MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
WHAT IS ZABBIX AGENT?
MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
Zabbix Agent
• Is a daemon, that gathers metrics locally from
the OS
• Available for UNIX-like and Windows operating
systems
• Low resource consumption.
• Can customize time intervals with a help of
Flexible/Scheduled intervals option
3
What Zabbix Agent can gather?
• Disk statistics, NIC statistics…
• Memory consumption, CPU usage…
• Generic metrics like hostname or OS release
• Listening port state
4
What Zabbix Agent can gather?
• Read logs or simple file contents
• Read Windows event logs
• Gather stats from a friendly Zabbix Server/Proxy
• and more (Read The Lovely Manual!)
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Still not enough? Hungry for more?
Can be extended using
Custom User [Link]
modules Parameters [*]
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Custom modules – coding jedies!
• As fast as native Zabbix Agent metrics
• But learn how to C
main {
printf("How to C learn, young padawan!")
}
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User Parameters – scripting ninja!
• Can run any command respecting Zabbix Agent
user privileges
• Runs as fork
• Better to be Active
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User Parameters
UserParameter=[Link], sleep 45 &&
echo "I'm a scripting genius!"
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[Link][*] – simple yet powerful!
• No need to worry if UserParameter line or if
file had been deployed to the config
• No need to restart Zabbix Agent if you like to
change command
• "With great power comes great responsibility"
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[Link][*]
• Server=[Link]/0
• EnableRemoteCommands=1
• LogRemoteCommands=0
• User=root
• AllowRoot=1
• shell> iptables –F
• shell> systemctl stop firewalld
• shell> setenforce 0
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[Link][*]
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CURRENT CHALLENGES
MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
Limitations of current Zabbix Agent
• Lack of ability to receive 3rd party traps
• No Scheduled/Custom intervals for Active
checks
• One active checks process for each Zabbix
Server/Proxy record.
• Not everybody wants to learn/knows C
language
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MEET THE BRAND NEW AGENT
MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
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Yes, NEW!
• It’s not C anymore
• It’s Go!
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Why Go?
• Compile into a single binary and deploy!*
• In our days Go is one of the most popular
development languages
• A little bit easier than C.
*dependency limitations may apply in certain variations
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Limitless Zabbix Agent 2
• Scheduled/Flexible intervals for both types of
checks
• Support of older .conf file
• Multiple parallel log file reading
• systemd monitoring out of the box!
• Timeouts implemented on plugin level
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Components
• Connector:
• Manages communication with server
• Item configuration
• Metrics buffer
• 1 connector per 1 ServerActive
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Components
• Listener
• Accepts passive requests and forwards them to
scheduler
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Components
• Scheduler
• Manages the task queue respecting schedule and
task concurrency
• Only one Scheduler per agent
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Passive checks
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Active checks
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Queue the task
• Two level queue:
• Each plugin has a queue of the requested check
• Scheduler has a queue of active plugins
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Queue the task
• When a task cannot be executed because of concurrency
limits the plugin is taken from scheduler queue and
returned only when next task can be executed.
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IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PLUGINS
MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
brand new means BRAND NEW!
• It’s not just “yet another Zabbix Agent”!
• It’s the whole new platform!
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Everyone is a Dev right now
• Writing your own plugins for Zabbix Agent
never been that easy.
• Multiple plugin interfaces for different
types of tasks.
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Framework for every purpose.
• Exporter
• Runner
• Watcher
• Collector
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Exporter
• Performs poll and returns:
• nothing
• an error
• single/multiple values
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Watcher
• Allows to implement your own gathering
method.
• Listen to a specific port.
• Good for supporting different trap-based
communication methods
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Collector
• Use it when you need to gather data on a
regular basis. For example, CPU related
metrics.
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Runner
• For example plugin could start/stop some
background goroutine by implementing
Runner interface.
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Just Go with it
[Link] the code
return string("Hello World!")
2. Register the metric
[Link](&impl, "HelloWorld","helloworld", "My
hello to the World!")
3. Place your plugin into the source folder
4. Add your plugin to the list
_ "zabbix/plugins/helloworld"
5. Compile
./configure --enable-agent2 && make install
6. Run and reuse your old .conf file
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package helloworld
import (
"zabbix/pkg/plugin"
)
type Plugin struct {
[Link]
}
var impl Plugin
func (p *Plugin) Export(key string, params []string, ctx [Link]) (result
interface{}, err error) {
return string("Hello World!"),nil
}
func init() {
[Link](&impl, "helloworld", "helloworld", "My hello to the World!")
}
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Availability
• Named as Zabbix Agent 2
• 4.4 – experimental, 5.0 – production ready
• Currently only Linux-like systems.
• Zabbix Agent 2 for Windows – already in development!
• Documentation - coming soon. Checkout our git!
[Link]
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TUTIN’, ROOTIN’, PLUGIN BOOTIN’
MAGIC OF THE
NEW ZABBIX AGENT
Who? What? Where?
• Date: 11.10.2019
• Time:
• Session 1: 8:30 AM
• Session 2: 9:30 AM
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What should I bring?
• Yourself ;)
• Awesome mood is a must!
• Mad skils are welcome but not mandatory
• Laptop with Zabbix Appliance
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Our plan
• We will not learn Go, sorry :D
• To build a very simple yet functional Go
plugin for brand new Zabbix Agent!
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Our goal
• Make it work!
• Have fun!
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THANK YOU!
