Tag Archives: zabbix training

Training and Skills Development: The Zabbix Advantage

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

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

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

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

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

Perform an effective training and skills development needs analysis

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

An effective needs analysis addresses questions like these:

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

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

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

Build targeted and customized courses

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

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

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

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

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

Provide quality, professional materials

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

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

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

Have qualified and experienced instructors

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

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

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

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

Assess training and skills development effectiveness

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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

 

 

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

Zabbix SNMP monitoring one-day training course

Post Syndicated from Arturs Lontons original https://blog.zabbix.com/zabbix-snmp-monitoring-one-day-training-course/25746/

SNMP – Simple network management protocol is a networking protocol that is extremely prevalent in network hardware such as switches and routers, as well as a variety of other devices such as printers, power supplies and even regular server hosts. Depending on the device, a wide array of metrics can be retrieved by using SNMP without the need to deploy any additional software on the target device. Our newly introduced Zabbix SNMP monitoring one-day extra course will teach you all you need to know about SNMP and how to use Zabbix to get the most out of your SNMP devices with the most optimal data collection approach.

Course contents

The goal of the course is to introduce the core concepts behind SNMP and provide the attendees with the skills necessary to extract the required metrics from SNMP endpoints. The course covers topics such as:

  • SNMP core concepts
  • SNMP command line utilities
  • Differences between SNMP versions
  • SNMP resource discovery with Zabbix Low-level discovery feature
  • Optimizing SNMP data collection with the SNMP walk[*] item introduced in Zabbix 6.4
  • Configuring and monitoring SNMP traps

The course will be hosted by a Zabbix Certified Trainer with thorough experience in SNMP monitoring and Zabbix configuration. The courses are designed with open Q&A sessions in mind, where attendees can discuss their current and potential use cases and how the course contents can be applied to their own real-life scenarios.

Zabbix Certified Specialist on-site training

SNMP monitoring in Zabbix 6.4 and newer versions

Zabbix 6.4 introduces a whole new approach to bulk SNMP monitoring – the walk[*] item. During the course, attendees will learn how the new bulk data collection approach greatly increases the metric collection speed and reduces the potential performance impact on the monitoring endpoint. The course covers the main differences between the old and new approaches and demonstrates how the new SNMP items can be configured in the correct manner. Trainers will also demonstrate and provide the opportunity to practice SNMP resource discovery with the new walk[*] item and Zabbix low-level discovery (LLD) features.

Practical tasks

Depending on the device and vendor, configuring SNMP monitoring can be both very simple or it may require understanding the underlying OID structure to find the data that you’re looking for. To guide our students through real-life scenarios in understanding how SNMP monitoring may differ across devices and vendors, the course includes practical tasks, during which the participants will get the opportunity to configure Zabbix SNMP monitoring for an array of network devices belonging to a selection of the most popular vendors, such as Cisco, HP and Mikrotik. By the end of the course, students will have both a theoretical and practical understanding of SNMP as a protocol and how it can be used by Zabbix for metric collection and problem detection.

At the end of the course, every attendee will receive the course attendance certificate.

Sign up for the SNMP monitoring Zabbix training course and check our other one-day extra courses by visiting the Zabbix Training Extra Courses page.

The post Zabbix SNMP monitoring one-day training course appeared first on Zabbix Blog.

Fast Way to Upgrade Your Zabbix Knowledge

Post Syndicated from Nicole Makarova original https://blog.zabbix.com/fast-way-to-upgrade-your-zabbix-knowledge/20267/

Since Zabbix 6.0 LTS has been released with a lot of new features and improvements, it might be tricky for one to figure out how to use these features on their own. Here, Zabbix comes to the rescue with Upgrade Training Courses to boost your knowledge in just one day.

If you previously completed the Zabbix 5.0 core training, the Upgrade Program will be an excellent way to learn about the recent improvements and add-ons of the new version without retaking the entire course. It is akin to a crash course that saves you both time and effort.

Zabbix Upgrade Training Program Overview

The Upgrade Training Program consists of two courses: Zabbix 6.0 Certified Specialist Upgrade Course and Zabbix 6.0 Certified Professional Upgrade Course. Let us tell you more about each upgraded training.

The Certified Specialist Upgrade Course covers the updated and new features of the basics, such as different data collection approaches, problem detection, data preprocessing, different visualization features, and more. Some of the long-awaited features you will get familiar with during the upgrade course are new Dashboard Widgets (e.g.: Item Value Widget), Top Hosts Widget, and the ability to display your monitored infrastructure on the Geomap Widget. Another thing that might serve your interest is the Service Monitoring section, which has been completely redesigned with a focus on flexible business service monitoring, alerting, and root cause analysis.

On the contrary, Certified Professional Upgrade Course focuses on advanced environments, where infrastructure scalability and redundancy are the common requirements. Hence, this course includes six major features, with two of them being High Availability and Advanced Problem Detection. The Zabbix server High Availability feature allows you to deploy multiple Zabbix servers that will remain in standby mode and will be failed over if the currently active server becomes unavailable. The Advanced Problem Detection section focuses on anomaly detection and baseline monitoring features, as Zabbix now supports history functions. This means that Zabbix can semi-automatically detect anomalous values and create alerts if such values are detected. The same approach can be used in baseline monitoring: Zabbix can now calculate baseline values for your metrics and react if your values are outside of this baseline.

As you see, such extensive training wraps up all the meaningful recent improvements of Zabbix 6.0 and delivers them to you in one day, not requiring you to spend a week on the course retake. And besides, it is also cheaper than the entire course.

This is the first time Zabbix is providing a quick and easy way to upgrade existing Zabbix 5.0 Specialist and Zabbix 5.0 Professional certifications to Zabbix 6.0. The course is designed for experienced Zabbix administrators, who are working with Zabbix 5.0 on daily basis. The one-day course featuring all important changes and updates in the most recent Zabbix LTS version is a very cost and time-efficient option.
– Kaspars Mednis, Chief Trainer at Zabbix

Applying for the Right Course

Now it is time to pick the right Upgrade Course to apply for if you are ready to evolve your Zabbix skills. Here are a few hints on how to do it.

If you have already completed our core training and received the Zabbix 5.0 Certified Specialist Certificate, you should apply for the Zabbix 6.0 Certified Specialist Upgrade Course. This one-day course includes 5 hours of training and a one-hour exam that will challenge you to check your knowledge of the whole Zabbix 6.0 LTS version and its new features.

Therefore, if you were certified as a 5.0 Certified Professional, go for the Zabbix 6.0 Certified Specialist + Professional Upgrade Course bundle. This one includes both: Specialist and Professional courses and lasts a little longer. After completing the Specialist course, Professionals will have their additional 1.5-hour training and a 30-minute exam to master their knowledge.

Useful Things to Know

We suggest revising your knowledge of the Zabbix usage, as the exam of the Upgrade Training Program includes questions about both: the entire Zabbix 6.0 LTS release, as well as new features and improvements. Feel free to use your Zabbix 5.0 materials from the previous core training you have completed or explore Zabbix Documentation in case the materials are unavailable to you for some reason.

Please, bear in mind that 6.0 Certified Professional Upgrade training is meant only for the 5.0 Certified Professionals who have previously acquired the 6.0 Certified Specialist level.

The Upgrade Training Program is available online all over the world in different languages and for various time zones. And what’s more, upon successful course completion, you will receive an official Zabbix training certificate stating you have upgraded to the Zabbix 6.0 Certified Specialist or Professional.

Ready for takeoff? Then check out the full schedule and cost of the program on our Upgrade Courses page and pick your training. For even more details, please contact our Sales Team.

Discover more courses and make a solid investment into your Zabbix skills by applying to:
Core Training Courses to become a professional or an expert
Extra Courses to study in depth one specific monitoring topic
Exams to prove your Zabbix knowledge

 

Take advantage of Zabbix services online by Sergejs Sorokins / Zabbix Summit Online 2021

Post Syndicated from sersor original https://blog.zabbix.com/take-advantage-of-zabbix-services-online-by-sergejs-sorokins-zabbix-summit-online-2021/18716/

From Turnkeys to Upgrades and Training courses – Zabbix offers a wast selection of services to help you get the most value out of your Zabbix environment. In this blog post, we will take a look at the new and existing Zabbix online services and learn how they can benefit both Zabbix veterans and newcomers to the monitoring world.

Zabbix in public clouds

Zabbix images are available for the most popular cloud services providers, including  – AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and many others. Let’s talk about what applications and services are available for those of you, that choose to take this Zabbix deployment route.

  • Virtual Appliances of Zabbix server and Zabbix proxy
  • Technical support services can be obtained directly in the cloud platform
  • Some cloud platforms provide containers for Zabbix server, Zabbix proxy, and Zabbix agent components

What does it take to deploy Zabbix in a public cloud?

  • 2-5 minutes to deploy a fully functional Zabbix instance
  • Easy to scale up and scale down according to your requirements
  • Select a geographical region where you wish to deploy your Zabbix component
    • For example, you could deploy the Zabbix server in one region and deploy a set of proxies across multiple other regions
  • The prices are very affordable and flexible
    • Depending on the cloud provider, the price can go as low as 5$ per month for the virtual appliance of the Zabbix server

Zabbix technical support services

Zabbix Technical support services are one of the most popular services with our customers. Zabbix support services offer 5 tiers of support.

Starting from the Silver tier, which covers the basic customer requirements such as answering customer tech support questions, to the Enterprise and Global tiers, which include not only technical support services but also remote assistance, performance tuning, training, on-site visits, and more. Each customer can pick a support tier depending on their requirements and budget.

The technical support service provides multiple obvious and not so obvious benefits:

  • Support on demand
  • You will receive the answers to your questions strictly within your SLA
  • Insurance against “storms”
    • Whenever a major outage or issue arises in your infrastructure, Zabbix support can assist you with fixing the problems and ensuring that your Zabbix instance is in a healthy state
  • A way to influence the Zabbix road-map
    • Commercial customers of Zabbix have the advantage of a direct line of communication with Zabbix regarding their feature requests or potential bug reports

Zabbix professional training

We can divide the Zabbix training into two types of courses – core courses and one-day courses. Both of these types of courses are unique in the knowledge that they aim to deliver.

Core courses

The core courses are multi-day courses that range from the Zabbix Certified User course to Zabbix Certified Expert.

  • Zabbix Certified User course, which is aimed at Zabbix users who are not involved in configuring Zabbix, but they still need to access the Zabbix Dashboards and read metrics on a regular or a semi-regular basis
  • On the other hand, the Zabbix Certified Specialist course is aimed at Zabbix users that deal with managing and configuring Zabbix – configuring metric collection, problem thresholds, data processing, and more
  • The Zabbix Certified Professional course takes another step forward and is tailored for up-and-coming Zabbix power users. The course deals in deploying and managing advanced Zabbix infrastructures with automation and custom data collection in place
  • Lastly, the Zabbix Certified Expert course is aimed at potential Zabbix architects. By participating in this course users will learn about best practices when designing Zabbix infrastructures, the inner working of Zabbix processes, and all of the underlying logic that Zabbix performs when processing data and generating alerts

One-day courses

The goal of the Zabbix one-day courses is to take an in-depth look at a particular topic and provide all of the available knowledge on specific Zabbix features. These are one-day courses with a large focus on practical tasks. The content of these courses is unique. Therefore it doesn’t matter if you’re a newcomer or a season Zabbix expert – the information covered in the courses will be useful to you in any scenario.

Course availability

All of the aforementioned courses are widely available all over the world. Zabbix provides courses in different languages, for different time zones both online and on-site.

  • The courses are available in 11 languages
  • Currently, there are 8 types of courses with more to come down the line
  • 21 official training partners, providing Zabbix training in different languages and time zones
  • Available both online and on-site

What we covered here is just a small part of the overall service offering that Zabbix provides. In addition to the aforementioned services, you can visit the Zabbix Professional Services page to find a full list of Zabbix services – from consultancy hours to turnkey deployments and integration services. If you’re interested in any kind of assistance from Zabbix, feel free to get in touch with our Sales department – [email protected] and together we will tailor the best service offering for you.

Questions

Q: What pre-requisites are required for the attendees of Zabbix training courses?

A: For the Zabbix Certified User course there are no pre-requisites. As for the Zabbix Certified Specialist – some basic IT knowledge and at least surface-level ability to navigate the Linux operating system would be useful for the attendees. On the other hand, the Zabbix Certified Professional course requires the completion of the Zabbix Certified Specialist course. Similarly – the Zabbix Certified Expert course requires the completion of the Zabbix Certified Professional course.

 

Q: With the release of Zabbix 6.0 LTS right around the corner – should our users simply wait until Zabbix 6.0 LTS training is available or they can certify in Zabbix 5.0 LTS?

A: Since Zabbix 5.0 LTS courses are still available, I would look at what you plan to stick with for the foreseeable future. If there are no plans to upgrade to Zabbix 6.0 LTS, then the Zabbix 5.0 LTS course could be the best for you. On the other hand, if a Zabbix upgrade is already scheduled – then 6.0 LTS might just benefit you more.

 

Q: What If I have the Zabbix 5.0 LTS specialist certificate – will I be able to attend the Zabbix 6.0 LTS professional course or do I have to start over?

A: With the release of Zabbix 6.0 LTS we plan to introduce the Zabbix Certified Upgrade course. This will be a one-day course that will allow Zabbix 5.0 certified specialists and professionals to upgrade their certification to the Zabbix 6.0 certified specialist or professional.

The upgrade course has the extra benefit of preparing you for the Zabbix 6.0 LTS changes before you actually perform the jump to the Zabbix 6.0 LTS release. With the upgrade certificate in hand, you will be aware of all of the changes and new features that await you in the latest Zabbix LTS release.

 

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