Blackboard DevCon 2012 - How to Turn on the Lights to Your Blackboard Learn Environment with Zabbix
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Zabbix is a distributed monitoring solution that can monitor Blackboard Learn. It collects various service quality metrics like uptime, response time, and failure rate to notify administrators of issues and help with troubleshooting. Blackboard uses Zabbix to monitor operations data, perform scalability analysis, and ensure server infrastructure stability. A Zabbix template suite is available to easily monitor Learn applications, Java, Linux, Windows, Tomcat, cache, and ActiveMQ components.
Blackboard DevCon 2012 - How to Turn on the Lights to Your Blackboard Learn Environment with Zabbix
- 1. How to Turn the Lights on Your Blackboard Learn with Zabbix Noriaki Tatsumi Manager, Performance Engineering Blackboard, Inc.
- 2. What’s Zabbix? http://www.zabbix.com/ • Distributed monitoring solution • GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 • Alerts, advanced monitoring, trend analysis, data visualization, actions, RC, JSON API • Stores data away from production • MySQL • PostgreSQL • SQLite • Oracle / IBM DB2 2
- 3. What can Zabbix do for you? 3
- 4. Cannot replace J.A.R.V.I.S. for Ironman 4
- 5. Collect service quality metrics • Uptime • Response time • Failure rate 5
- 6. Notify you when there’s an issue • Be the first to know about down time • Identify problems before the users report • Get alerted for potential security attack 6
- 7. Troubleshoot your environment • Reduce/eliminate guess work during root cause analysis • Minimize time to identify problem • Measure improvement after introducing a fix 7
- 8. Plan sysadmin tasks • Identify optimal maintenance window • Hardware projection 8
- 9. Measure success • Institution goals (ex. user adoption) • Brags 9
- 10. Explore data • Monitor anything! 10
- 11. Why Zabbix and not another monitor like Nagios? • Requires smaller effort to setup • Better UI monitoring and graphing capabilities • Template based • Built-in capability to monitor JMX, log files, Unix, Windows, SNMP, database, URL, and IPMI • Easily extensible via agents, plugins, and APIs • Other cool features like maps, screens, slide shows 11
- 12. Zabbix Custom Graph 12
- 13. Zabbix Custom Graph 13
- 14. Zabbix Custom Screens 14
- 15. Zabbix Status of Triggers 15
- 16. Zabbix Custom Dashboard 16
- 17. Zabbix Network Maps 17
- 18. How does Blackboard use Zabbix? • Monitoring and trending operations and statistical data for SaaS solutions like SafeAssign • Performance and scalability forensics • Internal server infrastructure monitoring 18
- 19. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite • Easy to install • Requirements • Zabbix 2.0 and up • Zabbix Java Gateway • Extended Monitoring B2 • Available for download on edugarage http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix 19
- 20. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite • Application • Java • Linux / Windows • Tomcat • Cache • ActiveMQ 20
- 21. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Application • Statistics • Sessions (active, inactive) • Users &Courses (available, unavailable) • Assessment attempts / hour • Database connection pool usage • Security • Config changes in conf/ folder & system registry database table • Creation of privileged accounts, Logins from unexpected terminal • Command-line authentication tool usage 21
- 22. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Application - Sessions 22
- 23. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Application - Security 23
- 24. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Java • Heap space memory usage • Eden space memory usage • Tenured space memory usage • Survivor space memory usage • Non-heap space memory usage • GC collection count • GC collection time • Threads usage • OutOfMemoryError, StackOverflowError 24
- 25. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Java 25
- 26. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Java 26
- 27. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Linux/Windows • Processor load average • CPU utilization • Memory usage • Network usage • Disk usage • File descriptor usage 27
- 28. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Linux – Processor Load Average 28
- 29. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Linux – CPU Utilization 29
- 30. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Linux – Disk IO 30
- 31. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Linux – Memory 31
- 32. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Tomcat • Request processor • Average processing time • Requests per minute • Errors per minute • Thread pool • Busy • Current • Max 32
- 33. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Tomcat 33
- 34. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Tomcat 34
- 35. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Cache (SP10 and above) • Hit ratio • Misses • Hits • In memory hits • On disk hits 35
- 36. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Cache (SP10 and above) 36
- 37. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite ActiveMQ • Broker • Consumer count • Message count • Memory usage • Enqueue/Dequque count • Queue • Enqueue/Dequeue count • Consumer count • Producer count 37
- 38. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Data sampling and retention • Sampling interval • 30 ~ 3600 (1 hour) • History (raw data) • 7 days ~ 14 days • Trend (min, max, avg) • Stats: 5 years • Others: 3 months 38
- 39. Zabbix Blackboard Learn Template Suite Deployment 1. Download at http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix 2. Install Monitoring Extension B2 for statistics and security data 3. Upload the templates via Zabbix GUI 4. Deploy agents using the provided script 5. Add hosts and apply the templates in Zabbix via GUI 39
- 40. Zabbix server deployment options • Compile from source • VMware / VirtualBox (.vmdk) • Open virtualization format (.ovf) • Live CD/DVD (.iso) • Preload ISO • USB stick / hard disk image • Xen guest 40
- 41. Zabbix Best Practices • Define an objective for each item you’re monitoring • Don’t sample data more than required • Don’t keep history and trend data longer than necessary • Use percentile line on charts where applicable • Graph all functions (min, avg, max) to indicate outliers • Don't create triggers that gets ignored • Self monitor Zabbix server • Have a maintenance and a backup/restore plan 41
- 42. Check out Zabbix! • http://www.zabbix.com • http://tinyurl.com/bbzabbix 42