Zabbix Conference 2015 Agenda

As always, Zabbix Conference is a 2-day event full of exciting talks, tricky topics, community solutions, use cases from a wide range of companies and workshops run by the Zabbix Team.

Explore the agenda in full, with all the videos and presentations!

Day 1 - September 11

09:00

Registration for Conference Delegates

10:00

Opening Speech

Alexei Vladishev

Founder and CEO, Zabbix

Alexei is the author of Zabbix, an enterprise class open source monitoring solution, and also the founder of Zabbix LLC, the company developing Zabbix.

Conference video & presenations

10:30

Beyond the Loadable Module

Zabbix loadable module provides a great way to extend capabilities of your Zabbix implementation, but knowing how to integrate your favorite interpreter with Zabbix, will bring you further than just creating the loadable module itself.

Using Python interpreter as an example, I will review the process of such integration, point on possible pitfalls, explain on how to debug your scrips and give you more ideas on how to organize distributed data collection, using Python-Zabbix modules.

Vladymir Ulogov

Technology Evangelist at Zabbix

Unix System Administrator and Software Developer with working knowledge of the Networking, Security and Monitoring. Experienced in installing and configuring network routers, switches and firewalls. Performed various system administration tasks on production servers. Working knowledge of how to enforce Systems security policies, harden the network, hosts and software resources. Designing and developing the monitoring architectures and other software components. Certified trainer for Zabbix monitoring platform.

Conference video & presenations

11:10

Zabbix and SNMP on Linux

Most often Zabbix users will monitor Linux hosts using the Zabbix agent, however SNMP is not only an option, it's actually a very viable one. Andrew Nelson will describe his experience configuring Zabbix to monitor a Linux environment of over 500 systems using only SNMP.

Andrew Nelson

GSenior Linux Consultant, Red Hat

Senior Linux systems administrator with a passion for systems monitoring using Zabbix. He has worked in mission critical data center environments, utilizing a SAAS (Software As A Service) model with millions of users and 24x7 availability. Specialties: Zabbix Certified Professional with 7 years experience in building and tuning Zabbix monitoring environments; the top non-employee contributor to the Zabbix forums; Senior level systems Linux systems administrator; in Ruby and Bash.

Conference video & presenations

11:50

COFFEE BREAK

12:10

Working the API like a Unix Pro

Communicating with the Zabbix API can be quite cumbersome, especially if you don't have a background as a programmer. For a sysadmin, it would be very nice if one could just run some CLI commands to control Zabbix behavior.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could fetch a list of active triggers and parse it with grep or sed to find the specific triggers you are looking for? Or perhaps you need a list of historic values that you can parse in a custom script? How about a cronjob that downloads and emails all the graphs in the system matching a certain regex?
In this presentation Raymond Kuiper will talk about some of these possibilities and show you how he achieved these things in his Zabbix setup.

Raymond Kuiper

IT Infrastructure Specialist, Netco Technology B.V.

As an IT Infrastructure Specialist with a strong focus on monitoring, networks and operations, Raymond started using Zabbix 1.1.3 in 2006 when the company he was working for needed a flexible, integrated solution to monitor servers and network availability and performance. Over the years Raymond has become a keen supporter of Zabbix and has introduced the tool to various organizations and administrators. He also likes to hang out in #zabbix on Freenode to help out other Zabbix users.

Conference video & presenations

12:50

SHORT TALK: Monitoring Large Multi-Site Data Environment

Dimitri Bellini and his customer Stefano Zuliani ,representative of a major Italian bank, will present a talk showcasing how Zabbix is used in a large enterprise infrastructure based on SAN Switches and IBM Mainframe HOST. The speech's focus will be on the integration process, case studying the integration of Zabbix with the Noc team of a large Italian bank using Zabbix API and a WEB front-end specialized for monitoring of Mainframe Storage Area Network infrastructure.

Dimitri Bellini

CEO, Quadrata

Dimitri Bellini has over 10 years of Unix experience within enterprise environment, having extensive knowledge of storage arrays and SANs. Dimitri is using Zabbix since 2005. In the beginning of 2013 he has attended Zabbix Certified Trainer course. Dimitri characterizes himself as Open Source solutions evangelist.

Conference video & presenations

13:10

How to Monitor Bilions of Miles Shared by 20 milion users with Zabbix: A Case Study at BlaBlaCar

This talk will cover a case study at BlaBlaCar, a transport network community with more than 20 milion members in 19 countires. The presentation will overview using a low-powered virtual machine to monitor the whole environment, concentrating on LLD and trapper items. Also projects like python-protobix, jmx-zabbix and python-zabbix will be covered.

Jean Baptiste Favre

System Architect, BlaBlaCar

Linux system engineer. I spent most of my time on the Internet, working with Debian, Xen and getting knowledge about Clusters and High availability. Specializing in high availabilty and custering, web performances, Xen virtualization, MySql, Apache & NGnix tuning and Monitoring. Particularly interested in Linux, Netfilter, Xen, clustering technologies.

Conference video & presenations

13:50

SHORT TALK: Advanced SysOps by using HyClops

This talk will demonstrate the capabilities of HyClops (open source), integrating it for Zabbix management The presentation will overview the benefits of three components of HyClops - job monitoring module, proxy auto management module and external job management tool (JobShceduler), as well as automatic distribution control of Zabbix Proxy based on rules, discussing the path of future development and operation possibilities.

Daisuke Ikeda

System Integrator, TIS, Inc

I work in TIS Inc. OSS Promotion Office. Our department provides OSS Enterprise Support Service. Our mission is to investigate for effective operation management in the cloud era. We pay our attention to Zabbix, fluentd, Ansible, JobScheduler etc. for realization of OSS eco system.

Conference video & presenations

14:10

LUNCH

15:10

SHORT TALK: Monitoring Payment Queues

When every message has an explicit monetary value, close monitoring of message queues is critical. In this talk Lukasz Lipski will present an overview of the ways Zabbix can monitor IBM MQ - with examples of channel and queue monitoring. An agent module will also be presented (using a feature introduced in Zabbix 2.2) that extends the agent with IBM MQ specific metrics.

Lukasz Lipski

IT Operations Specialist

UNIX/Linux System Administrator with some programming background and a passion for making things work with as little human feedback as possible. Currently working on a number of projects, and often wondering about the fine line between the use and abuse of Perl programming language. Using Zabbix as a primary monitoring solution since 2011.

Conference video & presenations

15:30

Case Study: Zabbix deployment at Globo.com

This talk will cover two years of Zabbix deployment at Globo.com - the web branch of Rede Globo, a major media player in Brazil providing access to media products to more than 1,8 million visitors hourly, 45 millions each day. The case study will include migration from legacy systems, integration, templates and deployment, suming up the challenges, solutions and the gained knowledge.

Filipe Paternot

Senior System Administrator, Globo.com

Conference video & presenations

16:10

SHORT TALK: Zabbix Tool for Graph Visualization

Designing custom reports for multi-host items in Zabbix can be a tedious manual effort. Moreover, creating new screens and graphs requires read-write access to Zabbix, potentially compromising security if granted to all Zabbix users. Graph tool is implemented at RingCentral Company (making it open source is one of the goals at the conference), which allows fast creation of custom graphs for any Zabbix user with read-only access. Examples of creating new Zabbix graphs on the fly will be demonstrated in real time by the authors of RingCentral Company. Co-authors of the presentation: Dmitry Tigrov, Sr. Tools Engineer; Dmitry Shchemelinin, Ph.D., Sr. Director of Operations, RingCentral Inc.

Serg Mescheryakov

Senior System Analyst, RingCentral

Serg Mescheryakov is a Doctor of Science, Professor of St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University (St. Petersburg, Russia), specializing in Computer Science and Engineering. He has published more than 100 scientific papers and implemented a series of enterprise database systems. Serg has 35 years of experience in IT as developer, database architect, team leader and analyst, including 10 years in leading IT companies in California. He is currently working for RingCentral as Senior System Analyst, responsible for system analysis of production stats and repeatable issues.

Conference video & presenations

16:30

COFFEE BREAK

16:50

Encrypting Daemon Traffic With Zabbix 3.0

Are you paranoid? Even if you are not, it might be a good idea to encrypt your email. Important documents. Communication. While monitoring data is not secret in many cases, transmitting it in plaintext over Internet does make some people nervous. And now, with Zabbix 3.0, there's a built-in way to encrypt communication between components, including Zabbix server, proxy, agent, get and sender. Yes, them all. In this short talk we'll learn about the available modes, supported libraries and how to configure it all to still make sense a few years later.

Rihards Olups

Senior Consultant, Zabbix

Conference video & presenations

17:30

Getting things done with Zabbix Services

In this talk Alexander will discuss details of available Zabbix Professional Services and the benefits your company/organization gets when using these.

Alexander Sergunin

Sales Manager, Zabbix LLC

Conference video & presenations

Day 2 – September 12

09:30

Registration for Conference Delegates

10:00

Reporting Large Environment Zabbix Database

Database Reporting may help in many areas.

-Managing Zabbix Large Environment with 14 000 hosts, 10 000 items and 10 000 triggers for over 7 000 NVS is not so easy and Zabbix Administrators need some High Level Dashboards to sanitize and standardize configurations.

- Some events (as for example the loss of a part of a Datacenter) need Summary Report because, on such Large Environment, Zabbix will fire too many informations.

- Designing High level dashboards for key actors as Managers, forecasters, ... We will see how we can organize Zabbix Database Reporting for such Large Environment with OpenBI tools.

Alain Ganuchaud

CEO, Core IT Project

Alain comes from the company Hewlett-Packard, developing around HP OpenView, especially in the area of databases. Then he established two OpenSources Companies, focusing on major accounts. Now, being as Zabbix Certified Specialist for Large Environment, he provides Zabbix consulting for 6 years, especially in the Banking sector & Large environment companies.

Conference video & presenations

10:40

Employing Zabbix to monitor OpenWrt (Beesip) devices with Uciprov

Beesip (Bright Efficient Embedded Solution for IP Telephony) is platform based on OpenWrt, primarily made for IP telephony purposes. The aim of the project is the development and implementation of embedded SIP communication server with an easy integration into the computer network based on open-source solutions. Beesip uses uciprov for remote management and provisioning. Next to this, it uses Zabbix for inventory and monitoring utilizing auto-discovery and auto-registration. Even if it is used primarily for IP telephony, it is common to use Beesip build system for other purposes like monitoring probes distribution or Eduroam AP management. Talk will be practically oriented showing possibilities of provisioning and auto inventory in OpenWrt world.

Lukas Macura

VoIP and Network Specialist, Cesnet, z.s.p.o.

Administrator of CESNET POP at Karvina and VoIP Specialist in CESNET multimedia team, Network Administrator and lecturer at Silesian University in Opava. Lucas is using Zabbix from its alpha versions for network monitoring. He aims to be an "open-source extremist". The best motto, which could be used for him is "Nothing is impossible".

Conference video & presenations

11:20

How to Debug Common Agent Issues

Probably every Zabbix user has a story of a Zabbix agent suddenly failing to work. Computers and networks are complex and diverse, and so are the causes of these problems.

This talk introduces a structured approach to debugging configuration problems, connectivity problems and problems in the execution of the agent. It will spotlight common problems, but also some rather obscure ones I met in the wild.

Volker Fröhlich

GNU/Linux Engineer

Volker Fröhlich is a system administrator with the Austrian company Geizhals Preisvergleich Internet Services. In his time off he is a RPM packager with Fedora and Openstreetmap mapper. "volter" is a permanent resident of the Zabbix IRC channel.

Conference video & presenations

12:00

Coffee Break

12:20

Event-driven Service Discovery

There are multitude of servers, services, dataflows, metrics, logs and actions - the usual way of perciving the IT field, with monitoring being just "the toolset X", "metrics", "triggers/actions", and logging is basically the same thing.
Why can't programs communicate with other programs by saying "Hello! We are alive and have a balanced configuration" or "Please help me, i need another CPU 'cos my workload was changed during last week"? Why are we currently perceiving monitoring from a human point of view?
The answer is simple: currently we use "human controls for machines" pattern in a very inefficient form.
In this talk Eugene Istomin will speak about true powerful of IT - TOGAF model, code-driven infrastructures, and cover event-driven service discovery.

Eugene Istomin

IT Architect, Support Engineer, EDS Systems

Conference video & presenations

13:00

SHORT TALK: Hardening Zabbix

A short talk about SELinux configuration for Zabbix Many people just disable SELinux because they don't know how to use it In this talk Patrik Uytterhoeven will cover the basics of SELinux configuration with Zabbix, common pitfalls and solutions to problems, and explain why we need it to keep Zabbix secure.

Patrik Uytterhoeven

Open Source Consultant, Open-Future,

Patrik had already 16 years of experience in IT and monitoring of mainframes before he joined Open-Future. Open-Future was the first Zabbix reseller in Belgium and when Patrik joined the company he took the oportunity to go to Zabbix SIA and certify himself in the beginning of 2013 as a Zabbix Certified Zabbix Trainer.

Conference video & presenations

13:20

Lunch

14:20

Using Logstash with Zabbix

Logstash is a terrific tool for capturing, filtering, parsing and enriching data from a number of sources—including logs, of course. But Logstash is also able to capture from many other sources, including social media streams, databases, and many more. Data streams like these are a potential gold mine for Zabbix trending and alerting of all kinds.

In this talk Aaron Mildensten will provide an overview of how to configure and integrate Logstash with Zabbix to:
* capture data
* parse data events into key/value pairs
* associate an event with the time-stamp provided by the data
* generate metrics from the data
* output these values to Zabbix, with the associated time-stamp

Aaron Mildenstein

Software Engineer, Elastic,

Conference video & presenations

15:00

Zabbix 3.0: Excited for new features?

Rihards Olups, Pavel Amosov

Senior Consultant, UI/UX Designer Zabbix

Rihards Olups has worked in the IT sector for more than 15 years, and in 2009 he joined Zabbix. He has had a chance to work with various systems, and most of that time has been spent with open source solutions. Exposure to Zabbix, one of the leading open source enterprise class monitoring solutions, was with the first public releases back in 2001, which has allowed to gain practical knowledge on the subject.
Pavel Amosov is a UI/UX designer at Zabbix. Pavel has recently joined the company where he is responsible for the look and feel of Zabbix front-end with a special focus on user experience. Before joining the amazing Zabbix team Pavel had years of corporate and international start-up experience predominantly in banking and FinTech industries.

Conference video & presenations

15:40

Coffee Break

16:00

Lightning Talks

5-minute inspiration!

Lightning Talks allowed 6 speakers, each, to share one great idea, passion for an idea, tell a story, share information and inspire, through a short 5 minute presentations.

Lightning Talk Speakers:

✔ Florian Kochm - "Monitoring CoreOS with Zabbix"
✔ Andres Toomsalu - "Infrastructure Performance Monitoring"
✔ Gabriele Armao - "Zabbix All Around You"
✔ Kazuhiko Inaba - "Ahiruyaki"
✔ Wolfgang Alper - "Zabbix Reporter"
✔ Dimitri Bellini - "Aggregate Zabbix"

Conference video & presenations

17:00

Q&A Session with Zabbix Team

During this session all participants and attendees of Zabbix Conference 2016 are welcome to ask their questions to Zabbix team.

17:30

Closing Speech

Alexei Vladishev

Founder and CEO, Zabbix

Alexei is the author of Zabbix, an enterprise class open source monitoring solution, and also the founder of Zabbix LLC, the company developing Zabbix.