As a system administrator, one of the key challenges is to ensure that your monitoring is efficient. In this blog post, I will explain how I structure my Zabbix monitoring to maximize efficiency and reduce unnecessary polling of metrics, while still getting the level of detail that I need on…
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It’s Time for Zabbix 6.0
Even though 6.0 was previously announced as arriving in “January” during the Zabbix Summit 2021… it’s finally here! This new major long-term support version of Zabbix, brings a slew of new features, improvements and fixes to Zabbix, your monitoring infrastructure. Highlights A bunch more improvements are available in the new…
Leave a CommentReduce Polling with Dependent Items and JSONPath
Using Zabbix Dependent Items and JSONPath we can significantly reduce the number of times we hit an API when monitoring the metrics it makes available to us. Most web API’s today use some sort of JSON-formatted data structure to deliver data. Dependent Items and JSONPath allow us to dig through…
Leave a CommentPreprocessing and Redacting Sensitive Data
With Preprocessing you can alter, fit and adjust your incoming data in any way shape or form you wish. This serves many purposes, e.g. your devices might not present data in the right format or gather numbered metrics to the right decimal. Excerpt from zabbix.com about item preprocessing: Item value…
Leave a CommentSecure configuration of Zabbix Agents
Zabbix Agents are a key part of your monitoring infrastructure and a secure configuration ensures safe and reliable operation. Excerpt from zabbix.com about agents: A native Zabbix agent, developed in C language, may run on various supported platforms, including Linux, UNIX and Windows, and collect data such as CPU, memory,…
Leave a CommentZabbix 3.2 Has Arrived – And It’s Awesome!
The next major release version of Zabbix is now available! Zabbix 3.2 brings both new features and many UI and performance improvements along with it. This release introduces many improvements and added functionality. Detailed release notes are available here: Zabbix 3.2.0 Release Notes Zabbix 3.2 – Highlights Event tags for…
1 CommentAlerts Must Be Actionable
One of the primary reasons of acquiring a monitoring solution, is to receive alerts of potential issues and correct them before they become issues. A classic scenario is that you start out by checking whether your hosts are replying to ICMP ping requests. You slowly become more curious and start…
Leave a CommentThe Correct Point of View
The entire purpose of monitoring, is making sure your systems and services are functioning as expected. As expected to who though? The point of view matters quite a bit here, both to a potential service end-user and to you as an administrator of said service. Take a classic LAMP setup…
Leave a CommentAlways use Templates, always
You’ve done it before, every Zabbix user has. You’ve added an item directly to a host and later re-created that item on another host, and then another, and another… You should’ve used templates from the beginning! Even though you’re only adding one item to one host, you might as well…
Leave a CommentProxies: They’re good for you!
You’re monitoring many hosts at many remote locations. A link to a location dies and to you and your Zabbix Server, everything is offline at the location! Zabbix Proxies to the rescue! Zabbix Server ↔ Zabbix Proxy ↔ Host To ensure consistent data gathering, you can utilize Zabbix Proxies. Proxies…
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