2 Monitoring of Specific Applications

2.1 AS/400

IBM AS/400 platform can be monitored using SNMP. More information is available at http://publib-b.boulder.ibm.com/Redbooks.nsf/RedbookAbstracts/sg244504.html?Open.

2.2 MySQL

Configuration file misc/conf/zabbix_agentd.conf contains list of parameters that can be used for monitoring of MySQL.

### Set of parameter for monitoring MySQL server (v3.23.42 and later)
       ### Change -u and add -p if required
       #UserParameter=mysql[ping],mysqladmin -uroot ping|grep alive|wc -l
       #UserParameter=mysql[uptime],mysqladmin -uroot status|cut -f2 -d":"|cut -f1 -d"T"
       #UserParameter=mysql[threads],mysqladmin -uroot status|cut -f3 -d":"|cut -f1 -d"Q"
       #UserParameter=mysql[questions],mysqladmin -uroot status|cut -f4 -d":"|cut -f1 -d"S"
       #UserParameter=mysql[slowqueries],mysqladmin -uroot status|cut -f5 -d":"|cut -f1 -d"O"
       #UserParameter=mysql[qps],mysqladmin -uroot status|cut -f9 -d":"
       #UserParameter=version[mysql],mysql -V

2.2.1 mysql[ping]

Check whether MySQL is alive

    Result: 0 - not started 1 - alive

2.2.2 mysql[uptime]

Number of seconds MySQL is running

2.2.3 mysql[threads]

Number of MySQL threads

2.2.4 mysql[questions]

Number of processed queries

2.2.5 mysql[slowqueries]

Number of slow queries

2.2.6 mysql[qps]

Queries per second

2.2.7 mysql[version]

Version of MySQL Example: mysql Ver 11.16 Distrib 3.23.49, for pc-linux-gnu (i686)

2.3 Mikrotik routers

Use SNMP agent provided by Mikrotik. See http://www.mikrotik.com for more information.

2.4 WIN32

Use Zabbix W32 agent included (pre-compiled) into Zabbix distribution.

2.5 Novell

Use MRTG Extension Program for NetWare Server (MRTGEXT.NLM) agent for Novell. The agent is compatible with protocol used by Zabbix. It is available from http://forge.novell.com/modules/xfmod/project/?mrtgext.

Items have to be configured of type Zabbix Agent and must have keys according to the MRTGEXT documentation.

For example:

** UTIL1 **

1 minute average CPU utilization

** CONNMAX **

Max licensed connections used

** VFKSys **

bytes free on volume Sys:

Full list of parameters supported by the agent can be found in readme.txt, which is part of the software.

2.6 Tuxedo

Tuxedo command line utilities tmadmin and qmadmin can be used in definition of a UserParameter in order to return per server/service/queue performance counters and availability of Tuxedo resources.

2.7 Informix

Standard Informix utility onstat can be used for monitoring of virtually every aspect of Informix database. Also, Zabbix can retrieve information provided by Informix SNMP agent.

2.8 JMX

First of all, you need to configure your jvm to allow jmx monitoring. How do you know if you can do this? You can use the sun jconsole utility that comes with the jdk and point it at your machine running the jvm. If you can connect, you are good.

In my tomcat environment, I enable it by setting the following options for the jvm:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=xxxxx \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true \
       -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=/path/java/jre/lib/management/jmxremote. password"

This tells the jmx server to run on port XXXXX, to use password authentication, and to refer to the passwords stored in the jmxremote.password file. See the sun docs on jconsole for details. (You might consider enabling ssl to make the connection more secure.)

Once that is done, I can then run jconsole and see everything that is currently exposed (and to verify that I can connect properly). jconsole will also provide you the information you need to query specific jmx attributes from the information tab.

Now, since I use Tomcat, there are two ways that I can grab the jmx attribute values (or effect a jmx operation). The first way is I can use the servlet provided by Tomcat. (Don't know what jboss has). The second way is I can send well formatted requests via a jmx command line tool.

Let's say I am interested in peak threads used by the system. I browse down through the jmx objects via jconsole, find it under java.lang, Threading. After selecting Threading, I click on the info tab, and I can see the name of the mbean is "java.lang:type=Threading"

With tomcat, I can do the following:

curl -s -u<jmxusername>:<jmxpassword> 'http://<tomcat_hostname>/manager/jmxproxy/?qry=java.lang:type=Threading'

where the jmx username and password are the ones defined in the file defined in the jvm options above, the qry string is the one obtained from jconsole.

The output from this will be all the metrics from this jmx key. Parse the output and grab the number of your choice.

If you don't have a servlet that will allow you to make a http request to the jmx interface, you can use the command line tool like this

/<pathTo>/java -jar /<pathTo>/cmdline-jmxclient.jar <jmxusername>:<jmxpassword> <jvmhostname>:<jmxport> java.lang:type=Threading PeakThreadCount

The difference with the command line client is you need to specify the attribute you are interested in specifically. Leaving it out will give you a list of all the attributes available under Threading.

Again, parse the output for the data of your choice.

Once you can reliably grab the data you are interested in, you can then turn that command into a zabbix userparm. e.g.

UserParameter=jvm.maxthreads, /usr/bin/curl -s -u<jmxusername>:<jmxpassword> 'http://<tomcat_hostname>/manager/jmxproxy/?qry=java.lang:type=Threading' | /bin/awk '/^PeakThreadCount\:/ { gsub( /[^0123456789]/, "" ); print $1 }'

or

UserParameter=jvm.maxthreads, /<pathTo>/java -jar /<pathTo>/cmdline-jmxclient.jar <jmxusername>:<jmxhostname> <jvmhostname>:<jmxport> java.lang:type=Threading PeakThreadCount | <some filter to grab just the number you need - left as an exercise to the reader>

That's it.

I prefer getting my stats from the servlet via http rather than using the java command line client as it is much "lighter" to start up and grab the information.

Need a command line jmx client? I use the one from here: http://crawler.archive.org/cmdline-jmxclient/

Information on setting up jmx monitoring for your jvms http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs...ment/agent.html

General Information on JMX http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs...verviewTOC.html