All posts by Michael Kammer

Simplifying Digital Transformation with Marianna Portela

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/simplifying-digital-transformation-with-marianna-portela/26609/

To help everyone in our community get up to speed with Zabbix Summit speakers and their topics, we’re continuing our series of interviews and sitting down for a chat with Marianna Portela of Brazilian mass media conglomerate Globo. Read on to get a preview of her Summit speech topic and see how she uses Zabbix to bring massive live events to millions of users around the globe.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

I’m a tech lead at Globo, the largest media group in Latin America. It includes over-the-air broadcasting, television and film production, a pay television subscription service, streaming media, publishing, and online services.

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

I have been working at Globo for 15 years. I’ve been involved in monitoring for 11 of those years, and I’ve been using Zabbix for 10. I help monitor the applications that generate data for live events, and I use Zabbix to generate metrics that support decision-making related to better content delivery quality.

Can you name a few of the specific challenges that Zabbix has helped you solve?

Zabbix allows us to empower our users and supports our entire digital transformation – including many things related to Globoplay streaming. It also helps us monitor live event infrastructure, like the Olympics and World Cup. Previously, when there were technical issues during live events, we would try to figure out what happened after the fact, but no longer – Zabbix gives us a proactive analysis of potential occurrences within live production.

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

I’m planning to talk about how we use Zabbix to help ensure the quality monitoring of live production, which is essentially the production and the part of Globo that deals with any type of live event and generates data for things like games, for example. I’ll introduce how we started with actual infrastructure monitoring and how this digital transformation at Globo began, specifically how we managed to enter new areas like content generation, especially live content. Then I’ll also discuss some specifics of how we monitor live event infrastructure.

The post Simplifying Digital Transformation with Marianna Portela appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What is Server Monitoring? Everything You Need to Know

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/what-is-server-monitoring-everything-you-need-to-know/26617/

Servers are the foundation of a company’s IT infrastructure, and the cost of server downtime can include anything from days without system access to the loss of important business data. This can lead to operational issues, service outages, and steep repair costs.

Viewed against this backdrop, server monitoring is an investment with massive benefits to any organization. The latest generation of server monitoring tools make it easier to assess server health and deal with any underlying issues as quickly and painlessly as possible.

What are servers, and how do they work?

Servers are computers (or applications) that run software services for other computers or devices on a network. The computer takes requests from the client computers or devices and performs tasks in response to the requests. These tasks can involve processing data, providing content, or performing calculations. Some servers are dedicated to hosting web services, which are software services offered on any computer connected to the internet.

What is server monitoring? Why does it matter?

Servers are some of the most important pieces of any company’s IT infrastructure. If a server is offline, running slowly, or experiencing outages, website performance will be affected and customers may decide to go elsewhere. If an internal file server is generating errors, important business data like accounting files or customer records could be compromised.

A server monitoring system is designed to watch your systems and provide a number of key metrics regarding their operation. In general, server monitoring software tests for accessibility (making sure that the server is alive and can be reached) and response time (guaranteeing that it is running fast enough to keep users happy). What’s more, it sends notifications about missing or corrupt files, security violations, and other issues.

Server monitoring is most often used for processing data in real time, but quality server monitoring is also predictive, letting users know when disks will reach capacity and whether memory or CPU utilization is about to be throttled. By evaluating historical data, it’s possible to find out if a server’s performance is degrading over time and even predict when a complete crash might occur.

How can server monitoring help businesses?

Here are a few of the most important business benefits of server monitoring:

Server monitoring tools give you a bird’s-eye view of your server’s health and performance

A quality server monitoring tool keeps IT administrators aware of metrics like CPU usage, RAM, disk space, and network bandwidth. This helps them to see when servers are slowing down or failing, allowing them to act before users are affected.

Server monitoring simplifies process automation

IT teams have long checklists when it comes to managing servers. They need to monitor hard disk space, keep an eye on infrastructure, schedule system backups, and update antivirus software. They also need to be able to foresee and solve critical events, while managing any disruptions.

A server monitoring tool helps IT professionals by automating all or many aspects of these jobs. It can show whether a backup was successful, if software is patched, and whether a server is in good condition. This allows IT teams to focus on tasks that benefit more from their involvement and expertise.

Server monitoring makes it easier to retain customers as well as employees

Acting quickly when servers develop issues (or even before) makes sure that employee workflows aren’t disrupted, allowing them to perform their duties, see results, and reach their goals. It also guarantees a positive customer experience by providing early notification of any issues.

Server monitoring keeps costs down

By automating processes and tasks (and freeing up time in the process) server monitoring systems make the most of resources and reduce costs. And by solving potential issues before they affect the organization, they help businesses avoid lost revenue from unfinished employee tasks, operational delays, and unfinished purchases.

What should you look for in a server monitoring solution?

Now that you’re sold on the benefits of server monitoring, you’ll want to choose the server monitoring solution that’s right for you. Here are a few capabilities to keep in mind:

Ease of use

Does the solution include an intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to monitor events and react to problems quickly? It should, and it should also allow you to make the most of the data it exports by providing graphs, reports, and integrations.

Customer support

Is it easy to contact support? How quickly do they respond? A quality server monitoring solution will provide a defined SLA and stick to it with no exceptions.

Breadth of coverage

A good solution will support all the server types (hardware, software, on-premises, cloud) that your enterprise uses. It should also be flexible enough to support any server types you may implement in the future.

Alert management

There are a few important questions to ask when it comes to alerts:

  • Does the solution include a dashboard or display that makes it easy to track events and react to problems quickly?
  • Is it easy to set up alerts via the configuration of thresholds that trigger them? How are alerts delivered?
  • Does the solution have a way to help you determine why a problem has occurred, instead of just telling you that something has gone wrong without context?

What are some best practices to keep in mind?

Here are a few best practices that will help you avoid the more common server monitoring pitfalls:

Proactively check for failures

Keep a sharp eye out for any issues that may affect your software or hardware. The tools included with a good monitoring solution can alert you to errors caused by a corrupted database (for example) and let you know if a security incident has left important services disabled.

Don’t forget your historical data

Server problems rarely occur in a vacuum, so look into the context of issues that emerge. You can do that by exploring metrics across a specific period, typically between 30 to 90 days. For example, you may find that CPU temperature has increased within the past week, which may suggest a problem with a server cooling system.

Operate your hardware in line with recommended tolerance levels

File servers are commonly pushed to the limit, rarely getting a break. That’s why it’s important to monitor metrics like CPU utilization, RAM utilization, storage capacity usage, and CPU temperature. Check these metrics regularly to identify issues before it’s too late.

Keep track of alerts

Always monitor your alerts in real time as they occur and explore reliable ways to manage and prioritize them. When escalating an incident, make sure it goes to the right individual as soon as possible.

Use server monitoring data to plan short-term cloud capacity

Server monitoring systems can help you plan the right computing power for specific moments. If services become slower or users experience other problems with performance, an IT manager can assess the situation through the server monitor. They’ll then be able to allocate extra resources to solve the problem.

Take advantage of capacity planning

Data center workloads have almost doubled in the past 5 years, and servers have had to keep up with this ongoing change. Analyzing long-term server utilization trends can prepare you for future server requirements.

Go beyond asset management

With server monitoring, you can discover which systems are approaching the end of their lives and whether any assets have disappeared from your network. You can also let your server monitoring tool handle the heavy lifting for you when it comes to tracking physical hardware.

The Zabbix Advantage

Zabbix is designed to make server monitoring easy. Our solution allows you to track any possible server performance metrics and incidents, including server performance, availability, and configuration changes.

Intuitive dashboards, network graphs, and topology maps allow you to visualize server performance and availability, and our flexible alerting allows for multiple delivery methods and customized message content.

Not only that, our out-of-the-box templates come with preconfigured items, triggers, graphs, applications, screens, low-level discovery rules, and web scenarios – all designed to have you up and running in just a few minutes.

And because Zabbix is open-source, it’s not just affordable, it’s free. Contact us to find out more and enjoy the peace of mind that comes from knowing that your servers are under control.

FAQ

Why do we need server monitoring?

Server monitoring allows IT professionals to:

  • Monitor the responsiveness of a server
  • Know a server’s capacity, user load, and speed
  • Proactively detect and prevent any issues that might affect the server

Why do companies choose to monitor their servers?

Companies monitor servers so that they can:

  • Proactively identify any performance issues before they impact users
  • Understand a server’s system resource usage
  • Analyze a server for its reliability, availability, performance, security, etc.

How is server monitoring done?

Server monitoring tools constantly collect system data across an entire IT infrastructure, giving administrators a clear view of when certain metrics are above or below thresholds. They also automatically notify relevant parties if a critical system error is detected, allowing them to act in a timely manner to resolve issues.

What should you monitor on a server?

Key areas to monitor on a server include:

  • A server’s physical status
  • Server performance, including CPU utilization, memory resources, and disk activity
  • Server uptime
  • Page file usage
  • Context switches
  • Time synchronization
  • Process activity
  • Server capacity, user load, and speed

If I want to monitor a server, how easy is it to set things up?

Setting up a server monitoring tool is easy, provided you’ve taken into account these 5 steps:

  • Assess and create a monitoring plan
  • Discover how data can be collected
  • Define any and all metrics
  • Set up alerts
  • Have an established workflow

The post What is Server Monitoring? Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What is Network Monitoring? Everything You Need to Know

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/what-is-network-monitoring-everything-you-need-to-know/26539/

Your company’s network is the glue that bonds your enterprise together. The technology of networking is growing more stable and reliable all the time, but it doesn’t mean you can leave your network unattended – quality network monitoring is an absolute must-have.

What are network monitoring systems?

At its most basic, network monitoring is a critical IT process where all networking components (as well as key performance indicators like network hardware CPU utilization and network bandwidth) are continuously and proactively monitored to improve performance, eliminate bottlenecks, and prevent network congestion and downtime.

Put more simply, it’s the act of keeping an eye on all the connected elements that are relevant to your business. That means all your hardware and software resources, including routers, switches, firewalls, servers, PCs, printers, phones, and tablets.

A network monitoring system is a set of software tools that lets you program this action. It allows you to constantly monitor your network infrastructure by doing systematic tests to look for issues and notifying you if any are found. A good system makes monitoring your network easy by:

  • Allowing you to see all information in dashboards
  • Generating reports on demand
  • Sending alerts
  • Displaying the monitoring data you need in easy-to-read graphs

What are some key benefits of network monitoring?

A quality network monitoring solution allows you to:

Benchmark standard performance

Monitoring gives you the visibility to benchmark your network’s everyday performance. It also makes it easy to spot any fluctuations in performance, which in turn allows you to identify any unwanted changes.

Effectively allocate resources

IT teams need a clear understanding of the source of problems. They also need the ability to minimize tedious troubleshooting and put in place proactive measures to stay ahead of IT outages. To use a plumbing analogy, monitoring lets them fix cracks before a leak happens.

Identify security threats

Preventing security breaches is a major challenge for any organization. As attacks become increasingly more sophisticated and difficult to trace, detecting and mitigating any form of network threat before it escalates is critical. Network monitoring makes it easier to protect data and systems by providing early warning of any suspicious anomalies.

Manage a changing IT environment

New technologies like internet-enabled sensors, wireless devices, and cloud technologies make it harder for IT teams to track performance fluctuations or suspicious activity. A network monitoring solution can:

  • Give IT teams a comprehensive inventory of wired and wireless devices
  • Make it easy to analyze long-term trends
  • Help you get the most out of your available assets

Proactively detect and resolve issues before they affect users

Monitoring a network closely allows an organization to quickly resolve issues and prevent major disruptions. This means fewer interruptions to operations and better utilization of IT resources.

Deploy new technology and system upgrades successfully

Thanks to monitoring, IT teams can learn how equipment has performed over time and use trend analysis to see whether current technology can scale to meet business needs. This can:

  • Give a clear picture of whether a network is able to support the launch of a new technology
  • Mitigate any risks associated with a major change
  • Easily demonstrate ROI by providing comprehensive metrics

What are some different types of network monitoring?

Different types of monitoring exist depending on what exactly needs to be monitored. Some of the most common include fault monitoring, log monitoring, network performance monitoring, configuration monitoring, and availability monitoring.

Fault monitoring

As the name suggests, fault monitoring involves finding and reporting faults in a computer network. It is crucial for maintaining uninterrupted network uptime and is essential to keeping all programs and services running smoothly.

Log monitoring

Resources such as servers, applications, and websites continuously generate logs, which can:

  • Provide valuable insights into user activity
  • Help a business comply with regulations
  • Promptly resolve incidents
  • Boost network security

Network performance monitoring (NPM)

NPM tracks monitoring parameters like latency, network traffic, bandwidth usage, and throughput, with the goal of optimizing user experience. NPM tools provide valuable information that can be used to minimize downtime and troubleshoot network issues.

Configuration monitoring

Monitoring network configuration involves keeping track of the software and firmware in use on the network and making sure that any inconsistencies are identified and addressed. This prevents any gaps in visibility or security.

Network availability monitoring

Availability monitoring is the monitoring of all IT infrastructure to determine the uptime of devices. By consistently monitoring devices and servers, organizations can receive alerts when there is a network crash or when a device becomes unavailable. ICMP, SNMP, and Syslogs are the most commonly used availability monitoring techniques.

How does it work?

Network monitoring uses multiple techniques to test the availability and functionality of a network. Here are a few of the most common techniques used to collect data for monitoring software:

Ping

A ping is the simplest technique that monitoring software uses to test hosts within a network. The monitoring system sends out a signal and records:

  • Whether the signal was received,
  • How long it took the host to receive the signal
  • Whether any signal data was lost

That data is then used to determine:

  • Whether the host is active
  • How efficient the host is
  • The transmission time and packet loss experienced when communicating with the host
  • Any other vital information

Simple network management protocol (SNMP)

SNMP is the most widely used protocol for modern network management systems. It uses monitoring software to monitor individual devices in a network. In this system, each monitored device has SNMP agent monitoring software that sends information about the device’s performance to the monitoring solution, which collects this information in a database and then analyzes it for errors.

Syslog

Syslog is an automated messaging system that sends messages when an event affects a network device. Technicians can set up devices to send out messages when the device encounters an error, shuts down unexpectedly, encounters a configuration failure, and more. These messages often contain information that can be used for system management as well as security systems.

Scripts

Scripts are simple programs that collect basic information and instruct the network to perform an action within certain conditions. They can fill gaps in monitoring software functionality, performing scheduled tasks such as resetting and reconfiguring a public access computer every night.

Scripts can also be used to collect data, sending out an alert if results don’t fall within certain thresholds. Network managers will usually set these thresholds, programming the network software to send out an alert if data indicates issues, including:

  • Slow throughput
  • High error rates
  • Unavailable devices
  • Slower-than-usual response times

How can businesses benefit from network monitoring?

Here are 5 ways that quality network monitoring can benefit any business:

Increased reliability

The main function of any monitoring solution is to show whether a device is working or not. A proactive approach to maintaining a healthy network will keep tech support requests and downtime to an absolute minimum.

Improved visibility

Having complete visibility of all your hardware and software assets allows you to easily monitor the health of your network. Monitoring tracks the data moving along cables and through servers, switches, connections, and routers. In the event of a problem, your IT team can identify the root cause and fix the issue quickly.

Enhanced performance

Network monitoring software lets you know which parts of your network are being properly used, overused, or underused. You can also uncover unnecessary costs that can be eliminated or identify a network component that needs upgrading.

Stricter compliance

Today’s IT teams need to meet strict regulatory and protection standards in increasingly complex networks. The latest compliance guidelines recommend actively watching for changes in normal system behavior and unusual data flow. The data provided by monitoring tools makes it easy to assess your entire system and deliver a service that meets all required standards.

Greater profitability

Network monitoring makes businesses more productive by saving network management time and lowering operating costs. If your team is aware of current and impending issues, you can reduce downtime and increase productivity and efficiency.

The Zabbix advantage

At Zabbix, we’ve perfected an enterprise IT infrastructure monitoring software that can deploy anywhere and monitor any device, system, or app in any environment while providing comprehensive data protection, easy integration, and unlimited visualization options.

You can also count on complete transparency, a predictable release cycle, a vibrant and active user community, and an outstanding user experience.

Everything we do scales easily, so we’re able to grow right along with you. What’s more, we offer a comprehensive range of professional services, including implementation, integration, custom development, consulting services, technical support, and a full suite of training programs.

The best part? Because Zabbix is open-source, it’s not just affordable – it’s free. Get in touch with us to find out more and get started on the path to maximum network efficiency today.

FAQ

What is an example of basic network monitoring?

An example of basic network monitoring is a network engineer collecting real-time data from a data center and setting up alerts when a problem (such as a device failure, a temperature spike, a power outage, or a network capacity issue) appears.

What is network monitoring used for?

Network monitoring can:

• Determine whether a network is running optimally in real time
• Proactively identify deficiencies and optimize efficiency
• Catch and repair problems before they impact operations
• Reduce downtime and make sure employees have access to the resources they need
• Boost the availability of APIs and webpages
• Optimize network performance and availability

What is the most popular network monitoring program?

Some of the most popular network monitoring programs available on the market include:

• Zabbix
• SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
• Auvik
• Datadog
• ManageEngine OpManager
• Site24x7
• Checkmk
• Progress WhatsUp Gold
• Microsoft Resource Monitor
• Wireshark
• Nagios
• Ntop
• Cacti
• FreeNATS
• Icinga

What are the key steps in network monitoring?

A network monitoring process includes all phases involved in executing efficient network monitoring. These phases include:

  • Locating all key network components
  • Actively monitoring the components
  • Creating alerts for component health and metrics
  • Making a plan for managing issues
  • Analyzing generated reports
  • Adjusting the process as necessary

The post What is Network Monitoring? Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Monitoring green power and distributed edge computing infrastructure with Hiroshi Abe

Post Syndicated from Michael Kammer original https://blog.zabbix.com/monitoring-green-power-and-distributed-edge-computing-infrastructure-with-hiroshi-abe/26451/

With Zabbix Summit 2023 almost upon us, we’ve prepared a short and direct interview with Summit presenter Dr. Hiroshi Abe. Dr. Abe, a Research Engineer at the Toyota Motor Corporation, will share his thoughts about how Zabbix is the ideal solution when it comes to monitoring green power and distributed edge computing.

Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.

I have been working for the Toyota Motor Corporation as a Research Engineer since 2019. My current research topics are related to large-scale monitoring systems that target connected car communications, edge computing, and green IT.

How long have you been using Zabbix? What Zabbix tasks are you involved in every day at your company?

Although I am technically retired, since 2015 I have been a member of the Monitoring team of the Network Operation Center, which is part of the ShowNet building team for the “Interop Tokyo” show event in Japan. I have been working with Kodai Terashima, CEO of Zabbix Japan, to build a monitoring system using Zabbix to monitor the event network required for ShowNet. In my office, we use Zabbix to monitor network and server equipment as well as our R&D environment.

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

You might expect to hear something deeply related to cars, and it’s true that much of the data created by cars can be processed using edge computing before being transported to the cloud. However, edge computing for the optimal use of green power will be the main topic of my talk. I’ll discuss a distributed monitoring system that uses Zabbix and Zabbix Proxy as a monitoring system for edge environments and green power in multiple data centers.

What made you go with Zabbix as a monitoring solution for green power and edge computing?

Zabbix Proxy is an easy-to-use distributed monitoring solution. A distributed monitoring system is a must for us because there will be multiple edge computing locations all over Japan.

Are you deploying Zabbix using containers to monitor your DCs?

We used RedHat’s OpenShift to implement the edge computing and data synchronization mechanism. We were able to easily deploy Zabbix in OpenShift as a container using Operator, and the monitoring environment using Zabbix containers is implemented in multiple DCs.

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