Book Image

Zabbix Network Monitoring - Second Edition

By : Rihards Olups, Rihards Olups, Rihards Olups
Book Image

Zabbix Network Monitoring - Second Edition

By: Rihards Olups, Rihards Olups, Rihards Olups

Overview of this book

This book is a perfect starting point for monitoring with Zabbix. Even if you have never used a monitoring solution before, this book will get you up and running quickly, before guiding you into more sophisticated operations with ease. You'll soon feel in complete control of your network, ready to meet any challenges you might face. Beginning with installation, you'll learn the basics of data collection before diving deeper to get to grips with native Zabbix agents and SNMP devices. You will also explore Zabbix's integrated functionality for monitoring Java application servers and VMware. Beyond this, Zabbix Network Monitoring also covers notifications, permission management, system maintenance, and troubleshooting - so you can be confident that every potential challenge and task is under your control. If you're working with larger environments, you'll also be able to find out more about distributed data collection using Zabbix proxies. Once you're confident and ready to put these concepts into practice, you'll find out how to optimize and improve performance. Troubleshooting network issues is vital for anyone working with Zabbix, so the book is also on hand to help you work through any technical snags and glitches you might face. Network monitoring doesn't have to be a chore - learn the tricks of the Zabbix trade and make sure you're network is performing for everyone who depends upon it.
Table of Contents (32 chapters)
Zabbix Network Monitoring Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
6
Detecting Problems with Triggers
7
Acting upon Monitored Conditions
Index

Simple checks


The previously created items all required the Zabbix agent daemon to be installed, running, and able to make a connection in either direction. But what if you can't or don't want to install the agent on a remote host and only need to monitor simple things? This is where simple checks can help you. These checks do not require any specialized agent running on the remote end and only rely on basic network protocols such as Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) and TCP to query monitored hosts.

Tip

Host-availability icons only cover the Zabbix agent, SNMP, JMX, and IPMI status, that is, things where we expect the response to arrive. Our expectations for simple checks could go both ways—an open port could be good or bad. There is no status icon for simple checks.

Let's create a very basic check now. Go to Configuration | Hosts, click on Items next to Another host, and click on Create item. Use the following values:

  • Name: Enter SMTP server status

  • Type: Select Simple check

  • Key:...