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Decrypting Zabbix TLS with Wireshark

Post Syndicated from Markku Leiniö original https://blog.zabbix.com/decrypting-zabbix-tls-with-wireshark/26832/

One of the built-in security features in Zabbix is TLS (Transport Layer Security) support for external connections. This means that when your distributed Zabbix proxies or Zabbix agents connect to the Zabbix server (or vice versa), TLS can be used to encrypt all the connections. When the connections are encrypted, third parties cannot read the Zabbix components’ communication, even though they would be able to catch the network traffic in some way.

In specific cases you may still want to inspect the encrypted traffic, for example to troubleshoot some problems with Zabbix agents or proxies. I already wrote a post about troubleshooting Zabbix agent with Wireshark, but the TLS encryption prevents anyone seeing the actual contents of the packets.

Since the traffic is encrypted in the Zabbix components (the server, agents and proxies), there still is a way for you, the Zabbix administrator, to intervene with the encryption so that you can get hold of the unencrypted traffic as well. In this post I will explain the process.

First, let’s demonstrate the TLS encryption between a Zabbix agent and a Zabbix server. I have configured the agent (Zabbix Agent 2 actually) with these lines:

Hostname=Zabbix70-agent
ServerActive=zabbixtest.lein.io
TLSConnect=psk
TLSPSKIdentity=agent-ident
TLSPSKFile=/etc/zabbix/psk

In this example I’m using TLS with pre-shared key (PSK), and the key itself is saved in /etc/zabbix/psk. My favorite way of generating a PSK is using OpenSSL:

markku@agent:~$ openssl rand -hex 32
afa34bf1104a1457e11e7d3a9b1ff7f5fb4f494c92ca1a8a9c5e1437f8897416
markku@agent:~$

The same key must also be configured on the Zabbix server frontend, see the Zabbix documentation for the PSK configuration details:

After the configurations I captured the Zabbix traffic for some time on the Zabbix server (using sudo tcpdump port 10051 -v -w zabbix70-tls-agent.pcap), stopped the capture, copied the capture file to my workstation, and opened it with Wireshark.

The capture file can be downloaded here:

Note: I recommend using Wireshark version 4.1.0 or later when analyzing captures containing Zabbix traffic because the built-in Zabbix protocol support was only added to Wireshark in version 4.1.0.

The packet list looks like this:

As we can see in the Protocol column, there are no Zabbix packets recognized in this capture, there are only TCP and TLS packets (the TCP-marked packets being the “empty” packets for negotiating the actual connectivity).

A side detail: Even though the traffic is encrypted, you can still see the configured Zabbix TLS PSK identity (“agent-ident” in my configuration above) in plain text inside the TLS Client Hello packets, if you ever need to check that in the traffic.

Now that we confirmed that TLS encryption is used and we cannot see the Zabbix traffic contents in the capture, let’s prepare the Zabbix server for the TLS decryption.

As I hinted in the beginning, since we have the TLS connection endpoints under our management, we can do tricks on the hosts to get the encryption keys. TLS negotiates the encryption keys dynamically for each connection, but there is a way to save the keys to a file so that we can later decrypt the captured traffic. (Note: I’m not a protocol-level TLS expert, so please forgive me any possible technical inaccuracies in the detailed explanations. I’ll just call “TLS keys” whatever is needed to get the encryption/decryption done.)

Peter Wu (who, in contrast to me, is a protocol-level TLS expert, and also one of the Wireshark core developers) has kindly published code for a helper library that makes it possible for us to save the TLS session keys on the TLS endpoint. In this demo I will save the keys on the Zabbix server, but the same could be done on the agents/proxies instead if needed.

First I’ll see the TLS library that my Debian-based Zabbix server is using:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ ldd /usr/sbin/zabbix_server | grep ssl
        libssl.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libssl.so.3 (0x00007f62ee47a000)
markku@zabbixserver:~$ dpkg -l libssl* | grep ^ii
ii  libssl3:amd64  3.0.9-1   amd64  Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - shared libraries
markku@zabbixserver:~$

To get and compile the helper library I’ll need to install some utilities:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ sudo apt install git gcc make libssl-dev
...
markku@zabbixserver:~$ dpkg -l libssl* | grep ^ii
ii  libssl-dev:amd64 3.0.9-1 amd64 Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - development files
ii  libssl3:amd64    3.0.9-1 amd64 Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - shared libraries
markku@zabbixserver:~$

I’ll the clone the Peter’s wireshark-notes repo to the server:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ git clone --depth=1 https://git.lekensteyn.nl/peter/wireshark-notes
Cloning into 'wireshark-notes'...
...
markku@zabbixserver:~$ cd wireshark-notes/src
markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$ ls -l
total 28
-rw-r--r-- 1 markku markku   534 Oct  7 15:39 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 markku markku 11392 Oct  7 15:39 sslkeylog.c
-rw-r--r-- 1 markku markku  7278 Oct  7 15:39 sslkeylog.py
-rwxr-xr-x 1 markku markku  2325 Oct  7 15:39 sslkeylog.sh
markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$

Now I can compile the library and make it available on the server:

markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$ make
cc   sslkeylog.c -shared -o libsslkeylog.so -fPIC -ldl
markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$ sudo install libsslkeylog.so /usr/local/lib
markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$ ls -l /usr/local/lib/libsslkeylog.so
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17336 Oct  7 15:40 /usr/local/lib/libsslkeylog.so
markku@zabbixserver:~/wireshark-notes/src$ cd
markku@zabbixserver:~$

To use the helper library, a couple of environment variables need to be set. For Zabbix server the easy way is to edit the systemd configuration for zabbix-server service:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ sudo systemctl edit zabbix-server

In the editor that opens I’ll add these in the configuration:

[Service]
Environment=LD_PRELOAD=/usr/local/lib/libsslkeylog.so
Environment=SSLKEYLOGFILE=/tmp/tls.keys

The variables are kind of self-explanatory: Whenever Zabbix server service is started, the libsslkeylog.so library is loaded first, and the SSLKEYLOGFILE variable sets the location of the file where the keys will be saved.

Now the word of warning: The libsslkeylog.so library, when loaded by a process that uses TLS communication, will save the encryption/decryption keys of all the TLS sessions of the process to the configured file. This means that whoever gets that file and the saved TLS communication will be able to see the decrypted contents of the packets, defeating the whole idea of the TLS encryption. You really don’t want to do this TLS key saving for any longer periods of time. Be sure to remove the configurations (and restart the service) after you have inspected whatever you were inspecting in your system. Or, don’t do any of this at all.

After saving the configuration the Zabbix server needs to be restarted:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server
markku@zabbixserver:~$

The TLS keys have now started being saved in the configured file:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ ls -l /tmp/tls.keys
-rw-rw-r-- 1 zabbix zabbix 10157 Oct  7 15:45 tls.keys
markku@zabbixserver:~$

At this point the Zabbix agent is still communicating actively with the Zabbix server, so I’ll take a new capture with tcpdump (sudo tcpdump port 10051 -v -w zabbix70-tls-agent-2.pcap).

After a short while I’ll stop the capture, and copy the capture file and the TLS key file on my workstation.

Now it’s a good time to disable the TLS key saving as well (besides containing sensitive data, the key file will also grow with each new TLS session so it can quickly get very large), so I’ll edit the Zabbix service configuration, remove the configured lines and restart the service:

markku@zabbixserver:~$ sudo systemctl edit zabbix-server
markku@zabbixserver:~$ sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server
markku@zabbixserver:~$

When opening the new capture file in Wireshark there is no immediate change in the packet list: the TLS packets are still shown encrypted. Wireshark needs to be specifically configured to read the TLS keys from the separate file.

In Wireshark, I’ll go to Edit – Preferences – Protocols – TLS:

There is the “(Pre)-Master-Secret log filename” field, I’ll use Browse button to select the copied tls.keys file, and save the configuration with OK.

At this point Wireshark reloads the capture file and the Zabbix agent TLS sessions will be decrypted:

Using the “zabbix” display filter will show just the Zabbix protocol packets:

When selecting a Zabbix protocol packet and looking at the packet details, in the lower right pane there are now three tabs: Frame (the encrypted TLS data), Decrypted TLS, and Uncompressed data.

This is because in this example the Zabbix agent 2 also compresses the traffic, and the compressed traffic is then encrypted when sending out to the network. Wireshark can interpret all this because of its built-in knowledge about TLS encryption and the Zabbix protocol structure, as well as the user-supplied TLS decryption keys.

We are now able to analyze the Zabbix agent communication with Wireshark even though the traffic was TLS-encrypted when we captured it.

One more trick about the TLS keys in Wireshark: It is also possible to save the keys inside the capture file when analyzing the traffic, instead of having the keys in a separate file (tls.keys in this example). I’ll go in Edit menu and select Inject TLS Secrets, and then save the capture file in pcapng format. Now the previously loaded keys are embedded in the capture file, and I can clear the “(Pre)-Master-Secret log filename” field in the TLS settings (as the filename setting is not useful in any later Wireshark analysis). The same can also be done in the command line by using editcap --inject-secrets (editcap is part of Wireshark install, see the manual page of editcap for more details).

Here is the second capture file of this demo, with the embedded TLS keys:

Finally some closing comments:

  • As demonstrated, when you have administrator/root-level access to the TLS session endpoint (Zabbix server in this example), there can be a possibility to save and decrypt the TLS sessions using external tooling. After all, TLS encryption is based on the negotiation between the TLS-connected endpoints, so if you are the TLS connection endpoint, you have ways to access the plaintext data. If you don’t have sufficient access to the TLS session endpoint, there is no way you can get the decryption keys mid-path.
  • Act responsibly when saving the TLS session keys for any traffic, on Zabbix server or otherwise. The encryption is there for a purpose, and saving the TLS keys always carries the risk that someone else gets access to data they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
  • Do not save the TLS session keys with the capture file, unless you are dealing with a test/demo environment, like I had here.
  • When troubleshooting Zabbix connections, TLS decryption with Wireshark is not the only way. You should also consider if just increasing the logging level in the Zabbix components brings you enough information to solve your case, or maybe in some specific case you can just disable TLS encryption for an agent for a moment to not have to deal with the decryption at all. But again, usually the encryption is there for a purpose, so you need to evaluate your own situation.

The post Decrypting Zabbix TLS with Wireshark 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.

Troubleshooting Zabbix Agent with Wireshark

Post Syndicated from Markku Leiniö original https://blog.zabbix.com/troubleshooting-zabbix-agent-with-wireshark/26514/

A variety of tools exist that can be used to troubleshoot different Zabbix components. In this article I will demonstrate how Wireshark can be used to rule out network connectivity issues as the root cause of data collection problems.

A user has a Zabbix agent that collects the used disk space information on a host. The item interval is one minute:

List of agent items

However, the user complains that Zabbix fails to collect the data appropriately, as the graph has empty areas with occasional dots:

Graph of used disk space

In Zabbix implementations with very high NVPS (new values per second) this may indicate some kind of performance problem where not all data is collected or saved to the database properly. However, that does not seem likely in this particular setup as there are only a couple of hosts and items configured and the NVPS value is under 2.

One question to ask whenever data is missing from Zabbix is: Did the data even arrive to the Zabbix server? If all the data never arrived, it is quite natural that there won’t be full data in the graphs or in the database.

As a networking professional one of the tools I always have at hand is Wireshark, the world-famous protocol analyzer (that just had its 25th anniversary!). Starting from Wireshark version 4.1.0, which is the current development release for the upcoming 4.2.0 stable release, it has built-in support for Zabbix protocol. This means that if you have a network capture of Zabbix agent or proxy traffic, you can analyze the Zabbix traffic contents using Wireshark. Previously this was possible also using manually-installed Lua-based scripts, but I was able to write the same functionality in C language and it was quickly accepted in the official Wireshark codebase as well.

Starting from Zabbix version 4.0, all of the traffic between Zabbix server and Zabbix proxies as well as Zabbix agent 2 traffic is compressed to save bandwidth and improve performance. The Zabbix protocol dissector in Wireshark is able to automatically decompress any compressed Zabbix traffic so that application-level analysis is possible. TLS-encrypted Zabbix protocol traffic is also supported if the session keys are available. I’ll write another post about that later.

In this example case I will use Wireshark to confirm that the agent really collects the disk space usage data and sends it to the server.

Note: Zabbix components (server, proxies, agents) are well-known for their stable network communications. They don’t just pretend to send data, so if they really have problems communicating, they should log those events in their own log files. The components also just do whatever they are configured to do, so usually the roots of any item-collecting problems are found by just checking the Zabbix logs and configurations. In this post I still want to highlight one network-centric way to troubleshoot Zabbix-related issues.

I’ll start by capturing the agent traffic on the server, as the agent is communicating directly with the server, not via a Zabbix proxy. On the Zabbix server I will use sudo tcpdump -v port 10051 -w zabbix-traffic.pcap command to start the capture and see its progress.

I will then restart the Zabbix agent using sudo systemctl restart zabbix-agent2 command (on the agent host, this is a Linux host with Zabbix agent 2).

After capturing traffic for a few minutes I’ll stop the capture with Ctrl-C on the server:

markku@zabbix-server:~$ sudo tcpdump -v port 10051 -w zabbix-traffic.pcap
tcpdump: listening on ens192, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), snapshot length 262144 bytes
^C958 packets captured
958 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel
markku@zabbix-server:~$

If you want to test the following steps yourself, you can download the capture file here:

After copying the capture file to my workstation I can open it in Wireshark:

Wireshark window with default view

This is still the default Wireshark profile, but I’ll right-click the Profile: Default text in the bottom right corner, select New, and create a new profile called “Zabbix” to continue with some adjustments. (For more information about configuring Wireshark to fit your taste, see my earlier post on my personal blog about customizing Wireshark settings.)

In the display filter field I’ll first type “zabbix” and press Enter.

Note: If your Wireshark does not recognize the “zabbix” display filter, check that you are running Wireshark version 4.1.0 or newer to support Zabbix protocol dissection, as mentioned earlier in this post.

I’ll expand the Zabbix tree in the lower half of the screen to see the Zabbix-specific fields:

Wireshark window with Zabbix protocol tree opened

I’ll drag the “Agent name: Zabbix70-agent” field to the column headings to add it as a column:

Zabbix agent column added in the packet list in Wireshark

Now I have the agent name conveniently visible in the packet list. The same can be done for any other field as needed. Instead of dragging and dropping the fields, you can also right-click any of the fields and select Apply as column.

I will now filter the packet list based on the agent name, and since the problem agent “Zabbix70-agent” is already visible in the list, I can just drag the agent name into the display filter as “zabbix.agent.name == "Zabbix70-agent"“:

Packet list filtered by the agent name

Now, the original issue is that I want to ensure that the agent really sends the monitored data to Zabbix server, so let’s check one of the “Zabbix Send agent data” packets:

Zabbix protocol packet with data

This is Zabbix agent 2 so the packet is compressed, but as you notice Wireshark automatically uncompressed and showed the contents for me.

The JSON data is a bit hard to read there in the packet bytes pane, but I can right-click the “Data [truncated]” field and select Show packet bytes to see it better:

Wireshark's Show packet bytes window

In the Show as dropdown list there is a selection for JSON to show it even better:

JSON data in Show packet bytes window

So, what does it show us? It shows that in this particular packet there are two data values sent, one for item ID 45797 and one for item ID 45738, with appropriate Unix-style timestamps (clock).

But how do we find out the item ID for the disk usage item?

You can find it in the Zabbix frontend GUI when editing the item: the item ID is shown in the browser address bar as itemid=45797.

But, since we have Wireshark at hand, we can also check the agent config packets that the server sent to the agent. First, add “and zabbix.agent.config and zabbix.response” in the display filter:

Zabbix agent config packet in Wireshark

Most of the responses just contain {"response":"success"} to indicate that there were no changes in the configuration (this is the new incremental configuration update feature in Zabbix protocol since Zabbix version 6.4), but since we restarted the agent during the capture, we have a full agent configuration in one of the responses (the one packet that is larger than the others, packet #36). In that packet there is:

Zabbix agent config data in JSON

So there we see that the item ID corresponding to the vfs.fs.size[/,used] key is 45797.

(In this demo agent we only had two items configured, so the output was very short. In practical cases you certainly have many more items configured.)

Ok, after that small detour, let’s try to filter the agent data packets based on the item ID using display filter:

zabbix.agent.name == "Zabbix70-agent" and zabbix.agent.data and zabbix.data contains "45797"

Agent data filtered with item ID

The “zabbix.data contains” filter is very simple in this example, you may get additional (false) matches in some more complicated cases, so be sure to check your results and adjust the filter as needed.

In this case we got six packets in the list (the capture length was about six minutes). When checking the data field contents more closely, we can see that the agent really sent the server the item values once every minute as configured. The values in the packets are (I copied the clock field from each packet separately and converted to local time using Epoch converter site):

Packet number “value” for itemid 45797 “clock” for itemid 45797 Absolute local time
(from “clock”)
14 1394282496 1690631357 14:49:17
182 1394290688 1690631417 14:50:17
330 1394290688 1690631477 14:51:17
508 1394290688 1690631537 14:52:17
676 1394290688 1690631597 14:53:17
834 1394290688 1690631657 14:54:17

But, when checking the same timespan in the item latest values in Zabbix frontend, there is only one value:

Item values in Latest data

Thus, our collected evidence shows that the Zabbix agent did its configured job properly and it sent the disk usage information every minute to Zabbix server, but Zabbix server decided for some reason to discard some of the values.

In this example the saved value 1394290688 (at 14:50:17) is especially interesting, because the previous value was different (1394282496). The next collected values are the same, and they weren’t saved.

Let’s see the item configuration more carefully:

Item configuration screen

In the top of the screen there is a hint: “Preprosessing 1”, meaning that there is one preprocessing step configured for this item. Let’s open that tab:

Item preprocessing configuration screen

Aha! There is a preprocessing step that says: Discard unchanged with heartbeat: 5 minutes.

It means that whenever Zabbix server receives a value it compares it to the previously saved value, and if the value is the same as earlier, it doesn’t save it, unless the specified heartbeat time has elapsed since the last saved value.

This preprocessing rule is frequently used for items whose values aren’t changing that often, because this can dramatically reduce the database size while still enabling Zabbix to quickly react to changes.

So in this case there wasn’t any problem in the system. The configured behavior just didn’t match the user’s expectations.

Finally, some key takeaways when considering using Wireshark for Zabbix protocol troubleshooting in the application level:

  • Ensure that you capture in the correct place to get the expected data in the capture. In this example I captured on the Zabbix server, but since I was only interested in a single agent, I could have also captured on that agent host, using whatever tool is appropriate for the operating system (like tcpdump, Wireshark, tshark, or see also my post about using Packet Monitor on Windows). Or, if there are capable network devices like firewalls in the path, maybe they can be used for capturing as well (check with your network team).
  • Ensure that you capture with a suitable capture filter. In case of Zabbix protocol the interesting TCP (Transmission Control Protocol, the transport protocol on which Zabbix protocol runs) port is usually 10051, but if you are using Zabbix agents in passive mode (where server/proxy connects to the agents), then you need to also capture TCP port 10050. Also, in your Zabbix setup the ports may have been reconfigured to something else, so check the Zabbix configurations if unsure.
  • When looking at the Zabbix protocol captures in Wireshark, experiment with the display filters to find out exactly what you are looking for. When you type “zabbix.” (with the dot) in the display filter, Wireshark will automatically suggest you all possible Zabbix protocol fields that can be used in the filter. The field names are also shown in the status bar when you click on the fields.
  • Also, be aware of the fact that if your Zabbix components won’t talk to each other at all because of some misconfiguration or connectivity error, the Zabbix protocol display filter won’t show you anything in Wireshark. In those cases you need to resort to other ways of troubleshooting, maybe looking for any TCP-level issues in the captures.
  • Practice! See what the Zabbix traffic (or any other network traffic) looks like when everything works. If you can, try to cause some errors in a testing environment (pull some cable out, disable the firewall rule, stop the server, etc.), and see how it then looks in your captures.

This post was originally published on the author’s blog.

The post Troubleshooting Zabbix Agent with Wireshark 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.

What’s Up, Home? – How to secure your (home) monitoring

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-how-to-secure-your-home-monitoring/26241/

As my home monitoring experiment has become such a celebrity and as it has so much going on, I’m trying to make sure I won’t ever lose its configuration and data, no matter what would happen. Here are some tips and reminders for you, too.

In the IT world, so much can go wrong. Hardware can die, files can become corrupt, malware can hit you, hackers can breach your systems, buggy software updates can cause havoc, you can fat-finger some commands or click on the wrong place and remove data… the list is endless. Here are some ways I’m attempting to protect my home monitoring environment.

Keep software updated

First things first. In today’s malicious world, it’s mandatory that you keep your software updated. With Linux and Zabbix, you don’t have an excuse to skip the updates. Updating your systems is fast and trouble-free. In small environments like home, even major Zabbix upgrades are fast as the database is not very big, so the database migrations that in a corporate environment can take time, will go through in minutes if not faster.

Remember to backup

Keep your backups in good shape. In my case, I do take backups with BackupPC and monitor my backups with Zabbix.

But I don’t trust one environment. What if my BackupPC says Kaboom? A nightly cron job also copies backup archives from my Raspberry Pi to my Mac, which in turn mirrors the backups to my iCloud. And, there’s one more cloud service I’m using for all my backups but not mentioning it here by name.

Test your backups

As long as you have not verified that your backups do actually work, you do not have a working backup. Have a virtual machine into which you can try to restore your backups. See if they work. Test them periodically, either manually or figure out an automated way to do that. 

In the case of Zabbix, you can make your primary Zabbix monitor your test environment, and make Zabbix alert if your restore environment Zabbix suddenly starts responding back something else than the regular login page, or if the restore environment database doesn’t come back with some query response you would expect.

Setup a HA cluster

As any hardware can die, it’s not a bad idea to set up a HA cluster. Last winter I was preparing for potential electricity blackouts here in Finland and did setup my laptop to be a secondary node for my Zabbix. This setup has been working very well.

Use strong passwords

Even if it would only be your sandbox environment where you do test new stuff, please remember to use strong passwords. An evil actor can attempt to breach more targets in your network through a single point of failure.

Use ssh keys

Instead of username + password combination, use ssh keys for ssh authentication. Keys are immune to brute-force attempts and with tuning, ssh keys can also be allowed to only connect from specific IPs and run only specific commands. You know how in your ~/.ssh/authorized_keys the lines do start with something like 

ssh-rsa aZfgT12b(....

but if you modify it to be 

command="/usr/bin/rsync" ssh-rsa aZfgT12b(....

well, then only rsync would be allowed.

Or, for IP address limitation

from="123.123.123.123" ssh-rsa aZfgT12b(....

Of course, these can be combined:

from="123.123.123.123" command="/usr/bin/rsync" ssh-rsa aZfgT12b(....

Obviously, this grants you much more security than traditional logins.

Use HashiCorp Vault

OK, I admit I’m not doing this at home as it would be overkill for my few logins. But, in a larger environment with absolutely critical safety requirements, use HashiCorp Vault for protecting your credentials. Zabbix has native support for it.

Monitor your logs

Setup a centralized log server — it can be your Zabbix server environment, too — and make sure you monitor the logs. My Zabbix gets all my logs, but wouldn’t be a bad idea to use more advanced log monitoring tools, too. Since I already do have ElastiFlow running at home, at some point I might start utilizing Elasticsearch for the logs. Not doing it much yet.

Use chkrootkit, AIDE, others

Tools like AIDE or chkrootkit can help you detect an intrusion. Set them to run in your cron and get alerted in case of any anomalies. Maybe I’ll one day integrate Zabbix with these tools.

Firewall your environment, use VPN

Don’t allow direct access from the Internet to your Zabbix, or your database, or anything really. In my case, my Asus router allows setting up OpenVPN connections, so that’s what I use. Whilst on the go, I just connect to OpenVPN on my phone and do whatever I need remotely through that.

Anything else?

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments.

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

The post What’s Up, Home? – How to secure your (home) monitoring appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Bringing computing education research to a new global audience

Post Syndicated from Isabel Ronaldson original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/research-global-clubs-partners-code-club-coderdojo/

A network of more than 40 partner organisations in over 30 countries works with us to grow and sustain the worldwide Code Club and CoderDojo networks of coding clubs for young people. These organisations, our Global Clubs Partners, share our mission to enable young people to realise their potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. We support them in various ways, and recently we invited them to two calls with our researchers to discuss new research findings about computing education in primary schools.

Three teenage girls at a laptop
Three girls in a Code Club session in Brazil.

Supporting Global Clubs Partners with research insights

Global Clubs Partners work to train educators and volunteers, provide access to computing equipment, run clubs and events for young people at a local or national level, and much more. Our aim is to provide support that helps the Global Clubs Partners in their work, including tailored resources and regular group calls where we discuss topics such as volunteer engagement and fundraising.

Educator training in a classroom in Benin.
Educator training in Benin, run by Global Clubs Partner organisation Impala Bridge.

Recently, we were excited to be able to highlight research from our newest seminar series to the network. This ongoing seminar series focuses on teaching and learning in primary (K-5) computing education. Many of the Global Clubs Partners work with schools or local education bodies — some partner representatives even come from a teaching background themselves. That’s why we hoped they would be able to use insights from the seminars in their work, whether with learners and educators directly, or to grow their network of Code Clubs or CoderDojos; we know this is easier for them when they can provide evidence to show why these programmes are so beneficial for young people.

Learning from Global Clubs Partners for our future research

We were also very interested to hear the Global Clubs Partners’ perspectives, as they work in a wide variety of contexts around the world. For example, would the research resonate the same way with an organisation based in Kenya as one based in Nepal? This kind of insight is useful for making decisions about our research work in future.

Each of the two calls featured a speaker from the research seminar series summarising their work and inviting attendees to share their own thoughts. We had some fascinating conversations; with partner representatives from seven countries across four continents, the discussions were a great showcase of the different experiences in our partner network. Dr Bobby Whyte, one of the speakers, noted: “Being able to share and discuss work within a global audience has been a really valuable experience.”

Young people at a Code Club session in a classroom.
A Code Club session in a classroom in Portugal.

We found the opportunity to connect our partner network with work from other areas of the Foundation really beneficial, and the Global Clubs Partners did too: their feedback from the calls was uniformly positive. Dr Jane Waite, our Senior Research Scientist, commented that “it’s really important for us to share research with people in different contexts and so exciting to hear when findings resonate and can be used in practice.”

You can find out more about our Global Clubs Partner network on the CoderDojo and Code Club websites, or contact us directly about partnerships.

The post Bringing computing education research to a new global audience appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

What’s Up, Home? – Does your phone battery drain faster in summertime?

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-does-your-phone-battery-drain-faster-in-summertime/26084/

Can you verify if your phone battery drains faster during summer compared to other seasons with Zabbix? Of course, you can!

I have always felt that during summer my phone battery drains faster than during the darker seasons. This would only be logical, as during summer the phone display must be brighter than during the darker seasons. Additionally, during summer we also tend to be more outdoors, so instead of home Wi-Fi the phone is using mobile data. On the other hand, during winter time if you are outdoors, the cold weather might affect battery life as well.

But how severe is the drainage difference? Let’s check it out!

Analyzing the data

In June, my iPhone battery average level has been 51%

In April, it was around 67%.

In March, about 71%.

What does this prove?

Well, necessarily not much as this is not a very scientific method. However, my day-to-day phone usage does not vary much — if anything, during March/April the drainage should have been worse, as I have a tendency to participate in one daily afternoon meeting from outdoors; I’ll stroll around with our baby and get some fresh air whilst being online in the meeting. Now in June, I’ve been enjoying my summer holiday. But clearly, something is going on as the average percentage difference is such high. For my Apple Watch, the difference is there but not that significant.

Why am I not comparing the data with the iPhone activity? Heh — to prove my point with my earlier “Things that WILL go wrong when monitoring IoT devices” post; something has happened as my Home Assistant won’t provide that information anymore. The same happened with connection-type data. I’ll have to take a look at that someday, but lately, I’ve been busy as a bee with 1) the summer holiday and 2) preparing material for Zabbix Summit 2023.

Real-world applications for this kind of cherry-picking

Even though this post is very thin in its contents, I’m posting this as a hint for you on how you can utilize Zabbix in more serious monitoring targets in this way. Need to compare UPS battery depletion rate? Disk space usage rate? CPU usage? Concurrent connections? Whatever the data, many times it’s useful to stop for a moment and compare how things were (some time units) ago.

Yes, you can simply pick a longer time period in Zabbix time picker and see the data for one year or whatever, and most of the time it will show you a change in pattern, but if the changes are more subtle or the graph is very busy, sometimes zooming in to shorter time periods in history will show you something that you might otherwise miss.

For example, if I expand the time range for the battery usage, not only you’ll notice that the Home Assistant iCloud ride has been a bumpy one, but also the details do get lost when the time range is longer.

More ways to compare historical data

I didn’t build any new graphs or dashboards for this quick experiment, I merely used the time picker. In case one would need to have comparison data available at any time, using time shift and additional data sets would help you out. And, like many of us do, one way to dive deeper into data collected by Zabbix would be to analyze it in Grafana, but that’s a story for another day.

I have been working at Forcepoint since 2014 and I’m happy that my work won’t drain my personal battery. — Janne Pikkarainen

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

The post What’s Up, Home? – Does your phone battery drain faster in summertime? appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Celebrating the community: Spencer

Post Syndicated from Sophie Ashford original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/celebrating-the-community-spencer/

We love hearing from members of the community and how they use their passion for computing and digital making to inspire others. Our community stories series takes you on a tour of the globe to meet educators and young tech creators from the USA, Iraq, Romania, and more.

A smiling computer science teacher stands in front of a school building.

For our latest story, we are in the UK with Spencer, a Computer Science teacher at King Edward VI Sheldon Heath Academy (KESH), Birmingham. After 24 years as a science teacher, Spencer decided to turn his personal passion for digital making into a career and transitioned to teaching Computer Science.

Meet Spencer

From the moment he printed his name on the screen of an Acorn Electron computer at age ten, Spencer was hooked on digital making. He’s remained a member of the digital making community throughout his life, continuing to push himself with his creations and learn new skills whenever possible. Wanting to spread his knowledge and make sure the students at his school had access to computer science, he began running a weekly Code Club in his science lab:

“Code Club was a really nice vehicle for me to get students into programming and digital making, before computer science was an option at the school. So Code Club originally ran in my science lab around the Bunsen burners and all the science equipment, and we do some programming on a Friday afternoon making LEDs flash and a little bit of Minecraft. And from that, the students really got an exciting sense of what programming and digital making could be.”

– Spencer

While running his Code Club, Spencer really embedded himself in the Raspberry Pi community, attending Raspberry Jams, engaging with like-minded people on Twitter, and continuing to rely on our free training to upskill.

A computer science teacher sits with students at computers in a classroom.

When leadership at KESH began to explore introducing Computer Science to the curriculum, Spencer knew he was the right person for the job, and just where to look to make sure he had the right support:

“So when I decided to change from being a science teacher to a computer science teacher, there were loads of course options you could find online, and a lot of them required some really specific prior knowledge and skills. The Foundation’s resources take you from a complete novice, complete beginner — my very first LED flashing on and off — to being able to teach computational thinking and algorithms. So it was a really clear progression from using the Foundation resources that helped take me from a Physics teacher, who could use electricity to light and LED on, to a programmer who could teach how to use this in our digital making for our students.”

– Spencer

Thanks to the support from KESH and Spencer’s compelling can-do attitude, he was soon heading up a brand-new Computer Science department. This was met with great enthusiasm from the learners at KESH, with a willing cohort eagerly signing up for the new subject.

Two smiling computer science students at a desktop computer in a classroom.

“It’s really exciting to see how students have embraced Computer Science as a brand-new subject at school. The take-up for our first year at GCSE was fantastic with 25 students, and this year I’ve really got students asking about, ‘Is there an option for next year, and how can I get on to it?’ Students are almost blown away by the resources now.”

– Spencer

Supporting all students

Spencer has a mission to make sure all of KESH’s learners can learn about computing, and making his lessons accessible to all means he’s become a firm favourite amongst the students for his collaborative teaching approach.

“Mr Organ teaches you, and then he just puts you in. If you do need help, you can ask people around you, or him, but he lets you make your own mistakes and learn from there. He will then give you help so you don’t make those mistakes the next time.”

– Muntaha, 16, GCSE Computer Science student, KESH

Computer science students at a desktop computer in a classroom.

Spencer’s work is shaped by his awareness that many of the learners at KESH come from under-resourced areas of Birmingham and backgrounds that are underrepresented in computing. He knows that many of them have previously had limited opportunities to use digital tools. This is something he is driven to change.

“I want my young students here, regardless of their background, regardless of their area they’ve been brought up in, to have the same experiences as all other students in the country. And the work I do with Raspberry Pi, and the work I do with Code Club, is a way of opening those doors for our young people.”

– Spencer

Share Spencer’s story and inspire other educators

As a passionate member of the Raspberry Pi Foundation community, Spencer has been counted on as a friendly face for many years, sharing his enthusiasm on training courses, at Foundation events, and as a part of discussions on Twitter. With the goal to introduce Computer Science at A level shortly, and an ever-growing collection of digital makes housed in his makerspace, Spencer shows no signs of slowing down.

If you are interested in changing your teaching path to focus on Computer Science, take a look at the free resources we have available to support you on your journey.

Help us celebrate Spencer and his dedication to opening doors for his learners by sharing his story on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The post Celebrating the community: Spencer appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.

What’s Up, Home? – 7 things to beware of if you monitor your home

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-7-things-to-beware-of-if-you-monitor-your-home/26035/

When reading this blog, you could easily think that everything is smooth sailing all the time. No. When you monitor your home IoT — or frankly, just USE your home IoT — you have plenty of small details to watch out for. I list them for you, so you don’t have to find them out the hard way like I’ve done over this 1+ year of journey.

1. The status is not what it seems

This is especially true with the IoT devices operating on 433 MHz radio frequency. Your home smart hub sends the signal like a radio station hoping for your IoT device to catch it, and to my understanding, it does not get a reply back from the device. If anything is interfering with the signal, your device will miss the signal and thus your home smart hub will be showing the wrong status.

So, you will need to either get rid of these devices and replace them with devices that use a two-way communication protocol such as ZigBee or if that’s not possible, to set up extra monitoring to try to guess if the command your home smart hub sent actually went through. Did you attempt to power on/off a smart power socket connected to a radiator? Keep an eye on the smart temperature meter and react soon if the temperature does not start to rise after the power socket got powered on, or so.

2. Battery-low messages can be deceiving

Two of my Philips Hue motion sensors have been complaining about low battery status for about six months now, but they are still operating just fine. I’ll let you know when I finally have to replace the batteries on them. 

On the contrary, the batteries on some 433 MHz frequency Telldus thermometers can just die without too much warning. For them, your monitoring need to react fast if the values are not coming in. To make things more complicated, not TOO fast though, as sometimes these thermometers can hibernate for some time before reporting new values; possibly when there’s no change in temperature, they will enter some power save mode or something. I don’t know.

3. Bluetooth devices and 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi can interfere with each other

Even though my devices do not use 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi too much, I have some devices like Sonos smart speaker where it’s a must. So, for example, when playing music through that speaker, it’s possible that my Raspberry Pi 4 cannot hear the RuuviTag environmental sensor very reliably. It did help somewhat when I found out that on my Asus router, it was possible to enable some kind of “Bluetooth coexistence” mode, but it’s not a 100% solution for my issue.

4. Make sure any helper components are really up

Along with Zabbix and Grafana, my Raspberry Pi 4 runs Home Assistant to harvest some values about my iPhone and so on. It runs as a Docker image and generally is stable, but sometimes it just stops working. I have an automatic daily restart of that Docker image and so far that has been a relatively good way to keep the image running.

5. APIs can and will change

Monitoring something over some API? Or through web scenarios? Rest assured that your joy won’t last forever. This is IT, and things just won’t remain the same. SOMETHING is guaranteed to change every now and then and the more your monitoring relies on 3rd party things, the less you can trust that your monitoring just would keep on working. No, it’s likely you will need to alter things every now and then.

6. Monitor your monitoring

Even though Raspberry Pi 4 and Zabbix are very reliable and are very unlikely to cause you any trouble, of course, they can fail, or more likely something else will not be like it should. Your home router or Internet connection can die. Electricity can go down. Hardware can die. If you want to be really sure, monitor your monitoring from outside somehow. Have a separate monitoring running on the cloud somehow. 

In our case, the electricity and ISP are very reliable, and Cozify smart home hub has a nice feature where the Cozify cloud will text me if the hub loses connectivity — that’s usually a good indication that either the ISP or power went down. Also, I’m about to roll out a small cron job on this site which would check if my Zabbix has updated a test file in a while. If not, it would indicate my Zabbix would be down or otherwise unreachable, so then whatsuphome.fi could e-mail me.

7. You will get paranoid

With more knowledge comes more pain. With some devices, you’ll start to think that they are going to break soon. As an example, the freezer I keep referring to — sometimes it has short periods of time when its temperature for some reason rises a bit and then it goes down again. I don’t know if that has something to do with the fact that our freezer is one of those which does not form ice everywhere so it’s maintenance-free, or if that’s something else, but we keep observing spikes like this about once a week.

I have been working at Forcepoint since 2014 and have learnt not to trust the technology. — Janne Pikkarainen

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

The post What’s Up, Home? – 7 things to beware of if you monitor your home appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What’s Up, Home? – Can ChatGPT help set up monitoring a USB-connected printer with Zabbix?

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-can-chatgpt-help-set-up-monitoring-a-usb-connected-printer-with-zabbix/25980/

Can you monitor a USB-connected printer with Zabbix? Of course, you can! But can ChatGPT help set up the monitoring? Well… erm… maybe! By day, I am a Lead Site Reliability Engineer in a global cyber security company, Forcepoint. By night, I monitor my home with Zabbix & Grafana and do some weird experiments with them. Welcome to my blog about the project.

When it comes to printing, I am not laser-sharp. That’s simply because I have not printed anything in a long, long time, and even if I have, it’s been a printer maintained by Someone Else. Yes, I know how to add paper and how to do a ritual dance whilst printing to prevent the printer from doing an annoying paper jam. Yes, I have added some printer servers under Zabbix monitoring at the office. That’s about where my printer wisdom ends.

Nobody buys a printer anymore, except for us

It’s 2023, and nobody prints anymore, or that’s my personal impression. Well, that changed at our home as we enter another domain I understand 0% about. Occasionally my wife is making some clothes for our baby, me, and herself. For that, she’s printing out the source code… the CAD models… well… the blueprints for the clothes. I kid you not, the clothes schematics look so complicated to me and the text-based instructions so alien that I’m sure the instructions are not from this planet.

Anyway, my wife found a used HP LaserJet Pro MFP M28a for us for a steal. No, not a literal steal, but for 40 euros, which did sound cheap to me, so we bought it. Of course, normal human beings would just connect the printer to their laptop/desktop and be done with it. However, you know how this story continues.

Flirting with ChatGPT

I went to Zabbix integrations and was sure I would be able to easily find out how to monitor a USB-connected printer. I’ll just search and… what? Nothing? No worries! We have the community templates! I’ll just quickly grab a template from there…. the empty result set, AGAIN? Monitoring SNMP-enabled printers is a different story, for that Zabbix can suit you very well, but just try to find out something for USB-connected printers. I know I could probably monitor my printer by spying cups but I’m not sure if it could return the details I wanted.

With my experiments, I’m used to the fact that I cannot get direct answers to my monitoring needs using search engines, as I’m doing stuff that not too many have done. Even if they have, they might not have blogged about it. That’s ok, but as this was about printing which is a common topic, I decided to try out what happens if I try out ChatGPT. I did the tests with the free ChatGPT 3.5, the new ChatGPT 4 would probably be a different ride.

Here’s our lovely little chat.

Me: I have an HP LaserJet MFP M28a monochrome laser printer connected to USB. How do I get its remaining toner level through the command line on Ubuntu 22.04?

ChatGPT:  You can get the remaining toner level of your HP LaserJet MFP M28a monochrome laser printer through command line on Ubuntu 22.04 by following these steps:

  1. Install the “hplip” package by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get install hplip

  1. Once the installation is complete, run the following command to set up your printer:

sudo hp-setup -i

Follow the instructions provided by the setup wizard to configure your printer.

  1. After the printer is set up, run the following command to get the remaining toner level:

hp-systray -x

This will launch the HP Device Manager, which displays the toner level for your printer.

Alternatively, you can also run the following command to get the toner level directly in the terminal:

hp-levels -n

This will display the toner level in a percentage format.

Me: None of those worked as hp-levels and hp-systray require QT4 and D-Bus. Let’s use ipptool instead.

ChatGPT: Sure, we can use the ipptool command to get the remaining toner level of your HP LaserJet MFP M28a monochrome laser printer on Ubuntu 22.04.

Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Make sure your printer is connected to the computer and turned on.
  2. Open the terminal on your Ubuntu 22.04 machine.
  3. Run the following command to install the CUPS and IPP utilities:

sudo apt-get install cups-ipp-utils

  1. Run the following command to find the printer’s URI:

lpinfo -v

The output should contain a line with the URI of your printer, which will look something like this:

ipp://HP_LaserJet_MFP_M28a.local:631/ipp/print

  1. Run the following command to get the remaining toner level:

ipptool -t -v -H ipp://localhost:631/ipp/print -I /usr/share/cups/model/HP/hp-laserjet_pro_mfp_m26a.ppd get-printer-attributes.test | grep marker-levels

Replace “get-printer-attributes.test” with the actual name of the test file used by your printer.

  1. The output of the command should contain a line with the toner level, which will look something like this:

marker-levels: marker-high-levels=(100) marker-low-levels=(5) marker-names=(Black Cartridge) marker-current-levels=(30)

In this example, the toner level is 30%.

That’s it! This is how you can use the ipptool command to get the remaining toner level of your HP LaserJet MFP M28a monochrome laser printer on Ubuntu 22.04.

* * * 

The latest tip really did work, so we’re off to a very good start with ChatGPT! Next, I tried asking if it could create a Zabbix template for me, but even though it really tried, it did fail.

Adding printer to Zabbix

So, before continuing with the failed ChatGPT attempt, let’s add this printer to monitoring, as that’s the reason you are reading this blog anyway. I was very surprised about the detail level of the ipptool output: everything from supported paper sizes to printing options to other usual details, but then also some dynamic details like printer uptime.

I wanted to add those dynamic details, so I read through the output and added the details in the way you already know me doing:

  • I first added a cronjob that runs every minute 

    ipptool -t -v “ipp://HP%20LaserJet%20MFP%20M28a%20(7C69CB)%20(USB)._ipp._tcp.local/” – get-printer-attributes.test  >/tmp/hp-printer.txt

  • Zabbix then reads that text file to a master item, and with dependent items and item preprocessing cherry-picks the interesting details

In screenshots, like this.

Does it work?

Of course, it does, as this routine is what I’ve done so many times before in this blog. Here’s the result. And yes, the toner will likely run out soon — this is a used printer and it’s complaining about low toner level every time we print. An interesting experiment to see how many pages we can still print before it actually runs out of juice. For “0% left”, as also reported by other tools, the printer does an excellent job.

Back to ChatGPT we go

If I would copy-paste my complete chat with ChatGPT, this blog post would become ridiculously long. Communicating with ChatGPT was like with a hyper-active intern who proceeds to do SOMETHING only to realize moments later that whatever it did was completely else than what you asked for. Probably I’m just a sucky ChatGPT prompter.

To get you an idea of how ChatGPT failed, here’s a summary of how it failed:

  • It really attempted to create YAML-based template files for me.
  • Unfortunately, when attempting to import the templates to Zabbix, that part failed every time 
  • When I told the error messages to ChatGPT, it attempted to fix its errors, but in weird ways. Sometimes it changed the template in drastic ways, even if it was supposed to only add or modify a single line of it. Multiple times, it decided to change the format from YAML to XML unless I demanded it to stay on YAML

Here are a few snippets from the chat. Maybe at some point, I’ll throw in some money to try out ChatGPT 4.

… this went on and on until I gave up. In conclusion: this time ChatGPT nudged me in to correct direction to get the desired output about the printer info (although a sharp-eyed reader might notice I hinted it about the tool I’d like to use and how I might after all know more about printers than I pretended during this blog post…). Then, ChatGPT ran out of ink when it tried to generate the Zabbix templates. It’s scary advanced anyway, and someday I will try out the more advanced ChatGPT 4.

I have been working at Forcepoint since 2014 and luckily I don’t suffer about the empty paper syndrome very often. — Janne Pikkarainen

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

The post What’s Up, Home? – Can ChatGPT help set up monitoring a USB-connected printer with Zabbix? appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What’s Up, Home? – Monitor your mobile data usage

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-monitor-your-mobile-data-usage/25856/

Can you monitor your mobile data usage with Zabbix? Of course, you can! By day, I am a Lead Site Reliability Engineer in a global cyber security company Forcepoint. By night, I monitor my home with Zabbix & Grafana Labs and do some weird experiments with them. Welcome to my blog about this project.

As it is Easter (the original blog post was published two months ago), this entry is a bit short but as I was remoting into my home systems over VPN and my phone, I got this blog post idea. 

When on the go, I tend to stay connected to my home network over VPN. Or rather, an iOS Shortcut pretty much runs OpenVPN home profile for me whenever I exit my home. 

My Zabbix collects statistics from my home router over SNMP, and as usual, the data includes per-port traffic statistics. VPN clients are shown as tunnel interfaces so Zabbix LLD picks them up nicely.

So, as a result, I get to see how much traffic my phone consumes whenever I’m using a mobile VPN. Here are seven-day example screenshots from ZBX Viewer mobile app. 

VPN connection bits sent.

VPN connection bits received

So, from this data I could get all the statistics I need. And, using my ElastiFlow setup, could likely see to where my phone has been connecting to most.

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

The post What’s Up, Home? – Monitor your mobile data usage appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

What’s Up, Home? – Monitor your iPhone & Apple Watch with Zabbix

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-monitor-your-iphone-amp-apple-watch-with-zabbix/25817/

I’m entering a whole new level of monitoring and “What’s up, home?” could now also be called “What’s up, me?”. Recently my colleague did hint to me about Home Assistant’s HomeKit Controller integration just to get my HomeKit-compatible Netatmo environmental monitoring device to get to return value back to Zabbix without my Siri kludge. One thing lead to another and now I’m monitoring my iPhone and Apple Watch — so, practically monitoring myself.

But how to get to this level? Let’s rewind a bit.

Home Assistant

Home Assistant is a nice home automation software. It is open source and provides many, many integrations for automating your home. I now have my Netatmo comfortably monitored through that…

Bye-bye, mobile app and my Siri kludge. This screenshot is from Home Assistant.

… but while exploring Home Assistant’s integrations, I came upon its iCloud integration. Oh boy. This takes my monitoring to a whole new level.

But how to get this data to Zabbix?

On Home Assistant, you can go to your account settings and create a Long-lived access token. With that, you then just pass the authorization bearer as part of your HTTP request and you are done. So, like this.

This way you’ll receive your Home Assistant data back in JSON format. As the output is really really really long, and I needed just a relatively small set of data for myself, I cherry-picked those using the above item as the master item and then created a bunch of dependent items.

… and here’s a single item so you get the idea.

Let’s create some dashboards

Now that I have my data in Zabbix, it’s time to create some dashboards. Fascinating that I can now truly monitor my iPhone and Apple Watch like this.

I also created a Grafana dashboard.

Observations

This has been now running for roughly a day for me. Already some observations:

  • While driving, at traffic lights I tried to see what would happen if I disable the Bluetooth connection between my car and my iDevices. My status was reported as Cycling instead of Automotive for the rest of the trip. Hmm.
  • Not all the data will be updated in real-time, but there’s a significant lag. Also, it seems I might need to VPN to my home so the data would be updated sooner while I’m not at home.
  • iPhone’s custom focus modes are not updated to Home Assistant. During the sleep focus mode, the focus mode was reported as On, but for any other mode I tried it only shows Off. Shame, I would have loved to start tracking things like how long it takes for me to put our baby to sleep or how much of the time I’m spending with this blog. That has to wait for now.

But anyway, this thing just opened a whole new Pandora’s box for me to explore. 

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

GitHub celebrates developers with disabilities on Global Accessibility Awareness Day

Post Syndicated from Ed Summers original https://github.blog/2023-05-18-github-celebrates-developers-with-disabilities-on-global-accessibility-awareness-day/

At GitHub, our favorite people are developers. We love to make them happy and productive, and today, on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we want to celebrate their achievements by sharing some great stories about a few developers with disabilities alongside news of recent accessibility improvements at GitHub that help them do the best work of their lives.

Amplifying the voices of disabled developers

People with disabilities frequently encounter biases that prevent their full and equal participation in all areas of life, including education and employment. That’s why GitHub and The ReadME Project are thrilled to provide a platform for disabled developers to showcase their contributions and counteract bias.

Paul Chiou, a developer who’s paralyzed from the neck down, is breaking new ground in the field of accessibility automation, while pursuing his Ph.D. Paul uses a computer with custom hardware and software he designed and built, and this lived experience gives him a unique insight into the needs of other people with disabilities. The barriers he encounters push him to innovate, both in his daily life and in his academic endeavors. Learn more about Paul and his creative solutions in this featured article and video profile.

Becky Tyler found her way to coding via gaming, but she games completely with her eyes, just like everything else she does on a computer, from painting to livestreaming to writing code. Her desire to play Minecraft led her down the path of open source software and collaboration, and now she’s studying computer science at the University of Dundee. Learn more about Becky in this featured article and video profile.

Dr. Annalu Waller leads the Augmentative and Alternative Communication Research Group at the University of Dundee. She’s also Becky’s professor. Becky calls her a “taskmaster,” but the profile of Annalu’s life shows how her lived experience informed her high expectations for her students—especially those with disabilities—and gave her a unique ability to absorb innovations and use them to benefit people with disabilities.

Anton Mirhorodchenko has difficulty speaking and typing with his hands, and speaks English as a second language. Anton has explored ways to use ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot to not only help him communicate and express his ideas, but also develop software from initial architecture all the way to code creation. Through creative collaboration with his AI teammates, Anton has become a force to be reckoned with, and he recently shared his insights in this guide on how to harness the power of generative AI for software development.

Removing barriers that block disabled developers

Success requires skills. That’s why equal access to education is a fundamental human right. The GitHub Global Campus team agrees. They are working to systematically find and remove barriers that might block future developers with disabilities.

npm is the default package manager for JavaScript and the largest software registry in the world. To empower every developer to contribute to and benefit from this amazing resource, the npm team recently completed an accessibility bug bash and removed hundreds of potential barriers. Way to go, npm team!

The GitHub.com team has also been hard at work on accessibility and they recently shipped several improvements:

Great accessibility starts with design, requiring an in-depth understanding of the needs of users with disabilities and their assistive technologies. The GitHub Design organization has been leaning into accessibility for years, and this blog post explores how it has built a culture of accessibility and shifted accessibility left in the GitHub development process.

When I think about the future of technology, I think about GitHub Copilot—an AI pair programmer that boosts developers’ productivity and breaks down barriers to software development. The GitHub Copilot team recently shipped accessibility improvements for keyboard-only and screen reader users.

GitHub Next, the team behind GitHub Copilot, also recently introduced GitHub Copilot Voice, an experiment currently in technical preview. GitHub Copilot Voice empowers developers to code completely hands-free using only their voice. That’s a huge win for developers who have difficulty typing with their hands. Sign up for the technical preview if you can benefit from this innovation.

Giving back to our community

As we work to empower all developers to build on GitHub, we regularly contribute back to the broader accessibility community that has been so generous to us. For example, all accessibility improvements in Primer are available for direct use by the community.

Our accessibility team includes multiple Hubbers with disabilities—including myself. GitHub continually improves the accessibility and inclusivity of the processes we use to communicate and collaborate. One recent example is the process we use for retrospectives. At the end of our most recent retrospective, I observed that, as a person with blindness, it was the most accessible and inclusive retrospective I have ever attended. That observation prompted the team to share the process we use for inclusive retrospectives so other teams can benefit from our learnings.

More broadly, Hubbers regularly give back to the causes we care about. During a recent social giving event, I invited Hubbers to support the Seeing Eye because that organization has made such a profound impact in my life as a person with blindness. Our goal was to raise $5,000 so we could name and support a Seeing Eye puppy that will eventually provide independence and self-confidence to a person with blindness. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of my coworkers when they donated more than $15,000! So, we now get to name three puppies and I’m delighted to introduce you to the first one. Meet Octo!

A German Shepard named Octo sits in green grass wearing a green scarf that says “The Seeing Eye Puppy Raising Program.” She is sitting tall in a backyard with a black fence and a red shed behind her.
Photo courtesy of The Seeing Eye

Looking ahead

GitHub CEO, Thomas Dohmke, frequently says, “GitHub thrives on developer happiness.” I would add that the GitHub accessibility program thrives on the happiness of developers with disabilities. Our success is measured by their contributions. Our job is to remove barriers from their path and celebrate their accomplishments. We’re delighted with our progress thus far, but we are just getting warmed up. Stay tuned for more great things to come! In the meantime, learn more about the GitHub accessibility program at accessibility.github.com.

What’s Up, Home? – Is it raining?

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-is-it-raining/25713/

Can you create a proper weather dashboard with Zabbix? Of course, you can! By day, I am a Lead Site Reliability Engineer in a global cyber security company. By night, I monitor my home with Zabbix & Grafana and do some weird experiments with them.

Since Zabbix 6.0 has provided you an official OpenWeatherMap template. It gives you all the standard weather details: temperature, humidity, and so on, for any location you’d like to observe.

However, by default, Zabbix does not come with a weather map template. Can we add one? Probably. I say probably because it looks like the free OpenWeatherMap account I created might not have enough credentials to show the layers. Still, let’s give this a try!

(And before you ask why I did not just add another custom geomap provider under Zabbix Administration –> General –> Geographical maps — I wanted to have these layer toggles for clouds etc, and that requires custom JavaScript)

Getting OpenWeatherMap account

Just go to the OpenWeatherMap site and create an account for yourself. Soon enough, you’ll get an API key you are supposed to use.

Embedding OpenWeatherMap to Zabbix UI

I found leaflet-openweathermap and even though it’s abandoned, the demo that comes with it seems to work just fine. Embedding that to Zabbix was not that of a big deal.

  • Clone the git project for yourself
  • Copy the example somewhere where you can serve it, I did put it on my Zabbix server under /assets/openweathermap/ directory
  • Load that map in an empty tab to verify you see it works for you
  • With the default App ID that is bundled with the map the layers do work, but it would not be cool to use the author’s API key as stated in the code
  • Change the AppID to one you have received … well, at this point it stopped working for me, but if you really need it, OpenWeatherMap is not that expensive

Then you can add it to Zabbix just by inserting a new URL widget and pointing that to your location.

How does it look like?

Here we go! And, as another idea for you, with the URL widget, you can embed any camera input to your dashboard, too, some hints in part 21 of this blog I don’t want to show you our own camera footage, so I added Lauttasaari, Helsinki location — that is where Forcepoint has its office.

Now that’s a weather dashboard for you.

Get alerted

OpenWeatherMap would also support alerts about severe weather conditions, but another option would be to find out your local weather data from your nearest provider and use their open data for this; in Finland for example, Finnish Meteorological Institute has its own open data for one to use. Then just add those to Zabbix via HTTP Agent item type for example much like I did in part 32 of this blog, and you’re done.

I have been working at Forcepoint since 2014 and as you know by now, I have this never-ending drive for monitoring. — Janne Pikkarainen

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

What’s Up, Home? – Let’s hit the road!

Post Syndicated from Janne Pikkarainen original https://blog.zabbix.com/whats-up-home-lets-hit-the-road/25693/

Can you monitor how much you drive your car, even if your car wouldn’t have any way to report back to Zabbix? Of course, you can! By day, I am a Lead Site Reliability Engineer in a global cyber security company. By night, I monitor my home with Zabbix & Grafana and do some weird experiments with them. Welcome to my blog about the project.

Some forewords: Now that our baby girl is over six months old, she has developed some kind of sleeping pattern. It means she goes to bed very early in the evening, around 6pm. Or, I go to the bedroom with her and wait for her to sleep steadily before I exit the bedroom without her noticing. It means I have lots of time to think, and also to play around with apps like iPhone Shortcuts. I have previously done a few Siri & Zabbix experiments and this will be one more.

I did do this shortcut only two days ago and have not actually driven yet, but I verified that the shortcut itself works when I go into my car and start it up. Also, as I don’t want to give out the exact location where we live, for this blog post I faked our car to be located in Santa Claus Village, Rovaniemi.

Let’s get started.

What are you planning?

Even though I already know very well how much I drive — there’s the odometer in our car, a fuel app in my iPhone shows how many liters per month I refuel, and so on, this data is still something that would contribute to my dear single pane of glass, like your company probably wants to have.

My Siri Shortcut is simple: whenever I go to my car and my iPhone connects to car Bluetooth, it’s a clear data point that I’m probably going somewhere, so the shortcut gets my current location and saves its coordinates to a text file in my iCloud.

Next, just like in my previous Siri examples, a Zabbix Agent on my MacBook keeps an eye on this text file, very much like in my FlightGear integration example, Zabbix will then populate the coordinates in Zabbix inventory for my car host. This way, I can project the car location to the Geomap widget.

Let’s create the shortcut

Here’s the shortcut in all its simplicity.

About that Append to Text File… why appending instead of overwriting, I’ll tell you a story some other day.

Why Desktop Directory? I’ll tell you a story some other day.

Next up, Zabbix

On the Zabbix side of the house, the story is like so many times in my posts: read the text file, and using dependent items create the longitude and latitude items.

Wait! You saved it on your Desktop but now it’s in /tmp? I’ll tell you a story about this kludge some other day… or immediately after this caption.

It was easier to get macOS Zabbix Agent to get to read /tmp instead of your home directory, as the security is in the way, so a cronjob syncs the file once per minute to /tmp. Not only that but because in iOS Shortcuts the Append to a text file was the only way I got the shortcut to run without it asking for permission to run, my cronjob is actually like this:

* * * * * /usr/bin/tail -n1 /Users/jaba/Desktop/car_location.txt >/tmp/car_location.txt

Beautiful? No, but due to reasons I had to do this, and at least it works.

Anyway, then the longitude/latitude-dependent items just use some regular expressions.

Beautiful? No, but it works.

Does it work?

Of course, it does! See for yourself.

Here’s the latest data…

… and here’s the Geomap.

But wait! How does this track your kilometers?

Heh, you got me. It does not. One easy way would be to use Get distance block in iOS Shortcuts. It actually works — you get to choose that yes I will be driving, give me the kilometers. Whenever I do that, I would need a text file containing just one line (which would contain the old location), and getting to that point without your iPhone asking anything ever is not so simple, so for now I gave up.

So, the next part of this will be to use some API and make my Zabbix calculate the distances. That would be cooler anyway, but I’ll find time for that next time. Anyway, from now on Zabbix will know the locations where I have started our car, so the data will be collected from today. I know there are limitations in this implementation, such as that if I start the car and just drive to some place and back without ever stopping the engine, that won’t really give me any results, but this is better than nothing.

I have been working at Forcepoint since 2014 and as you know by now, I have this never-ending drive for monitoring. — Janne Pikkarainen

This post was originally published on the author’s page.

How enabling developers can help drive financial inclusion

Post Syndicated from Mark Paulsen original https://github.blog/2023-04-10-how-enabling-developers-can-help-drive-financial-inclusion/

Developers who feel more satisfied in their jobs are better positioned to be more productive. We also know developers can gain a sense of fulfillment by making an impact beyond the walls of their company and elevating their community. An opportunity exists, which developers can meet, to support those who lack access to the financial system. Many countries are working to drive financial inclusion through different motions—to which developers can contribute. GitHub provides a set of tools and services, which can support your developers working to address this need.

For example, in Australia, there is a huge opportunity to continue the work aimed at reaching those who are not currently included in the financial system. There are still a large number of people that don’t have access to important services that many of us take for granted—an opportunity that financial inclusion tries to solve.

Let’s explore these opportunities and how GitHub can help.

Financial inclusion explained

The World Bank defines financial inclusion as providing individuals and businesses access to affordable financial products to meet their needs. This includes products, such as checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages, and payments, which are still not available to over a billion unbanked people around the world. Many of these are women, people living in poverty, and those living outside of large cities.

Open Finance (or Open Banking) is an approach adopted by banks like NAB (National Australia Bank) to help include more individuals in the financial system by providing them access to the best products and services in a secure way that addresses their needs.

To enable financial inclusion and Open Finance, there needs to be a channel to exchange data and services between banks, customers, and trusted partners (fintechs, for example); that is where application programming interfaces (APIs) come in. The easiest way to understand an API is to think of it as a contract between two applications that need a standardized and secure way to talk to each other. Once the contract is created and secured, it can be used anywhere to share data or initiate a financial transaction.

This API-driven innovation lowers barriers for those individuals who may have limited physical access to banks, credit cards, or traditional financial products.

How GitHub can help

The tremendous opportunities for Australia, New Zealand, India, and other countries to enable financial inclusion to its population are dependent on the quality of the APIs. The quality and adoption of the APIs is dependent on creating a great developer experience because they are the ones building the APIs and applications that will leverage them.

GitHub is used by 100 million developers and is widely-recognized as the global home of open source. Developer experience is at the core of everything we do and it empowers developers to do their best work and be happy. But how does GitHub help enable financial inclusion and Open Finance?

The Open Bank Project released a report in 2020 highlighting how providing a great developer experience can drive growth of APIs that enable financial inclusion. Several topics which were highlighted and where GitHub can help are:

1. Create solutions to help people

This is an important motivator for developers. If developers create solutions that can help increase financial inclusion, they should make sure those solutions are available to as many people as possible through the open source community. Since we know that open source is the foundation of more than 90% of the world’s software, there is a great opportunity to collaborate globally and build on solutions that already exist.

Because GitHub is the home of open source and has 100 million developers, there is no better place for developers to create solutions that will make the biggest impact.

2. Running Hackathons

Hackathons, like the Global Open Finance Challenge, which NAB collaborated in and was won by an Aussie start-up, are important for developers to share ideas with other developers and large enterprises. They help developers see what APIs are currently available and enable innovation and collaboration with a global reach. To run a successful hackathon, developers will need to have access to code and documentation, which has been open sourced—and GitHub is a key component to enable this.

3. Recognition for developers

If a developer has worked on a solution that is helping enable financial inclusion, it’s important to ensure their effort is recognized and supported. The most important part of recognizing the awesome work developers do is to make sure there is a single platform where this work can be shared. Thankfully, that platform already exists and any developer, anywhere in the world, can access it for free—it’s GitHub!

Tip: Is there a project on GitHub that you rely on? Consider giving the repository a star, or creating a a new GitHub Discussion to let the maintainer know you’re thankful!

At GitHub, we also know that sometimes recognition isn’t enough, and developers need support. This is why the GitHub Sponsors program was created. We also created our GitHub for Startups program which provides support to the startup community around the world—many of whom are important contributors to Open Banking.

4. Documentation

The success of an API is dependent on how easy it is for developers to understand and use. If developers are unable to quickly understand the context of the API, how to connect to it, or easily set it up to test it, then it probably won’t be successful.

The topic of API documentation and API Management is beyond the scope of this post, but it’s important to remember that open source is a key enabler of Open Finance and developers will need a platform to collaborate and share documentation and code. GitHub is the best platform for that, and we have seen at least a 50% increase in productivity when developers leverage documentation best practices enabled by GitHub.

Call to action

Developers have an amazing opportunity to contribute to the financial inclusion work that is happening in Australia and across the world. GitHub can help support developers to address this opportunity by giving them the tools and services they need to be productive and successful.

We’ve recently launched our weekly livestream on LinkedIn Live, GitHub in my Day Job, for those who want to learn more about how GitHub empowers developers across the community while providing guardrails to govern, and remain compliant. So, join us at https://gh.io/dayjob—we can’t wait to have you with us.

Clubs Conference 2023: Ideas and tools for CoderDojos and Code Clubs

Post Syndicated from Sarah Roberts original https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/clubs-conference-2023-talks/

On 24 and 25 March, more than 140 members of the Code Club and CoderDojo communities joined us in Cambridge for our first-ever Clubs Conference.

Participants at the Clubs Conference.
Participants at the Clubs Conference.

At the Clubs Conference, volunteers and educators came together to celebrate their achievements and explore new ways to support young people to create with technology. The event included community display tables, interactive workshops, discussions, poster sessions, and talks.

For everyone who couldn’t join us in person, we recorded all of the talks that community members gave on the main stage. Here’s what you can learn from the speakers.

Running your club

  • Jane Waite from our team offered a taste of the research we do and how you can get insights from it to help you run your own coding club. Watch Jane’s talk to learn about the research that informs our projects for your club.
  • Rhodri Smith, who runs a Code Club, shared how you can use assistive technologies to open your club experience to more young people. Watch Rhodri’s talk for some fantastic tips on how assistive technology can make Code Club accessible to children of all ages and abilities.
Participants at the Clubs Conference.
  • Dave Morley, who volunteers at the CoderDojo at Royal Museums Greenwich, presented his way of using Scratch projects to keep engaging Dojo participants. Watch Dave’s talk for tips on how to create your own coding projects for young people.
  • Tim Duffey, who is part of the West Sound CoderDojo, shared how his Dojo ran successful online sessions during the coronavirus pandemic. Watch Tim’s talk for great advice on how to run successful coding clubs for young people online.
  • Steph Burton from our team presented new resources we’re working on to help clubs recruit and train volunteers. Watch Steph’s talk for tips on how to recruit new volunteers for your coding club.

Engaging young people in your club

  • Sophie Hudson, who runs a Code Club in rural Yorkshire, told us how her school’s Code Club turned taking part in Astro Pi Mission Zero into a cross-curricular activity, and how she partnered older learners with younger ones for peer mentoring that engaged new learners in coding. Watch Sophie’s talk to learn how you can get your school involved in Astro Pi, especially if you don’t have much adult support available.
Participants at the Clubs Conference.
We brought a replica of the Astro Pi computers to the Clubs Conference.
  • Helen Gardner from our team shared how you can motivate and inspire your coders by supporting them to share their projects in the Coolest Projects showcase — even their very first Scratch animation. Watch Helen’s talk if you’re looking for something new for your club.

The benefits of Code Club and CoderDojo for your community

  • Fiona Lindsay, who leads a Code Club, presented her insights into the skills beyond coding that young people learn at Code Club, and she shared some wonderful videos of her coders talking about their experience. Watch Fiona’s talk to hear young girls talk about how to get more girls into coding, and for evidence of why every school should have a Code Club.
Hillside School's cake to celebrate ten years of Code Club.
Last year, Fiona’s Code Club held a special event to celebrate the tenth birthday of Code Club.
  • Bruce Harms, who is involved in AruCoderDojo, shared how he and his team are making the CoderDojo model part of their wider work to bring digital skills and infrastructure to Aruba. Watch Bruce’s talk to learn how his team has tailored their coding clubs for their local community.

What is volunteering for CoderDojo and Code Club like?

  • Marcus Davage, who volunteers at a Code Club, shared his journey as a volunteer translator of our resources, and how he engaged colleagues at his workplace in also supporting translations to make coding skills available to more young people across the world. Watch Marcus’s talk if you speak more than one language.
  • To end the day, we hosted a group of community members onstage to have a chat about their journeys with CoderDojo and Code Club, what they’ve learned, and how they see the future of their clubs. Watch the panel conversation if you want inspiration and advice for getting involved in helping kids create with tech.
A panel discussion on stage at the Clubs Conference.

Thank you to everyone who gave talks, ran workshops, presented posters, and had conversations to share their questions and insights. It was wonderful to meet all of you, and we came away from the Clubs Conference feeling super inspired by the amazing work Code Club and CoderDojo volunteers all over the world do to help young people learn to create with digital technologies.

We learned so much from listening to you, and we will take the lessons into our work to support you and your clubs in the best way we can.

The post Clubs Conference 2023: Ideas and tools for CoderDojos and Code Clubs appeared first on Raspberry Pi Foundation.