Open Source Tools for Monitoring the MPLS nodes

Open Source Tools for Monitoring the MPLS nodes Piyush Vyas, Roll No. Y9414 Mathematics And Scientific Computing, IIT Kanpur Project guide: Dr. N.P. Dhavale DGM, INFINET Department Institute of Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 1

Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 2

CERTIFICATE This is to certify that project report titled Open Source Networking Tools for monitoring the MPLS nodes submitted by Piyush Vyas, a 3 rd year UG of Mathematics and Scientific Computing, MSc. Integrated from IIT Kanpur, is record of a bonafide work carried out by him under my guidance during the period 11 th May 2012 to 6 th July 2012 at Institute of Development and Research in Banking Technology, Hyderabad. The project work is a research study, which has been successfully completed as per the set objectives. In this project assigned to Mr. Piyush Vyas, he has done excellent work. We wish him all the best for the near endeavors. Dr. N.P. Dhavale DGM, Infinet office IDRBT,Hyderabad Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 3

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) and particularly Dr.N.P. Dhavale,(DGM, INFINET and Services) who was my guide in this project. This opportunity of learning all the nuances of a banking platform and a SLA (Service level Agreement) system application of the country was a boon to me as one rarely gets such exposure. I would not hesitate to add that this short stint in IDRBT has added a different facet to my life as this is a unique organization being a combination of academics, research, technology, communication services, crucial applications, etc., and at the same time performing roles as an arm of regulation, spread of technology, facilitator for implementing technology in banking and non-banking systems, playing a role of an NGO (without being one) and many more varied activities. I am extremely grateful to Dr.N.P.Dhavale for his advice, innovative suggestions and supervision. I thank him for introducing me to an excellent banking application and giving me the opportunity to approach diverse sections of people starting from bankers to general public. I am thankful to the staff of INFINET department at IDRBT for helping me to get familiar with the application. They gave me a chance to study the application and its impact from different perspectives. I am thankful to my college, IIT Kanpur for giving me this golden opportunity to work in a high-end research institute like IDRBT. I am thankful for IDRBT for providing such an amazing platform for students to work in real application oriented research. Finally, I thank one and all who made this project successful either directly or indirectly. I am very thankful to Ms. Anuraddha Madam and Shri Shrihari Sir with whom I worked throughout my stint at IDRBT and the project was possible only with their cooperation. Piyush Vyas Project Trainee Department of INFINET IDRBT, Hyderabad Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 4

CONTENTS Introduction 5 INFINET and Objective.6 What to monitor...8 Zabbix....9 Zabbix Installation...11 Web Interface Installation.17 Basic Operations..19 Device Addition 20 Creating Trigger...23 Configuring Actions..25 Graphical Features...27 Conclusion.....28 Project Result..29 References. 31 Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 5

Introduction: Network Monitoring The term network monitoring describes the use of a system that constantly monitors a computer network for slow or failing components and that notifies the network administrator (via email, SMS or other alarms) in case of outages. It normally measures the processor (CPU) utilization of hosts, the network bandwidth utilization of links, and other aspects of operation. It will often send messages (sometimes called watchdog messages) over the network to each host to verify it is responsive to requests. When failures, unacceptably slow response, or other unexpected behaviour is detected, these systems send additional messages called alerts to designated locations (such as a management server, an email address, or a phone number) to notify system administrators. Why is Network Monitoring required? Today, most businesses rely on a computer and network infrastructure for internet, internal management, telephone and email. A complex set of servers and network equipment is required to ensure that business data flows seamlessly between employees, offices, and customers. The economical success of an organization is tightly connected with the flow of data. The computer network's reliability, speed, and efficiency are crucial for businesses to be successful. But, like all other technical objects, network devices may fail from time to timepotentially causing trouble and loss of sales, no matter what migration efforts have been made up-front. Network administrators need to take three key steps to maintain network uptime, reliability and speed: 1. Set up a well-planned network with reliable components. 2. Create recovery plans for the event of device failure. 3. Monitor their network to know about failures as they build up or actually happen. Benefits of Network Monitoring Network monitoring offers the following main benefits: Reduced inefficiency & downtime: no more undetected system failures Improved customer satisfaction through a quicker and more reliable system Peace of mind: As long as you do not hear from the monitoring tool you know your systems are running perfectly Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 6

INFINET The INdian FIniancial NETwork [INFINET], a Closed User Group Network for the exclusive use of member banks and financial institution, is the communication backbone for the National Payments System, which caters mainly to inter-bank applications like RTGS, Delivery Vs Payment, Government Transactions, Automatic Clearing House, etc. The network has a MPLS architecture as shown Thus INFINET is so very important for the financial sector that any failure in this might result in severe consequences and if such a thing happens then it must be reported as soon as possible so that the issue can be resolved quickly. So it is very necessary that the network is monitored 24x7. Objective IDRBT while hosting the INFINET has to take care of the communication backbone of the inter bank transfer and other activities. As a result they need to constantly need to monitor over the entire RBI locations all across the country and if for any link going down,need to report the network administrator about it and take necessary actions. This calls for the use of a network monitoring tool quite robust and stable which can counter over these problems and comes with the worthwhile result. So, The aim of our project was to find suitable tool/tools which should be capable of monitoring all the parameters which are essential for INFINET network and notify if there is any problem. This involved:- Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 7

Designing and developing of the database for the integrated network monitoring tool. Designing and developing Web interface of the integrated network monitoring tool which should have the following features:- Dashboard facility Reports and Graphs Simple and User-friendly To explore installation, configuration and implementation of the tools and to integrate them. Tools identified A broad division of 13 networking tools both under open source as well as licensed version as below where taken for the study. Open Source Tools: Zabbix Argus Nagios Cacti NetDisco Zenoss Open QRM Open NMS Frame Flow Licensed Tools: OpManager PRTG NetFlow Analyser FreeWare: SpiceWorks My Part I was given to work on the tool Zabbix. The whole tool right from the installation, configuration, and implementation was under my responsibility. Meanwhile, we also co-ordinated with each other in helping out whenever there is any difficulty in any of the other tool. The next page shows the parameters which our tool should monitor and then is the detailed study of my tool Zabbix. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 8

Report Format for Monitoring MPLS Network using Key Parameters Sno Parameter Description 1 Device Availability ( MPLS CPE and Crypto Server ) Threshold Value Periodicity a Devices that is not reachable for more than 5 minutes Executive Report b CPU Utilization in % >70% c Memory Utilization in % >70% d Mean Time Between Failures One Month Monthly e Mean Time To Repair 4 hours 2 Interface Availability and Performance a Interface not reachable for more than 5 minutes. >5 Minutes Executive Report BGP Protocol Status >5 Minutes HSRP Protocol Status >5 Minutes Physical I/O Status >5 Minutes 3 Performance (Link, NNI Link and Crypto Server Link) a Link Availability <99.9% Executive Report Link Utilization >70% b Packet loss % >0.1% c CRC Errors >1% d Round Trip Time >100 msec e Latency >70 msec (Avg) f Jitter Sensitive g GET VPN Utilization >70% h GET VPN Status Monitoring Down i Site Availability (When Both links are down) Both Link/Boxes Down j Locations where Auto failover not happened 4 Crypto Server Monitoring a Crypto Session Status Down Executive Report b Auto Failover between Crypto Servers Auto Failover Not happened Any parameter deemed to be Key Performance 5 Application Wise (IP) and Port utilization. a Top 30 IPs Application wise utilization. 30 IPs Executive Report b Top 30 IPs Port wise utilization. 30 IPs 6 Report Summary a Calls Received from RBI and Member Banks Executive Report b List of RBI locations Managed by Primary SP and Secondary SP c RFOs Pending RFOs > 2 hrs d TT Raised with SIFY and Reliance Pending > 4hrs e Configuration Changes in MPLS network f Number of connectivity s MPLS network like Monthly addition/deletion/shifting of the connections. g Inventory of MPLS network (Upgrade in Box/Link) Monthly 7 Backup for entire Remote NMC Configuration for IDRBT Monthly 8 Service Provider SLA Compliance Report including Remote NMC Monthly 9 Any Changes in Escalation Matrix for SIFY/Reliance/HCL In case of Changes Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 9

Zabbix Zabbix is software that monitors numerous parameters of a network and the health and integrity of servers. Zabbix uses a flexible notification mechanism that allows users to configure e-mail based alerts for virtually any event. This allows a fast reaction to server problems. Zabbix offers excellent reporting and data visualisation features based on the stored data. This makes Zabbix ideal for capacity planning. Zabbix consists of several major software components, the responsibilities of which are outlined below. Server Zabbix server is the central component to which agents report availability and integrity information and statistics. The server is the central repository in which all configuration, statistical and operational data are stored. Database storage All configuration information as well as the data gathered by Zabbix is stored in a database. Web interface For an easy access to Zabbix from anywhere and from any platform, the web-based interface is provided. The interface is part of Zabbix server, and usually (but not necessarily) runs on the same physical machine as the one running the server. Zabbix web interface must run on the same physical machine if SQLite is used. It is unique in many ways:- Front End Alerting. Real time SLA monitoring. Can Graph any value it monitors. Can monitor any configuration changes. Can create template of our own if required. Can issue remote command to the device being monitored. Can configure almost everything according to ourselves that too on web interface. Zabbix offers advanced monitoring, alerting and visualization features today which are missing in other monitoring systems, even some of the best commercial ones. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 10

Hardware requirements The ZABBIX Server requires the following system resources: Resource Minimum Recommended Disk space 10 MB 100 MB RAM 64 MB 256 MB CPU Pentium Pentium IV or equivalent Supported platforms ZABBIX software runs on: Platform ZABBIX Server ZABBIX Agent AIX Supported Supported FreeBSD Supported Supported HP-UX Supported Supported Linux Supported Supported Mac OS X Supported Supported Novell Netware - Supported Open BSD Supported Supported SCO Open Server Supported Supported Solaris Supported Supported Tru64/OSF Supported Supported Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows Vista - Supported ZABBIX Agent is not required for monitoring of external network services such as FTP, SSH, HTTP, DNS, LDAP, etc. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 11

Software Requirements. Building of Zabbix server or agents from sources requires additional software. The following software is required to compile : One of the following database engines: IBM DB2 Headers and Libraries - CLI headers and libraries are required. MySQL Headers and Libraries. Oracle Headers and Libraries - OCI headers and libraries are required. PostgreSQL Headers and Libraries. SQLite Headers and Libraries. With addition this are also required:- NET-SNMP (or UCD-SNMP) library and header files. Required for SNMP support. Optional. Iksemel library and header files. Required to enable Jabber messaging. Optional. Libcurl library and header files. Required for WEB monitoring module. Optional. C Compiler. GNU C compiler is the best choice for open platforms. Other (HP, IBM) C compilers may be used as well. GNU Make. GNU Make is required to process Zabbix Makefiles. Installation Procedure Install pre-requisites:- Apache,MySQL-Server, PHP5, Net-Snmp libraries and Curl libraries sudo apt-get install build-essential mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev php5 php5-gd php5-mysql snmp libsnmp-dev snmpd libcurl4-openssl-dev fping NOTE:- If you aren't going to be using Web Monitoring, you can exclude libcurl3-dev from above. For Jabber support make sure to include libiksemel3 and libiksemel-dev packages and then add with-jabber=/usr/ to your configure command (STEP #4 below). Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 12

1 - Make the zabbix user and group: sudo adduser zabbix enter in new password confirm use the remaining defaults. Add zabbix to the admin group: sudo adduser zabbix admin 2 - Download and Untar the sources: su - zabbix wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/zabbix/files/latest/download?source=files tar -zxf download?source=files This will give you the latest stable product of zabbix. Right now it is Zabbix-2.0.1 3 - Creating the MySQL DB We will have to create a database for Zabbix and than import scripts which will do the rest for us. First of make sure the MySQL daemon is running using # service mysqld status If not you can start it with # service mysqld start If this is the first time MySQL is started, you will probably get a message telling you that root has no password. Change the root password to something safe which you won't forget with # mysqladmin -u root password 'new-password-here' After the password has been set, its recommended to run the following script in your console to secure your MySQL installation # mysql_secure_installation Now that we have set a root pw and secured our db we can connect to it, to create a new db for Zabbix. # mysql -u root -p Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 13

and enter the password you set before. Then let us create the db with mysql> create database zabbix character set utf8; Next we want to tell MySQL that our zabbix user hast he rights to mess with the db so lets give him all rights mysql> grant all privileges on zabbix.* to 'zabbix'@'localhost' identified by 'set-password-here'; mysql> quit; It's important to remember this password as we a going to need it for the Zabbix config files. Now we are going to import the sql scripts into the db so we have tables, and data. Change to zabbix-2.0.1 folder first, then # cd database/mysql # cat schema.sql mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix # cat images.sql mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix # cat data.sql mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix To make sure the script worked we can list the tables of the Zabbix database to see if any where created. mysql> use zabbix; mysql> show tables; mysql> quit; If any problems occur the easiest way is to delete the db with mysql> drop database zabbix; and start from the beginning again. 4 - Configure, compile and install the server: cd zabbix-2.0.1/./configure --prefix=/usr --with-mysql --with-net-snmp \ --with-libcurl --enable-server --enable-agent && make sudo make install If you aren't going to be using Web Monitoring, you can exclude with-libcurl from above. If you wish to add Jabber support add with-jabber=/usr/ and make sure you have libiksemel3 and libiksemel-dev packages as noted above before STEP #1 Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 14

5 - Prepare the rest of the system: sudo nano /etc/services Add at the end: zabbix_agent 10050/tcp # Zabbix ports zabbix_trap 10051/tcp Save and exit. sudo mkdir /etc/zabbix sudo chown -R zabbix.zabbix /etc/zabbix/ cp misc/conf/zabbix_* /etc/zabbix/ Edit /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf: nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf Make sure that the Server parameter points to the server address, for the agent that runs on the server it is like this: Server=127.0.0.1 Save and exit. Edit /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf: nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf For small sites this default file will do, however if you are into tweaking your config for your 10+ hosts site, this is the place.change this: # Database user DBUser=zabbix # Database password # Comment this line if no password used DBPassword=Secret Save and exit. Copy the init.d scripts to the right spot: sudo cp misc/init.d/debian/zabbix-server /etc/init.d sudo cp misc/init.d/debian/zabbix-agent /etc/init.d Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 15

You may need to edit these script files as the compiled versions of the zabbix files is placed under /usr/sbin (/usr/bin in older versions). sudo nano /etc/init.d/zabbix-server Look for the following line: DAEMON=/home/zabbix/bin/${NAME} and replace it with: DAEMON=/usr/sbin/${NAME} (old versions use /usr/bin/${name}) Save and exit. sudo nano /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent Look for the following line: DAEMON=/home/zabbix/bin/${NAME} and replace it with: DAEMON=/usr/sbin/${NAME} (old versions use /usr/bin/${name}) Save and exit. Now set the correct permissions and set ZABBIX to start when the machine boots: sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/zabbix-server sudo update-rc.d zabbix-server defaults sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent sudo update-rc.d zabbix-agent defaults Start the server : sudo /etc/init.d/zabbix-server start Start the agent: sudo /etc/init.d/zabbix-agent start Now check to make sure that they are running: ps -aux grep zabbix You should see multiple instances of zabbix_server and zabbix_client running if everything has gone ok. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 16

6 - Configure web interface mkdir /home/zabbix/public_html cp -R frontends/php/* /home/zabbix/public_html/ Make php.ini adjustments: sudo nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini Change the following values: max_execution_time = 300 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds date.timezone = Asia/Kolkata Make some other modification in php.ini according to table given: Pre-requisite Minimum value Description PHP version 5.0 PHP Memory limit 8MB PHP post max size PHP max execution time PHP max input time PHP database support PHP BC math PHP multibyte support 8MB 300 seconds 300 seconds One of: IBM DB2, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite Any Any In php.ini: memory_limit = 128M In php.ini: post_max_size = 16M In php.ini: max_execution_time = 300 In php.ini: max_input_time = 300 GD Version 2.0 or higher Module php-gd. Image formats At least PNG Module php-gd. Restart Apache: sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart One of the following modules must be installed: ibm_db2, php-mysql, oci8, phppgsql, php-sqlite3 Compiled in or separate module php-bcmath. Compiled in or separate module php-mbstring. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 17

Web Interface Configuration Now point your browser to: http://<servername or ip>/zabbix/ for example:- localhost/zabbix 1. Introduction read and click Next 2. License Agreement Read, check 'I Agree', click Next 3. Check of Pre-Requisites Fix any problems, click retry. Click Next when all pre-requisites are OK. 4. Configure DB Connection Enter appropriate settings and click Test Connection. Click Next when OK. 5. Pre-Installation Summary Verify installation settings, click Next. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 18

6. Install Click Save Configuration file and save to machine. Copy zabbix.conf.php to /home/zabbix/public_html/conf/zabbix.conf.php 7. Finish Click Finish to complete installation. Your New Zabbix install will now be shown. Log in with username: Admin Password: Zabbix 8. Zabbix is now ready to do all the monitoring work. You must be seeing the zabbix Dashboard with many tabs in it. Don t be dazzled, below given is some of the some basic operations to start with. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 19

A basic start guide is given on the link below:- Guide to Some Basic Operations http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/quickstart Well you might not require creating a different user. You can work as admin only. But just remember to change the e-mail id there. Go to Administration --> User --> Admin --> Media. And add a new media there. It can either be email, SMS or jabber. If you need, you can add more than one media too. Also, I recommend you to create a user group who do not run the tool but need to receive a mail whenever there is any problem. And set the action to be send mail to this user group. The setting of Actions is explained later. Setting the Media Types:- In the given link when you work on the media types, specify SMTP server:- localhost SMTP helo:- localhost SMTP email:- user@idrbt.ac.in (This is the mail from which the messages will be send to the users. Basically a user will receive mail from this mail id.) Front-End Alerting You can also specify the front-end aletring.ie. it makes beeps and sounds according to the problem which is gnererated. For this, go to Profile on the right hand top corner. There go to the Media Tab. Make sure that the Front-end Messaging checkbox is marked. You can also change the type of sound which is produces. And if it s too irritating you can also turn it off by unmarking the check box Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 20

Adding a device:- Go to Configuration --> Host. On the right hand corner you will find Create Host. Click on it. You will get a window like this. You need to specify host name. Visible name is optional. You need to specify which group it belongs to. You can create new group by leaving the host group blank and just writing its name in New host group box. You need to specify which interface the device is working on. If it is SNMP device then specify it in the snmp. Then click on the Template tab. (Just above the host name.) Select a template you want. For SNMP device select Template SNMP device. But this contains very less items which has very less use. Instead I suggest you to download the template, import it and the add that. Here s the link from where the templates can be download:- http://www.zabbix.com/wiki/templates/start Download the template which depending on the device. I used the SNMPv1 device template and you can also use this template if you are not sure about which template to add. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 21

Click the Hosts tab. There you will find that your host is been added. (Here Avaya L3 switch) Click on the items. You will get the list of all the items which it monitors. For each item you need to specify the port and the community string. For that, click on the check box right of Wizard. All the items on that page will be selected. Then from the bottom select Mass Update and click on GO. There, update the community string and the port number and anything else you need to change. Just after doing this, the items will be monitored. And you can view the data from Monitoring --> Latest Data. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 22

Adding new item to a host. Apart from the items that automatically come with the templates, you can add items of your own. Go to Hosts. To add item to Avaya L3 switch, click on the items next to it. There on the right hand side, click on the create item tab. You will get a window like this. Give the name of the item. Select type and key. For SNMP item you need to specify the SNMP OID of the the parameter which you need to monitor.a list of SNMP OID is given on the link here. http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/advanced_snmp Here s a list of some other useful items which can be added. Description Item Type OID/ Description Ping Test Simple Check icmpping[] Response Time Simple Check icmppingsec[] Packet Loss Simple Check icmppingloss[] CPU utilization SNMPv1 agent 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.56.0/ IcpuPercentagebusy Memory Utilization SNMPv1 agent 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.2.1.8.0/ImemFreeMem Available Bandwidth SNMPv1 agent interfaces.iftable.ifentry.ifspeed.1 (for interface 1**) Bandwidth Utilization Calculated Specify the formula as:- It is for interface1** (change("ifinoctets1") + change("ifoutoctets1"))/128 % Bandwidth utilized Calculated (Bandwidth Utilization/Available Bandwidth)*100 ** A router generally has many interfaces. For each interface you have to find these items separately. You can find number of interfaces by this OID:- IF-MIB::ifNumber.0 Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 23

Creating a trigger. Trigger is basically a condition on a specified value. It is set on any of the item for which we want that a action should be invoked if it differs from the threshold condition given. To Create a trigger:- Go to Hosts --> Select trigger for the host for which you want to add a trigger. On right hand side, click on create trigger. You will get a window like this. Specify the name you want to give to trigger. In the expression, click on Add tab. You will get a pop-up window as in the right side of the pic. Select the item you want to set your trigger on, the function you need, the value of T and N. Time shift is periodicity of trigger. Click on insert. As you do so, the expression will be added. You can give a description if you want. Set severity of the trigger. And click on save. Your trigger is created!! Creating a graph. Zabbix itself provides graphs for all the values which it monitors. These graphs are mapped w.r.t time. But what if we have to compare two or more values in the same graph or make a graph of item1 vs item2 or create a pie-chart to improve visibility. This is the place for this. Again the construction is similar. Click on graphs for the host you want. Then create graph. There set the parameters. This are self-explanatory and one can do them easily. You can also preview your graph by clicking on the preview tab. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 24

Setting up the Auto-Discovery Rules. This is not the discovery rule of the single host which you see on clicking the Hosts tab. This is a auto discovery process to find all the devices which are in the network automatically. This may be very useful if you a monitoring a LAN network. It will reduce you tedious manual work of adding every host individually. You can just set an action on this discovery rule and your work will be done. Actions are explained later. Go to Configuration --> Discovery. Click on create discovery rule on the right hand side. Here give the name. Specify the IP range and the check type. Click on Save. The device discovered will be shown in Monitoring --> Discovery. This is all what the software does. Though we have created users, user-groups, given our emailid s, set the media and set the sender s email address too but still we don t know how we will get the notifications. We have created triggers, but we have not yet specified how the tool will take the action. That s what we do now, Set the tool on Action. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 25

ACTION!!!!! The procedure is more or less the same Again Configuration --> Actions --> Create Action on right hand side. In the Actions Tab, specify the name. Mark the recovery message if you want the message to come on recovery too. In the condition tab, add triggers and conditions on it. Like if you add triggers A and trigger B and condition OR. Then the action will take place whenever A or B anyone triggers off. Now, the Operations tab. It is the most useful tab shown below You can specify the number of steps to be taken, the type of operation, whom to send the message, how to send the message (i.e. email, sms, jabber or All) Now, Add the operation and then click on Save. Further, you can also give remote command to the device which you are monitoring. For this, select the operation type as remote command and select the type of command you need. Here s the link for further details of remote commands:- http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual/tutorials/remote_actions The remote command can be highly useful to save precious manual time. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 26

You can set action not only on triggers, but also on the discovery rules. Like the above action shown add the device auto-discovered to the host group: Linux servers and links Template OS Linux to it and starts to monitor it automatically. The procedure for adding the action on discovery is also the same. Just you need to select the event source below the create action to discovery. Real Time SLA monitoring Service level agreement is a legal document that formally defines the level of service to be provided by the service provider. For IT service providers, it defines the penalties to be imposed on payment if the level of service falls below certain level. And now a days, a very important need is SLA monitoring and calculation. This is generally done manually by creating the excel sheets. But Zabbix uniquely provides the facility for doing the Real Time SLA monitoring. Here s a link to a brief about the SLA monitoring. http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.0/manual/it_services Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 27

Graphical Feature Zabbix has got great Graphs. Here are some of the graphs which I got:- The trigger line is also shown in this graph. Zabbix Monitoring Itself: Showing the network Traffic Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 28

Conclusion Zabbix is simply a wonderful tool. Easy to use, so much features, that being flexibility to modify, add other tools being open source. In short, it best features are as follows Distributed monitoring :- Centralized configuration, Centralized access to all data, Up-to 1000 of Zabbix nodes, Unlimited number of proxies. Scalability Tested with 100,000 monitored devices and servers Tested with 1,000,000 availability and performance checks Processing of thousands of availability and performance checks per second Auto discovery Discovery by IP range, services and SNMP Automatic monitoring of discovered devices Escalations and notifications Repeated notifications Unlimited escalations Recovery messages Be notified while problem is resolved WEB monitoring WEB performance and availability monitoring Flexible scenarios Support of POST and GET methods High performance agents All platforms supported (UNIX, Windows, Novell) Memory utilization Network utilization Disk I/O Disk space availability File checksums Monitoring of log files Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 29

Real-time monitoring Performance monitoring Availability monitoring Integrity monitoring Flexible notification conditions Alerting users (Email, SMS, Jabber) Logging Agentless monitoring Monitoring of remote services (FTP, SSH, HTTP, other) Support of SNMP v1,2,3 Support of IPMI SNMP traps Add The LAST True Open Source Solution No license driven limitations Access to source code Open to code audit I would happily and confidently recommend Zabbix to anyone who wants to do any work related to monitoring of any network. Though its installation is bit lengthy and tedious but the result is totally worth it. The Project Result We in our group studied 13 networking tools. We compared the features of all this tools with each other. Concluded on using 4 tools out of them which were the best. Given on next page is the comparison chart of all the tools studied. This chart is made on the basis of the parameters which were given to us i.e. the parameters which are given on page 8. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 30

Based on this Comparision chart, the Selcted tools are:- Zabbix opennms Spiceworks Nagios All the tools are successfully installed in the INFINET servers and the real time monitoring of the network has started. Further Scope Zabbix has got a great API of its own and it also allow third party tool integration. Only few of the needed features are not available in Zabbix. So one of the tool can be integrated with zabbix to create a perfect tool which serves all the purpose solely. It will be very user friendly and also there will be fewer loads on server. Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 31

References:- www.zabbix.com/documentation/1.8/manual http://sourceforge.net/projects/zabbix/forums Networking Essentials- Microsoft(Publication House) www.zabbix.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zabbix_(software) Institute for Development And Research in Banking Technology 32