Help You Avoid Them) appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

2023 in Review: A Bigger, Bolder, and Better Zabbix

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/2023-in-review-a-bigger-bolder-and-better-zabbix/27272/

It hardly seems possible, but somehow 2023 is already in the rearview mirror. It’s been quite a ride, full of dynamic growth, popular events, new releases, and exciting additions to our global community. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the highlights!

Spreading the word

We radically expanded our slate of events this year in an attempt to spread the good word about the world’s finest open-source monitoring solution and meet our vibrant community. Our efforts took the form of:

• 31 meetings (in locations ranging from Kuala Lumpur to Seoul to Paris)
• 3 forums (in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Mexico City)
• 16 meetups (online and in multiple locations around the globe)
• 5 conferences (in Germany, Benelux, China, Japan, and Latin America)
• Countless exhibitions, trade fairs, and expos from Las Vegas to Tokyo and all points in between

Oh, and one blowout Zabbix Summit in Riga in October!

Building a better product

This year we released Zabbix 6.4, which included many important new features:

• Just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning
• Cause and symptom events
• Instant propagation of configuration changes
• Zero-downtime upgrades
• SNMP discovery/bulk data collection speed and performance improvements
• A new menu layout
• The ability to stream metrics and events from Zabbix to external systems over HTTP
• Template versioning
• A development framework for widget creation
• Optional interfaces for server-originated checks
• Streamlined media type configuration for multiple email service providers

Zabbix 6.4 also comes with many new templates for the most popular vendors and cloud providers, including:

• Microsoft Azure MySQL servers
• Microsoft Azure PostgreSQL servers
• Microsoft Azure virtual machines
• Low-level discovery improvements in AWS by HTTP template
• Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
• Veeam Backup and Replication
• Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
• BMC Control-M
• Cisco Meraki dashboard
• OS processes by Zabbix agent
• Improvements to filesystem discovery in official Zabbix OS templates

Speaking of templates, since the release of Zabbix 6.0, we have developed 38 new integrations, including:

• 16 application templates
• 4 cloud templates
• 2 database templates
• 6 webhooks
• 2 net templates
• 3 SAN templates
• 5 server templates

Maintaining security

In January, we received an ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certificate for information security. The certification stands as proof positive that Zabbix protects all our information within the highest internationally acknowledged security standards and reaffirms our commitment to prioritize information security best practices everywhere within our organization.

February saw us launch a public bug bounty program in partnership with HackerOne, the world’s number one ethical hacker-powered platform. The program’s purpose is to discover potential security vulnerabilities by letting hackers proactively search for and report Zabbix security vulnerabilities and get rewarded for found and validated issues. The program has been a massive success, with 15 reports resolved and $17,800 in bounties being paid out so far.

The power of growth

In 2023 we managed to grow our headcount across every location we operate in, while adding to a growing roster of remote workers from around the world. On March 29, we officially opened a new office in Mexico, joining our offices in Brazil (opened in 2020), the United States (2016), Japan (2012), and Latvia (2005).

To celebrate this momentous occasion, we invited our community of users, partners, and customers to participate in a free and exclusive event dedicated entirely to Zabbix. They were able to learn a little more about the company, ask questions about the plans for the new office, and share knowledge with our team of experts.

Our Integration team also saw significant growth in 2023, which has resulted in a faster rollout of popular templates and integrations as well as higher levels of quality than ever before. The Partners team had a busy year as well, adding 19 new certified partners around the globe and upgrading several others to Premium and Certified Reseller status.

Lending a helping hand

As an open-source company, we champion knowledge sharing and a more open world. It’s why we took part in the career day at the Transport and Telecommunication Institute in Riga, supported the “Youth Has Talent” contest in Latvia organized by the Laiks Jauniešiem association, and sent our Head of Training Kristine Lamberte as a guest speaker to Rezekne Technical School.

Our team in Latin America got in on the action by working with the DEDICATE Foundation to develop the Zabbix Innova Challenge. It’s a free activity that’s designed to promote the development of technological projects that involve young people in Mexico, while boosting the technology community and stimulating the development of creative solutions.

Our goal in showing up at all these events is to encourage young talent, support and invest in local social projects that empower and inspire future generations, share our skills and experience, and showcase some of the amazing career opportunities that Zabbix can offer.

We aim to create a world without interruption, and just as we strive to make the world a better place by building the best monitoring tool possible, we also do what we can to help those around us whose lives have been interrupted by circumstances beyond their control.

In 2023, that involved donating a total of €378,000 to organizations like the Children’s Hospital Foundation, Samaritan International Latvia, The Oncological Patient Support Association “Tree of Life”, the Children’s Foundation of Latvia, the Autism Support Point in Rēzekne, and ziedot.lv.

Getting noticed

The world continued to sit up and take notice of what we’ve been doing in 2023. Brazilian tech journal iMasters started off the year by noting Zabbix LATAM’s incredible 300% growth rate, while another Brazilian journal, Baguete, published an outstanding piece on the opening of the Zabbix office in Mexico.

In May, we were recognized as the top monitoring solution on Peerspot, and July saw us spotlighted in Labs of Latvia, a media platform for tech and innovation, which reported on our global expansion.

October brought with it a wave of favorable press coverage – Zabbix Summit 2023 speaker Dr. Hiroshi Abe had great things to say about us when profiled in El Español, and the same publication also published a well-researched company profile after the Summit.

In addition, Guaratã Almeida, a Zabbix partner and the technology director of the Brazilian city of Maceió, was an enthusiastic4 participant in the Summit, as noted by the city’s website.

Meanwhile, ThinkIT in Japan published an insightful interview with Zabbix Engineers Elina Pulke and Eliza Sekace, plus an inside look at the Summit proceedings.

Belgian website ITdaily followed that up with a post-Summit look at our business model and future plans, while Techzine published a glowing profile of their own as November drew to a close.

The icing on the cake of 2023 was Zabbix being named to the list of the “Top 101 Latvia’s Most Valuable Enterprises in 2023.” It’s a good measure of our significant contribution to Latvia’s economy and a reminder of our increasingly global impact.

Carrying our momentum into 2024

It was a year full of growth and accomplishments, and it was all possible because of our incredible community of customers and contributors! As 2024 approaches, you can look forward to a long list of new upgrades, events, and inspiration. Keep following us on social media, reading our blog, and checking our forum to stay on top of all the latest Zabbix news and events!

The post 2023 in Review: A Bigger, Bolder, and Better Zabbix appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Building a Partner Program: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/building-a-partner-program-the-zabbix-advantage/27164/

At Zabbix, our emphasis on high performance, functionality, and reliability has led to the creation of one of the most popular monitoring solutions on the market. It’s so popular, in fact, that we get near-constant requests for Zabbix professional consulting, advice, support, and training from almost every corner of the world.

That’s why we created the Zabbix Partner Program. Our partner program was designed with one goal in mind – to get our services to the widest possible audience of qualified buyers by allowing customers to purchase them through a network of verified Zabbix partners as well as from Zabbix directly.

Our partners create high value for thousands of customers who would not otherwise enjoy access to Zabbix services by providing complete localization in terms of linguistic and cultural compatibility, availability across time zones, in-person access, and flexibility around currencies and payments.

To do that as effectively as possible, we’ve divided our partners into 3 categories:

Resellers. These are companies that promote and resell Zabbix services. Their job is to locate leads, present and promote Zabbix products and services, consult the leads regarding their ideal solutions, and arrange the contracts. At that point, Zabbix steps in and provides the services. Resellers are a great resource for customers who are limited by local regulations when it comes to buying Zabbix services in their local currency or from companies registered in their own country.

Certified Partners. Certified partners can also promote and resell Zabbix services, but they’re also officially authorized to deliver selected Zabbix services and solutions in their local languages. The ease of access and a common language allows certified partners to stay in close contact with customers. They can also sell their own value-adding services alongside Zabbix services.

Premium Partners. A premium partner has the same authorization as certified partners, but premium partner status is reserved for partners with the highest expertise and experience. Premium partners can participate in highly sophisticated Zabbix implementation, integration, and support projects.

Building a winning partner program has taught us a few things about the process, so without further ado, we’d like to share 6 best practices that we adhere to when it comes to cultivating and expanding our network of partners.

Set realistic goals

Years of running a partner program have taught us that success is impossible without clearly defined goals and success metrics. Setting firm, realistic goals for a program is the only way to measure its effectiveness and ROI. After a few quarters, it should be possible to compare performance to goals and see whether changes need to be made.

Accordingly, we make sure that Zabbix executives, sales teams, and partners are aware that getting a new program up and running (or making changes to an existing program) takes time. Expecting instant results is not realistic – we’ve learned that a ramp-up period of a few months is usually reasonable.

Make expectations clear

Nothing kills momentum faster than confusion. That’s why it’s important to make sure that partners have a solid understanding of everything that’s being asked of them. We’ve learned to give partners concise goals and objectives so that everyone is on the same page. We also create annual business plans for all three partnership programs, review them quarterly, and reward success.

Having the same KPIs as partners is also important. When different metrics for success exist, we run the risk of our partners being less enthusiastic about taking actions that will increase the success of Zabbix but may do less for them. In our experience, it’s better to build partnerships around a joint success target so that when partners win, we win.

Support your partners

At Zabbix, supporting our partners means providing outstanding sales, marketing, and technical support, all of which shows that we’re invested in their success as much as our own. Our partnership team helps partners with all presales-related questions, organizes demo calls, manages the deal registration to protect partner deals, patriciates in joint calls with customers, and helps with all possible legal questions and certifications.

Apart from day-to-day pre-sales support, we organize and participate in joint Zabbix marketing events of different formats together with our partners. These meetups, meetings, conferences, and external events organized by other vendors around the globe are designed to spread the word about Zabbix solutions and services while helping our partners generate new leads. During these events, our partners demonstrate their recent use-cases and serve as experts for the rest of the partner network and the wider Zabbix community.

Build Trust

Trust is the foundation of all partnerships, and we find that our partners trust us because we deliver the support and tools they need to be successful. It’s why we work hard to keep our partners updated with product developments and industry trends, and we continuously educate them on how to sell and overcome roadblocks.

We even allow some of our partners to conduct official Zabbix trainings, provided they have a certified trainer available. When an existing partner wants to become a training partner, we discuss their needs and plan their training certification together.

Measure and monitor

Whether launching a new program or scaling up an existing one, measuring the right key performance indicators (KPIs) can mean the difference between growth and chaos. If a business doesn’t know what to measure and optimize for their partner program, they won’t know what to improve if growth stalls out, and you’ll struggle to explain how partnerships contribute value.

It’s impossible to get far on the road to success without measuring progress along the way. That’s why we review goals and metrics with our partners every quarter, assess what’s working well and what’s missing the mark, and adapt and adjust if needed. We’ve learned not to change things up too often, but we’re always open to making tweaks that will amplify success.

Communicate effectively

One of the most important ingredients of any successful partner program is communication. It’s essential to keep partners informed about new products, promotions, and other important updates. That involves knowing the audience and understanding what each partner type and their respective employees are interested in and when.

A cornerstone of the Zabbix Partner Program is our ability to actively listen to our partners’ feedback. Our experience is that getting ahead of issues and concerns strengthens relationships, maintains trust, and guarantees that our partners feel supported and valued.

Conclusion

Becoming a Zabbix Partner is an ideal way to get recognized by potential customers and increase the visibility of your business, while also getting a leg up on your competitors by using technical support according to a professional service-level agreement.

In addition, you can count on discounts on all Zabbix services, the ability to access pre-sale consulting services, and participation in joint marketing events.

To find out more about our partner program and sign up, visit the Zabbix Partners page.

The post Building a Partner Program: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Training and Skills Development: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/training-and-skills-development-the-zabbix-advantage/26873/

At Zabbix, we know that we’ve developed a competitive product. We know it’s very likely the best on the market. Millions of satisfied customers around the world download and use it every day. But that’s not where the story ends.

It’s critical to us that our customers know how to use our product to its full potential in order to get the most value out of it. That’s why we take ongoing training and skills development so seriously, and why we work hard to equip our users with knowledge that’s designed to increase their productivity and performance.

We’ve got years of experience seeing what works and doesn’t work when it comes to showing our users how to get the most out of Zabbix. We’ve learned how to make complicated concepts simple, how to adjust to a wide variety of cultures and learning styles, and how to build courses that create happier, more productive, and more satisfied users.

Let’s take a look at what we’ve identified as 5 of our best training and development practices, and how they help to make sure that the information we present in our training sessions sticks with our users and helps them get as much value from Zabbix as they possibly can.

Perform an effective training and skills development needs analysis

Quality training and skills development begins with a needs analysis. This is a process that organizations use to determine the gap between the current and desired knowledge, skills, and abilities of end users. It typically involves determining the root cause for a training request, identifying the needed outcomes, and uncovering the best learning approach.

An effective needs analysis addresses questions like these:

  • Which of our users need training the most?
  • What kind of training do they require?
  • How can we best design an effective training program for them?
  • What will be the impact of training on their experience with Zabbix?
  • What level of investment and resources will be required to implement an effective training program for them?

At Zabbix, we ask ourselves these questions and many others before creating new training courses or modifying existing ones. We take into account our users’ backgrounds, including their education and work experience. We are always trying to speak to their experiences and offer content in a language that’s easy for them to understand. Our ultimate goal is to make our training sessions feel relevant to everyone, no matter their level of Zabbix experience.

Once we know who we’re speaking to, we can identify the areas where users may be struggling. We focus on what our users are motivated by and what tasks they seem to stumble over the most, and we know that showing users how our training can positively impact their careers will go a long way toward creating a receptive audience for the information we’re presenting.

Build targeted and customized courses

There’s no such thing as one-size-fits-all when it comes to training and skills development. As the world and technology change, knowing which training methods to implement can be a challenge. Businesses, educators, and learners all have unique learning approaches, and tailoring a custom training program creates balance for effective learning experiences.

The Zabbix method is to create a different course for every skill level and potential user of our services, creating an official Zabbix certified training path that guides our users toward the goal of becoming a Zabbix certified expert.

We start by making sure we’ve clearly identified our target audience, so that we can create content that’s relevant and engaging. For example, in our Zabbix Certified Expert and Zabbix Certified Professional courses, we know that users already have a baseline of knowledge, so we don’t need to provide a lot of background or general information. Understanding our audience helps us keep the content concise and to the point.

From there, we focus on structuring our content. For us, this means keeping training and development focused on a single skill level and keeping content short and to the point. Once we have our “big picture” outline, we work with our trainers to plan out the format, key takeaways, and activities.

That brings us to our final point –providing a truly hands-on experience. We know that it’s critical for learners to be able to quickly apply what they’ve been taught, so we include at least one activity per section of a course, allowing learners to put their new skills to the test by performing practical tasks and solving real-life use cases. This approach is borne out by the fact that our labs are consistently rated by students as among their favorite aspects of the training experience.

Provide quality, professional materials

Experience shows that it’s vitally important to focus on providing training materials that are:

  • Professional in appearance AND user-friendly
  • Available before, during, and after class to reinforce the learning process
  • Aligned with the course objectives
  • Easy to access (including print or online options)

Every student who attends a Zabbix course gets the course presentation as well as the lab manual containing the practical tasks and their solutions. When it comes to the presentation, we go to great lengths to make sure we know our learners and write for them, using accessible, approachable language and keeping things simple and to the point at all times.

Have qualified and experienced instructors

Most people don’t recall a lot of details from specific lectures they attended in high school, but it’s very likely that they remember the name of their favorite teacher. Instructors have a massive impact on how adults learn as well.

Effective trainers continuously practice and develop qualities that improve their understanding of what learners and organizations need. They understand that the more they exercise these qualities, the better equipped they’ll be to deliver engaging trainings that create an active learning atmosphere and incorporate current learning trends.

Every Zabbix Certified trainer works with the tool on a daily basis, so they’ve got plenty of hands-on use cases, hacks, workarounds, and shortcuts to share. They understand that a quality training session is a continuous feedback loop between learners and an instructor, so they listen actively and encourage engagement through the use of activities and Q&A sessions throughout our courses.

In addition to their demonstrated knowledge of all things Zabbix, our trainers also bring to the table strong interpersonal skills and a passion for what they do. That’s why nearly all the feedback we receive highlights the expertise and professionalism of our trainers as a high point of the training experience.

Assess training and skills development effectiveness

Training effectiveness measures the impact of training on a learner’s knowledge, skills, and performance. It needs to measure not only what employees learn but how they apply it in their jobs. It should also determine whether the training truly benefits users, while uncovering any issues in the training process that need to be improved.

Zabbix takes a two-track approach to measuring the effectiveness of training and skills development. We incorporate assessments into all our training courses and ask for feedback post-session to help us understand what each user learned, but we also depend on a system of certifications that are backed up by exams.

A Zabbix certification is our guarantee that a certificate holder has mastered the theoretical and practical skills covered during a course. Participants must score 80% or higher to pass any exam, which is why they stand as concrete proof that a certificate holder has the required knowledge to understand the concepts presented in a training session and implement them in real Zabbix environments.

Conclusion

Zabbix has a wide variety of users, so we need to offer a wide variety of courses to meet their needs. Our training programs are intended for IT administrators, auditors, system integrators, and anyone else who deals with IT infrastructure monitoring.

We’re proud of the fact that even veteran administrators with several years of Zabbix experience come away from our trainings armed with inside knowledge of new features and best practices.
To find out more about our comprehensive suite of trainings and find the one that’s right for you or your organization, visit zabbix.com/training.

 

 

The post Training and Skills Development: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Technical Support: The Zabbix Advantage

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/technical-support-the-zabbix-advantage/26709/

If you’ve ever been part of a technical support team (or dealt with technical support as a customer, for that matter) you’re aware that there are as many different types of technical support teams as there are types of businesses.

However, there are a few best practices that all technical support teams share, no matter what industry they’re in. Read on to learn a bit more about them and see how our technical support team at Zabbix embodies each one.

Offer omnichannel technical support

Omnichannel support is the practice of providing support across every touchpoint that a customer uses to interact with your business. It’s not to be confused with multi-channel support, where teams work in silos and have little or no interaction.

Omnichannel support provides a unified experience across different channels, including email, phone, live chat, in-app chat, etc. Customers can start a conversation on any channel, at any time, and pick it up from where they left off on any other channel, any other time. Businesses can keep all customer data in the form of contacts inside a single platform, so that their support representatives can address issues with the proper context.

The goal of our technical support service at Zabbix has always been to provide responsive, dependable, quality support to resolve any issues regarding the installation, operation, and use of Zabbix.

Our specialists also leverage their skills, experience, and proximity to the design and development teams pass along the kind of helpful hints, tips, and tricks that help customers get the most out of their Zabbix installation.

The backbone of our support delivery is the Zabbix Support System. Available to every Zabbix customer, it guarantees swift and easy communication between customers and our technical specialists.

Email and remote sessions can be used to communicate with Zabbix support at any time.  Customers with our Global or Enterprise support tiers can access support services by phone or take advantage of on-site visits anywhere in the world by lead technical engineers.

No matter the channel, there’s no guesswork involved – all information is automatically entered into the support system to keep track of issues and resolutions.

Set realistic SLAs and stick to them

Service level agreements (SLAs) are critical to technical support performance. They help set clear expectations for both the service provider and the customer by outlining what services will be provided, how they will be delivered, and the expected level of performance. This gives everyone involved a clear understanding of what to expect, prevents any misunderstandings, and makes sure that the customer’s needs are being met.

SLAs also provide a way to measure the performance of the service provider. By defining metrics and targets, both parties can track the provider’s performance and make sure that they’re meeting the agreed-upon standards. This can help identify areas for improvement and provide a way to hold the service provider accountable if they don’t meet their obligations.

Here at Zabbix, we don’t just meet our SLAs – we exceed them by getting to the root cause of customer issues and providing extensive documentation with the aim of making sure they don’t happen again.

Our support goes far beyond the support of Zabbix as software – we do our best to support the whole monitoring infrastructure, which in some cases can even mean troubleshooting issues that are only tangentially connected to Zabbix as a monitoring system.

That might involve architecture questions, best practices in gathering data from one or another data source, or helping a customer understand and optimize some third-party scripts. No matter what the case may be, we do our best to help.

Listen to what customers need and communicate effectively

As anyone who’s ever contacted technical support knows, the best support isn’t necessarily provided by someone with genius level knowledge who understands every function of a product in minute detail.

For efficient technical support, communication skills are just as vital as technical knowledge. Specialists need to listen first, ask questions to confirm that they understand the problem, and restate what they’ve heard to give the customer the opportunity to provide more information. Above all, they need to speak to the customer’s level of understanding, avoiding jargon and needless details.

Our technical support team sees itself as a bridge between the customer’s needs and the solutions we provide. A key principle of technical support at Zabbix is the notion that the information our customers are sharing with us is precious. The way we see it, our customers give us valuable insights into what’s working in our product and what isn’t.

Listening carefully to the different support queries that we get allows us to form a complete feedback loop between our users and our solutions. For example, if our support team notices issues with collecting specific types of data or monitoring particular endpoints, they can prevent further queries by including a link to our FAQ section while our developers work to fix the issue.

Help customers help themselves

In technical support as in life, self-help is often the best help. It may seem illogical, but the best technical support is usually when the customer is either not asking for help or is able to help themselves.

Allowing customers to perform self-service saves them the time needed to call in or submit an online ticket, and it also improves turnaround time and serves them in the channel they prefer.

Giving customers the tools to be self-sufficient has been a part of our technical support philosophy at Zabbix from day one, and we’re fortunate to have a dedicated and devoted user community to help us do it.

Our users regularly post troubleshooting articles on our blog, and all official product documentation (including an extensive FAQ section) is available on our website. What’s more, our employees make a habit of sharing their knowledge on community Telegram channels, on-site and virtual meetups, and free webinars.

The official Zabbix forum is also a great place to go for support. Customers can interact with each other and get their problems solved easily. No matter what the issue, there’s a good chance that somebody somewhere has experienced it as well and may have a clever workaround or trick to share.

Self-help has limits, however. Your data and infrastructure are the core of your business, and some things are simply best left to experts. That’s why it’s a good idea to add to your knowledge via our official training sessions and have your most urgent issues taken care of by the skilled professionals on our support team. 

Embrace automation where it makes sense to do so

Not all technical support tasks can or should be automated. Most require complex problem-solving, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Others are repetitive, simple, or predictable. It’s important to identify the best use cases for automation based on what the customer expects, the nature and value of the task, and what resources are available.

Our philosophy at Zabbix has always been that there’s no substitute for the human element when it comes to technical support. Our customers trust us to handle complicated, urgent, and sensitive issues, and there’s no substitute for the hands-on assistance that our support team can provide. It’s why we take great pains to make sure that all our team members display soft skills like interpersonal communication, personality traits, and social awareness.

However, we also harness the power of automation to assist with lower-level and more menial tasks, such as ticket assignment and processing counts. Thanks to automation, our specialists don’t need to manually grab tickets from a pool. Instead, everything is automated based on the calendar and who is working on a particular shift.

The ultimate goal is always the same – choosing the best automation path for the particular task at hand so that the customer’s issue gets resolved as quickly as possible with a minimum of disruption.

Conclusion

At Zabbix, we see our role as solving problems, not questions. 95.7% of our resolved support tickets receive positive reviews, and it’s because of the hard work, dedication, knowledge, and soft skills of our support team, as well as their goal of providing sustainable growth, long-term success, and measurable outcomes.

Our support team is a truly global entity that can provide round-the-clock support, and it’s made up of highly skilled Zabbix professionals, experts, and trainers who can boast years or even decades of Zabbix experience. 

We offer multiple support tiers at a variety of price points, so you can be sure that no matter what the support needs of your organization happen to be, we have a plan that will fit perfectly.
Contact us to learn more and find the support tier that’s right for you.

The post Technical Support: The Zabbix Advantage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

A Look Back at Zabbix Summit 2023

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/a-look-back-at-zabbix-summit-2023/26744/

Autumn in the Latvian capital of Riga is marked by a variety of traditions. The leaves fall, the rainy season arrives, the birds migrate, and IT professionals from around the world descend on the city for the annual Zabbix Summit.

On October 6 and 7, the Radisson Blu Hotel Latvija was packed with 450 delegates from 38 countries, all there for Zabbix Summit 2023, the 11th in-person version of Zabbix’s premier yearly event.

This year’s Summit was marked by presentations, partner activities, and moments of relaxation and celebration that will energize the Zabbix community and spark ideas that attendees will take home to every corner of the world.

If you couldn’t make it, here’s a little taste of how it felt to be there!

Zabbix Summit 2023 in numbers

The stage hosted 27 speakers from 17 different countries who gave 31 speeches, including both lectures and lightning talks. There were four workshops with deep dives into technical topics, conducted by the Zabbix technical team as well as our partners from Opensource ICT Solutions and IZI-IT. Summit attendees also enjoyed three parties designed to provide a relaxing experience and networking opportunities.

Zabbix Summit 2023 proudly featured 10 sponsors, all part of Zabbix’s official partner network. They included:

initMAX – Diamond Sponsor
IntelliTrend – Platinum Sponsor
IZI-IT – Platinum Sponsor
Quadrata – Platinum Sponsor
Allenta – Gold Sponsor
Metricio – Gold Sponsor
Opensource ICT Solutions – Gold Sponsor
Docomo Business – Gold Sponsor
SRA OSS – Silver Sponsor
Enthus – Lunch and coffee break sponsor

We’d also like to give a shout-out to our Zabbix Fans, who played a crucial role in supporting the Summit this year (as every year) with their attendance, merchandise purchases, and enthusiasm!

We’re grateful to everyone who played a role and helped us make Zabbix Summit 2023 happen!

Highlights from the main stage

This year we continued a Summit tradition and allowed our in-person audience as well those tuning in via livestream and YouTube to ask questions during live Q&A sessions – a feature that made the proceedings more interactive and helped everyone feel more involved. The speeches were all fascinating and well received, but a few in particular stood out:

What the future holds for Zabbix

Zabbix CEO and Founder Alexei Vladishev kicked off the presentations on Day 1 with a keynote speech about his current plans for Zabbix’s development, including a detailed look at enhancements requested by users.

Avoiding alert fatigue

Bringing a less technical and more conceptual approach to addressing day-to-day data monitoring issues, Rihards Olups, SaaS Architect at Nokia, discussed alert fatigue and how science explains it. During his presentation, Rihards showed how an excess of alerts can negatively affect selective attention and shared his thoughts about how professionals can intervene to prevent problems.

Making Zabbix’s latest offerings accessible to everyone

Day 2 began with Zabbix Director of Business Development Sergey Sorokin focusing on new plans and offerings, including a subscription system for technical support, consulting services, and monitoring tailored for managed service providers.

Monitoring everything (and we do mean everything!)

Janne Pikkarainen, Lead Site Reliability Engineer at Forcepoint, provided detailed and entertaining insights into how he connects Zabbix to smart accessories and uses it to monitor aspects of his home, including the location of personal items, noise levels, and even the frequency of his daughter’s naps and cries.

Implementing ideas and design in MSP environments

In tackling the topic of data collection and analysis for service providers, Brian van Baekel, Zabbix Trainer at Opensource ICT Solutions, presented details on the development of projects focused on monitoring service providers. He also highlighted best practices for data collection in Zabbix Server, data storage, and presenting on the Zabbix Frontend.

Monitoring the London transportation system

A use case presented by Nathan Liefting, Zabbix Consultant and Trainer at Opensource ICT Solutions, and Adan Mohamed, DevOps Manager at Boldyn Networks, showed how Zabbix monitors the availability of the London Underground subway system. Data is collected from 136 “tube” stations in a high-level architecture and used to assess the availability of Wi-Fi networks, emergency connections, and other services.

Bringing the Olympics and World Cup to life with Zabbix

Marianna Portela, a Tech Lead at Globo in Brazil, shared her insights into how Zabbix supports Globo’s digital transformation and helps her monitor live event infrastructure at massive events like the Olympics and World Cup.

Don’t forget the fun part!

Zabbix Summits are renowned for their friendly, informal atmosphere, which is probably most clearly on display at our famous Summit parties.

Zabbix Summit 2023’s Welcome party was held at the Stargorod Riga brewery in the heart of Riga’s old town. It featured arm wrestling, a selection of delicious foods and beverages, and plenty of opportunities for Summit participants to get to know each other.

The Main party saw live music, dancing, quizzes, and other fun events take place within the historic confines of the Latvian Railway History Museum. The atmosphere, food, drinks, and good company all combined to create an event that nobody who attended will soon forget!

Last but not least, the Closing party at the Burzma food hall was a true celebration of the diversity of the global Zabbix community, with food and music from every country with a Zabbix presence as well as plenty of opportunities for Summit attendees to swap stories and exchange contact details.

Open door, open minds

The traditional Zabbix open-door day was held on Thursday, October 5, and while past Summits have typically seen around 50 visitors, we were proud to welcome closer to 100 this time around. Attendees could have a coffee with their favorite Zabbix employees, play a friendly game of foosball or table tennis, and get a behind-the-scenes look at where the magic happens.

Testify!

One new feature that made a big splash at this year’s Summit was the testimonial booth, which allowed Summit attendees to share their thoughts and experiences about Zabbix with the rest of our community. Sharing a testimonial or leaving a review allowed attendees to collect a piece of exclusive Zabbix Summit 2023 merchandise, and we went through a lot of it – the booth provided us with 28 filmed and 17 written testimonials about Zabbix products and services, far more than we anticipated.

Where to find the presentations

If you couldn’t attend but want to stay informed about what was discussed at the event (or if you’d just like to revisit the stage presentations), both days of recordings are available on Zabbix’s YouTube channel at the following links:

Streaming – Zabbix Summit Day 1

Streaming – Zabbix Summit Day 2

The graphics and texts of the presentations are also available for reference and download on the official event website.

We hope that Zabbix Summit 2023 was a time of valuable learning, connections, and idea exchange for everyone who attended or followed along through social media. If you’ve enjoyed the photos, you can see several more on our Instagram.

If you had an amazing time at Zabbix Summit 2023 (and we certainly hope you did), registration for Zabbix Summit 2024 is already open and Early Bird tickets are available.

See you next year!

 

The post A Look Back at Zabbix Summit 2023 appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

The Zabbix Advantage for Business

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/the-zabbix-advantage-for-business/26497/

CIOs and CITOs know all too well that a smoothly functioning network is the backbone of any business. Your network has to guarantee reliability, performance, and security. An unreliable network, by contrast, means damaged productivity, negative customer perceptions, and haphazard security. The solution is network monitoring, and in this post we’ll explore the reasons why Zabbix is the ideal monitoring solution for any business.

What is network monitoring?

Network monitoring is a critical IT process where all networking components (as well as key performance indicators like CPU utilization and network bandwidth) are constantly monitored to improve performance and eliminate bottlenecks. It provides real-time information that network administrators need to determine whether a network is running optimally.

Why Zabbix?

At Zabbix, we’re here to help you deliver for your customers, flawlessly and without interruptions. Our monitoring solution is 100% open source, available in over 20 languages, and able to collect an unlimited amount of data. Designed with enterprise requirements in mind, Zabbix provides a comprehensive, “single pane of glass” view of any size environment. Put simply, Zabbix allows you to monitor anything – from physical and virtual servers or containers to network infrastructure, applications, and cloud services.

What’s more, we offer a wide variety of additional professional services to go along with our solution, including:

  • Multiple technical support subscriptions that are tailored to the needs of your business
  • Certified training programs that are designed to help you master Zabbix under the guidance of top experts
  • A wide range of professional services, including template building, upgrades, consulting, and more

Keep reading to find out more about the difference Zabbix can make for your business.

The Zabbix advantage

IT teams are under enormous pressure to have their networks functioning perfectly 100% of the time, and with good reason. It’s simply not possible to run a business with a malfunctioning network. Here are 5 key reasons why you need to make network monitoring a top priority, and why Zabbix is the right answer for all of them.

Reliability

A network monitoring solution’s main reason for being is to show whether a device is working or not. Taking a proactive approach to maintaining a healthy network will keep tech support requests and downtime to an absolute minimum. Zabbix makes it easy to do so by automatically detecting problem states in your metric flow. Not only that, but our automated predictive functions can also help you react proactively. They do this by forecasting a value for early alerting and predicting the time left until you reach a problem threshold. Automation then allows you to remove additional inefficiencies.

Visibility

Having complete visibility of all your hardware and software assets allows you to easily monitor the health of your network. Zabbix lets businesses access metrics, issues, reports, and maps with a single click, allowing you to:

  • Analyze and correlate your metrics with easy-to-read graphs
  • Track your monitoring targets on an interactive geo-map
  • Display the statuses of your elements together with real-time data to get a detailed overview of your infrastructure on a Zabbix map
  • Generate scheduled PDF reports from any Zabbix dashboard
  • Extend the native Zabbix frontend functionality by developing your own frontend widgets and modules

Performance

By making it easy to monitor anything, Zabbix lets you know which parts of your network are being properly used, overused, or underused. This can help you uncover unnecessary costs that can be eliminated or identify a network component that needs upgrading.

Compliance

Today’s IT teams need to meet strict regulatory and protection standards in increasingly complex networks. Zabbix can spot changes in normal system behavior and unusual data flow. It can then either leverage multiple messaging channels to notify your team about anomalies or simply resolve any issues automatically.

Profitability

Zabbix has an extensive track record of making businesses more productive by saving network management time and lowering operating costs. Servers, for example, are machines that inevitably break down from time to time. Being able to quickly re-launch after a failure has occurred and minimizing the server downtime are vital. By making sure your team is aware of any and all current and impending issues, Zabbix can reduce downtime and increase the productivity and efficiency of your business.

Zabbix across industries

Whatever field you’re in, there’s no substitute for consistent, problem-free service when it comes to gaining the trust and loyalty of customers. Zabbix has an extensive track record of helping clients in multiple industries achieve their goals.

Zabbix for healthcare

A typical hospital relies on tens of thousands of connected devices. Manually checking each one for anomalies simply isn’t practical. Establishing a stable service level is a vital issue in most industries, but in healthcare it’s literally a matter of life and death. With Zabbix, hospital IT teams receive potentially life-saving alerts if anything is out of the ordinary.

What’s more, Zabbix can monitor progress toward expected outcomes, providing up-to-the-minute statistics on data errors or IT system failures. Issues, response times, and potential bottlenecks are displayed in easy-to-read graphs and charts. This allows hospital staff to follow up on the presence or absence of problems.

Zabbix for banking and finance

Financial institutions of all sizes rely on their networks to maintain connectivity and productivity. By processing millions of checks per minute and considering very complex dependencies between different elements of infrastructure, Zabbix allows banks to proactively detect and resolve network problems before they turn into major business disruptions.

Zabbix is also designed to seamlessly connect distributed architecture, including remote offices, branches, and even individual ATMs. Some of our financial industry clients previously used up to 20 different monitoring tools. Each alert sent hundreds of emails to different people, making it impossible to effectively monitor the environment. Naturally, they found Zabbix’s ability to monitor many thousands of devices and “single pane of glass” view to be a significant upgrade.

Zabbix for education

In an age of digital course materials and resources, schools and universities can’t operate without functioning IT infrastructures. Our clients in education typically have heterogeneous infrastructures with thousands of servers and clients. They also possess all kinds of connected devices, dozens of different operating systems, multiple locations, and hundreds of IT staff.

Zabbix has proven itself to be a simple, cost-effective method of monitoring geographically distributed campuses and educational sites. We’ve done this by:

  • Providing early notification of possible viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other transmitters of system infection
  • Monitoring IT systems for intellectual property (IP) protection purposes
  • Saving human resources by reducing manual work

Zabbix for government

Network monitoring is critical for government agencies, as downtime can bring a halt to vital public services. Our public-sector clients range from city-wide public transportation companies all the way up to entire prefectures. They use Zabbix to monitor the availability of utilities, transport, lighting, and many other public services.

In the process, Zabbix increases the effectiveness of budget expenditures by providing precise and accountable data on how public resources are used. This makes it easier to justify further expenditures. In most business software, agents are required for each monitored host and costs increase in proportion to the number of monitored hosts. By contrast, Zabbix is open source and the software itself is free of charge, resulting in anticipated cost reductions of up to 25% in many cases.

Zabbix for retail

Retail environments increasingly depend on network-connected equipment, particularly when it comes to warehouse monitoring and tracking SKUs (stock keeping units). Zabbix delivers an all-in-one tool to monitor different applications, metrics, processes, and equipment while providing a complete picture about the availability and performance of all the components that make a retail business successful. This makes it possible for retailers to easily automate store openings and closings, monitor cash machines, and keep track of access system log entries.

Not only that, the quantity and quality of information that Zabbix collects makes it easy for retailers to conduct a more accurate analysis of what is happening (or what may happen) and take preventive measures. Our retail clients find that having this level of control over their resources and services increases the confidence of their teams as well as their customers.

Zabbix for telecom

Internet, telephony, and television verticals require availability and consistency. The key to success is providing your services 24/7/365.

Zabbix makes this possible by providing full visibility of all network and customer devices, allowing operators to know of any outage before customers do and take necessary actions. Some of our telecommunications clients are able to effortlessly monitor well over 100,000 devices with a single Zabbix server. This helps them improve the customer experience and driving growth in the process.

Zabbix for aerospace

In the aerospace industry, timely data delivery and issue notification are the keys to safe operations. Aircraft depend on complex electronic systems that can diagnose the slightest deviations and make malfunctions known. Unfortunately, this is often in the form of either an indicator light on an instrument panel or a log message that is accessible only with specialized software or tools.

With Zabbix, all data transfers from the aircraft’s diagnostic system to the responsible employees can happen automatically. Error prioritization and escalation to further levels can also happen automatically if any aircraft has an ongoing issue that remains active for multiple days.

Conclusion

At Zabbix, our goal is a world without interruptions, powered by a world-class universal monitoring solution that’s available and affordable to any business. Our open-source software allows you to monitor your entire IT stack, no matter what size your infrastructure is or where it’s hosted.

That’s why government institutions across the globe as well as some of the world’s largest companies trust us with their network monitoring needs.

Get in touch with us to learn more and get started on the path to maximum efficiency and uptime today!

 

The post The Zabbix Advantage for Business appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Monitoring the London Underground with Nathan Liefting and Adan Mohamed

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/monitoring-the-london-underground-with-nathan-liefting-and-adan-mohamed/26693/

With just a few days remaining until Zabbix Summit 2023, our series of speaker interviews draws to a close as we talk to Opensource ICT Solutions trainer and consultant Nathan Liefting about how he worked with Adan Mohamed of Boldyn Networks to monitor the London Underground with Zabbix.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

I’m a Zabbix trainer and consultant for Opensource ICT Solutions. You might also know me from the books Brian van Baekel and I wrote called “Zabbix IT Infrastructure Monitoring.”

How long have you been using Zabbix? What kind of daily Zabbix tasks are you involved in at your company?

My tasks are easy to explain – Zabbix, Zabbix, and some more Zabbix! Opensource ICT Solutions is one of the few companies that focus solely on Zabbix, so I get to work full time with the product, 40 hours a week. I build new environments, integrations, automations, and anything that you might need for your Zabbix environment.

Can you give us a sneak peek at what we can expect to hear during your Zabbix Summit speech?

Definitely! Adan from Boldyn Networks and I will be presenting you with a real use case for Zabbix monitoring. We’ll have a look at how Boldyn has brought broadband network connectivity to the London Underground tunnels and why it’s so important to monitor the equipment that makes that all possible. Of course, since this is THE Zabbix summit, we’ll also look at what the Zabbix setup looks like and share a pretty interesting use case for SNMP traps.

How and why did you come to the decision to use Zabbix as the monitoring solution for your use case?

Boldyn was looking for the best network monitoring solution for their project. Since we offer exactly that, we got to talking and we decided that our favorite open-source network monitoring tool was the way to go. Since then, we’ve been building amazing custom monitoring implementations together. The rest is history.

Can you mention some other noteworthy non-standard Zabbix monitoring use cases that you’ve worked on?

Definitely! Since I get to work on monitoring all day long, we’ve got a lot to choose from. I do most of my work in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and all those markets are super exciting. We’re monitoring infrastructure that keeps planes flying safely and makes sure power grids are up and running, and now we’re also helping to keep people connected to the internet even when they go underground. If you ask me, it doesn’t get a lot more exciting than that – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The post Monitoring the London Underground with Nathan Liefting and Adan Mohamed appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Leveraging Telegram as a User Interface for Zabbix with Sven Putteneers

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/leveraging-telegram-as-a-user-interface-for-zabbix-with-sven-putteneers/26604/

One of the highlights of any Zabbix Summit is the diverse set of fascinating speakers who show up each year. With that in mind, we’re continuing our series of interviews with Summit 2023 speakers by sitting down with 7 to 7 CEO Sven Putteneers, who has been gracious enough to fill us in on his work, his Zabbix experience, and the details of integrating Zabbix with the popular messaging app Telegram.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

I’m a 43-year-old computer geek with a strong interest in Open Source software and programming. I work for a big telco, where I help to build and maintain a cloud telephony platform. Apart from that, I administer our Zabbix installation, which we have set up as a multi-tenant platform and which we use to provide a “monitoring as a service” offering to our customers. Aside from my day job, I founded a company (7 to 7), where Zabbix consultancy is part of the services I offer.

How long have you been using Zabbix? What kind of daily Zabbix tasks are you involved in at your company?

I have been using Zabbix daily for the last 7+ years. My daily tasks are configuring new customers and hosts, maintaining our Zabbix deployment, programming integrations with external systems, and thinking about how we can improve our Zabbix installation in any way.

For my side job, I give Zabbix-related advice, help customers solve tough Zabbix problems (e.g. “how to monitor this exotic device”) and roll out Zabbix installations from scratch to a fully functional monitoring platform. I also offer monitoring in an MSP-like fashion for customers who want their infrastructure monitored but don’t want to deploy their own Zabbix.

Can you give us a sneak peek at what we can expect to hear during your Zabbix Summit speech?

I’ll describe how a Telegram bot that is connected to your Zabbix deployment can turn your Telegram app into a small but powerful user interface for your Zabbix. This means not just using Telegram as a one-directional notification mechanism (like email), but allowing you to query your Zabbix, perform actions (like acknowledging alarms), fetch graphs, etc.

Why did you decide to write a bot for Telegram as opposed to other popular messaging systems? Was it simply a matter of preference or were technical considerations taken into account?

Preference was only a factor after we made a first selection based purely on technical criteria. Some of the criteria we had were that it had to be multi-platform (our Zabbix users are on Android as well as on iOS and use Mac, Windows, and Linux on their computers), it preferably had built-in platform support for bots, and the option of sending more than just plain text.

Telegram ticked all the boxes and has some nice extra features that were not hard requirements (like in-place updating of already sent messages instead of just being able to send new messages), so we decided to go with that.

Have you written any other custom integrations for Zabbix?

Yes, but most of these are for internal systems (like our in-house CRM) and are not really interesting outside the company.

I have written some integrations for monitoring (i.e. UserParameter scripts and external scripts -scripts + the accompanying templates) to monitor systems that have an API that is difficult to query with vanilla Zabbix. An example would be TLS certificate monitoring that is a bit more in-depth than what Agent2 currently offers.

I have also fixed some bugs in a script called mib2zabbix, which as the name suggests takes an MIB file as input and outputs a template file that can be imported in Zabbix.
There are a few features I still want to add to the script (like generating the new walk items for efficient SNMP value gathering), but the script as it is has saved us a tremendous amount of time already.

One fun (and useful!) thing I wrote is a script that uses zabbix_sender to feed data to a “fake host” representing all the things we monitor (think of it as an item per monitored host). Because our Zabbix is multi-tenant, we have some naming conventions and rules around mandatory hostgroup membership to control where alarms for a specific host (or trigger) get sent and when.

I did a talk about how we use hostgroups to control action logic at the Zabbix Benelux Conference 2020 (and the same talk again at the Online Meetup in September 2020. The “fake host” alerts us when a host doesn’t conform to our conventions or is misconfigured, so alarm notifications would be prevented from being sent, for example.

The cool thing is that since this is all based on discovery rules and a script that pulls everything from Zabbix through the API and then feeds data about potential problems back through zabbix_sender, new hosts are picked up automatically and are checked for compliance with our conventions within minutes after they’ve been added.

 

The post Leveraging Telegram as a User Interface for Zabbix with Sven Putteneers appeared first on Zabbix Blog.