1Information Sciences and Technology Department Raza Fall 2151 Spring 2151 NSSA 322 – Lab3 Guide Zabbix Installation Description This lab has ... major components: 1. This is part one of a series of labs covered in this course. The labs will be documented in an online WiKi. Users will be able to use the WiKi you develop to understand how to cover the various parts of these labs. You will be required a lab report which will eventually be available through your WiKi. 2. Installing and configuring a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 (RHEL6) or 7 (RHEL7) Server. mgmt terminal Figure 1 – Virtual Setup Installation of monitoring software, Zabbix. The labs in this course will require that you monitor your network and be comfortable using and interpreting monitoring software; this is another critical piece of systems administration.Information Sciences and Technology Department Raza Spring 2145 Activity 1 – Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6/7 installation You will need to install a separate Red Hat Enterprise 6/7 Server Virtual Machine. Use the same files downloaded for the installation done in Lab 02. Activity 2 - Zabbix Installation and pfSense Monitoring Zabbix is an open source monitoring system that centralizes network management. Some of the key features of Zabbix include the use of a web interface, the ability to monitor SNMP and IPMI devices, the creation of templates to customize and configure monitoring needs specific to your network environment and built-in graphic capabilities. This lab will involve the installation of Zabbix 2.4.x monitoring software. It is good practice not to run the monitoring software on the same server that other critical services are running, such as DNS, DHCP and LDAP. You may run Zabbix on a new Red Hat Installation. Additionally, you may perform the installation using webmin, a web based utility designed to help Linux/Unix Administrators manage servers though a web interface remotely. MyCourses provides a video illustrating the webmin installation procedure; it can be accessed through Content  Lab Resources  Zabbix  webmin install. You need to learn about webmin yourself. Activity 2.1 - Install the Zabbix Server, Agent and Front End For this activity you will install the three key components (see Figure 2) that are required for the Zabbix Installation. For the purposes of this lab the Zabbix Server and database should be installed on the same Linux device, the Zabbix front end may be installed on any device of your choice, even a Windows client or server. You can use the mgmt terminal (Win 7) for this. For the database installation most Linux distributions use the MySQL database, you may have already installed it when y ou installed your Wiki (different Wikis use different backend databases, so this may not be the case). A few Zabbix installation methods, unless you are familiar with compiling software packages on a Linux box, it is recommended that you follow the webmin installation in myCourses or the package installation, the major benefit of the package insta -llation is that it will automatically include the additional software dependencies needed to complete the installation. Figure 2 – Zabbix Database, Server and Frontend.Information Sciences and Technology Department Raza Fall 2151 Installation Summary The installation that will be covered in this lab is the one composed by a server for each of the following base components:  A web frontend (can be client based)  A Zabbix server  A Zabbix database There are three ways to install Zabbix:  Downloading the latest source code and compile it (not recommended)  Installing it from packages (i.e. yum install)  The Webmin installation (video inmyCourses) Benefits of installing from a package…  It makes the process of upgrading and updating easier  Dependencies are automatically sorted Benefits of compiling it...  You can compile only the required features  You can statically build the agent and deploy it on different Linux distributions  You can have complete control over the update process Activity 2.2 - Zabbix Templates, Items and Triggers Zabbix terminology has some slight differences compared to more common network terms. Most networks implement the client server model; however Zabbix refers to clients as "agents". When configuring Zabbix three terms are widely used and are important to understand in relation to the Zabbix monitoring architecture, templates, items and triggers. Zabbix has built in templates that can be used to link to a client or host. Templates are preconfigured and are accessed through Configuration  Hosts, select all in the Group dropdown and then choose Templates from the dropdown in the upper-right corner. You can use the default template but more times than not you will want to customize it for your specific purposes. Information on customizing templates can be obtained through the on-line Zabbix documentation or in either of the Zabbix books listed in the resource section at the end of the lab guide. The basic information a Zabbix server uses to retrieve information from a client is an item. "An item in Zabbix is a configuration entity that holds information on gathered metrics." Zabbix has built-in templates that include items to monitor; you may use these temples or customize your own templates to monitor specific services. Refer to the online Zabbix manual for additional information .Information Sciences and Technology Department Raza Fall 2151 Items on their own hold information but do not have any information on thresholds. In order to identify some behavior on your network you need to create a trigger, a logical expression is used for calculating the trigger state. For example, assume the average CPU usage on your Linux server is 2 to 3% and you would like Zabbix to notify you if it exceeds 5%, you would need to create an expression so that when this condition occurs it creates the trigger, referring to the online Zabbix documentation provides more information . Resources: Two resources available electronically through the library are… 1. Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring by Richard Olups. 2. Mastering Zabbix by Andrea Dalle Vacche & Stefano Lee Kewan. The Zabbix website. https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/manual Practical Objectives  Red Hat Enterprise Linux is to be installed as a Virtual Machine, and the user has outside Internet Access.  The Zabbix monitoring system installed and functioning at the time of the practical.  The Zabbix frontend must be installed and running on a Windows or Linux Device at the time of the practical.  Zabbix must be configured to monitor local resources such as CPU, Memory and Hard Drive statistics.  Zabbix should be configured to monitor SNMP on the PFSense router.  In future labs you will configure Zabbixto monitor core network services and create triggers, you may want to experiment with this now rather than later. Report 1. Goal (minimum two paragraphs) This section of the report should describe the main purpose of the lab. You should include information about what you learned and how this will further your understanding of the subject matter. 2. Procedure All parts of the report should be now documented on your WiKi. Lab 01 and Lab 02 Reports should also be on your WiKi. 3. Security Considerations (minimum 4 paragraphs) Drawing from class discussion and your previous experiences in other courses (i.e. System Administration I), write about security issues that may be of concern with this particular lab. It is highly recommended you draw from outside sources, in other words do some research, particularly from standards organizations, forums and alliances such as the IEEE or OSI. Be sure to cite those resources.Information Sciences and Technology Department Raza Fall 2151 Hint: Which ports should your router allow on the interfaces etc? How do you prevent people from causing issues on your router? How do you monitor what is being done on the router? The guides should help you but you are required to critically think about the question of security. 6. Conclusion (3 to 5 paragraphs) The conclusion should summarize the lab, what you learned and how it relates to the role of the network administrator. Be sure to cover the major exercises, what things did you find difficult or easy. How did the procedures differ from what you found in the documentation or were they essentially the same? Summarize your experience, it doesn't have to be very detailed but should provide enough information so that the reader has a sense of what you did during the lab and what you learned from it. 1. Be able to monitor network services using Zabbix or Opsview 8. Effectively document and communicate network procedures. Learning Objectives Covered 4. Monitoring (minimum 3 paragraphs) Much of this class is intended to move past the installation of network services and focus on the management aspect of the network. Whether you decided to use Opsview or Zabbix discuss the things you might monitor in an enterprise network and why. With respect to this particular lab think about the "edge" device (i.e. the router that is interfacing with RIT's network, what type of traffic might you want to monitor beyond SNMP? You are free to discuss or expand beyond what you have done so far in this lab, consider workstation devices, printers and even mobile devices in an enterprise environment. You may use outside resources to support your argument. Hint: This should be fairly obvious; you need at least one service for Wiki (http). Think also about the router what things on the router could be monitored; look at the types of services on the router that are available such as ssh. 5. Performance (minimum 3 paragraphs) When thinking about performance from a customer's perspective two things are critical, does it work and is it fast? In other words does it maximize productivity? One of the things to consider when using a network service is how it can be optimized. Does this service require fast disk read/write operation, should QoS service features be implemented, should load balancing be implemented, does the network have the bandwidth to support the operations? While you may not be implementing the solutions in the lab explicitly these are the types of questions you should be thinking about and including in the report.