Proposed Session: Comparing and Contrasting Open Source Network Monitoring Solutions
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Description: Demonstrate, explain and compare leading free, open source network monitoring solutions such as Zabbix, Observium and Nagios to demonstrate what they can do, how they compare to each other and what each brings to the table.
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I don't know about comparing/contrasting. Maybe a deep dive into a single application may be good.
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@coliver That's easy... Do one on Zabbix.
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@coliver said:
I don't know about comparing/contrasting. Maybe a deep dive into a single application may be good.
This. I thought the point here was in depth skill training.
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@coliver said:
I don't know about comparing/contrasting. Maybe a deep dive into a single application may be good.
But which one? Deep dives were discussed and listed as highly problematic as they generally will apply to only a couple of people. Technical sessions, yes. But highly focused deep dives basically are not an option for a conference. If there is a single product that needs a lot of focus for a lot of people, like PowerShell, it can work. But for just one of several popular monitoring tools in a category where most people don't monitor at all is likely not tenable unless we find a large trend that we don't otherwise know about.
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@dafyre said:
@coliver That's easy... Do one on Zabbix.
That matches what we use here. So if we were to do only one, that would be my vote.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
I don't know about comparing/contrasting. Maybe a deep dive into a single application may be good.
But which one? Deep dives were discussed and listed as highly problematic as they generally will apply to only a couple of people. Technical sessions, yes. But highly focused deep dives basically are not an option for a conference. If there is a single product that needs a lot of focus for a lot of people, like PowerShell, it can work. But for just one of several popular monitoring tools in a category where most people don't monitor at all is likely not tenable unless we find a large trend that we don't otherwise know about.
Right, but I don't really see the value in doing a compare/contrast session. We all know what these tools can do... how do they work though. Maybe a deep dive is the wrong turn of phrase but if we could look at Zabbix (or a different product) that may help people along when they go to deploy a different application. At least then they could understand language and user metaphors a bit.
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@coliver said:
Right, but I don't really see the value in doing a compare/contrast session. We all know what these tools can do... how do they work though.
Is that true? I'd honestly like to see the big ones compared to see why and when to choose which one. Maybe I'm unique in not being super familiar with all of them?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Deep dives were discussed and listed as highly problematic as they generally will apply to only a couple of people.
The only discussion I recall seeing was you stating that they cannot work.
@coliver said:
Right, but I don't really see the value in doing a compare/contrast session. We all know what these tools can do... how do they work though.
This is how I see it. Most people know all about the names of the various tools and their general capabilities. But they have not used them. A comparison is not useful in teaching us more.
@coliver said:
Maybe a deep dive is the wrong turn of phrase but if we could look at Zabbix (or a different product) that may help people along when they go to deploy a different application. At least then they could understand language and user metaphors a bit.
Yes, even if they choose a different solution, they will have SEEN a full system in use and be better able to make an informed decision because they more fully understand how they actually work.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@coliver That's easy... Do one on Zabbix.
That matches what we use here. So if we were to do only one, that would be my vote.
Would love to learn more about Zabbix. I do alot with Cacti and see some overlap but never sunk my teeth into Zabbix as much as I want to.
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@quicky2g said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@dafyre said:
@coliver That's easy... Do one on Zabbix.
That matches what we use here. So if we were to do only one, that would be my vote.
Would love to learn more about Zabbix. I do alot with Cacti and see some overlap but never sunk my teeth into Zabbix as much as I want to.
I'd like to learn more about it as well. I've only ever used Nagios so it will be nice to learn something different
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Zabbix is like Cacti.... Only better! lol. I actually started with Cacti at my last job when I was only monitoring the Network switches. Then I started using Zabbix to monitor the Servers, and then Zabbix added in SNMP stuff for network devices, and I haven't been back to Cacti since.
Once I get my Zabbix server up and running again, I'll get a demo of it set up so you guys can see some live data. 8-)
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@dafyre said:
Zabbix is like Cacti.... Only better! lol. I actually started with Cacti at my last job when I was only monitoring the Network switches. Then I started using Zabbix to monitor the Servers, and then Zabbix added in SNMP stuff for network devices, and I haven't been back to Cacti since.
Once I get my Zabbix server up and running again, I'll get a demo of it set up so you guys can see some live data. 8-)
I fell in love with Cacti because of the 10 second polling intervals and spine multi-threaded polling. Can Zabbix do the same? Think I tried getting 10 second polling intervals with Zabbix a while back and had trouble figuring it out.
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@quicky2g said:
@dafyre said:
Zabbix is like Cacti.... Only better! lol. I actually started with Cacti at my last job when I was only monitoring the Network switches. Then I started using Zabbix to monitor the Servers, and then Zabbix added in SNMP stuff for network devices, and I haven't been back to Cacti since.
Once I get my Zabbix server up and running again, I'll get a demo of it set up so you guys can see some live data. 8-)
I fell in love with Cacti because of the 10 second polling intervals and spine multi-threaded polling. Can Zabbix do the same? Think I tried getting 10 second polling intervals with Zabbix a while back and had trouble figuring it out.
It should be able to. It has a few places where you can set the timers for it. But 10 seconds... Yeowch. That's a ton of data, lol.
IIRC Cacti only stores the data in the RRD files, right?
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I've seen Graphana doing one second on huge environments with tons of sensors.
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@dafyre said:
@quicky2g said:
@dafyre said:
Zabbix is like Cacti.... Only better! lol. I actually started with Cacti at my last job when I was only monitoring the Network switches. Then I started using Zabbix to monitor the Servers, and then Zabbix added in SNMP stuff for network devices, and I haven't been back to Cacti since.
Once I get my Zabbix server up and running again, I'll get a demo of it set up so you guys can see some live data. 8-)
I fell in love with Cacti because of the 10 second polling intervals and spine multi-threaded polling. Can Zabbix do the same? Think I tried getting 10 second polling intervals with Zabbix a while back and had trouble figuring it out.
It should be able to. It has a few places where you can set the timers for it. But 10 seconds... Yeowch. That's a ton of data, lol.
IIRC Cacti only stores the data in the RRD files, right?
Yea RRD files. I usually do 10 second intervals and store it for a month. Usually ends up being 80MB per graph.
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@scottalanmiller said:
I've seen Graphana doing one second on huge environments with tons of sensors.
Never heard of Graphana. Will have to check it out. Only thing I've seen that does 1 second intervals (Other than custom scripted stuff) is Flowalyzer but only used that for troubleshooting not long term graphing.
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One of the guys who codes for one of the Graphana collectors who built the system that I saw has offered to speak at MangoCon. I'm hoping that we can work that out. He could demo a Graphana system that would rock.
