Zabbix Reviews

We are using Zabbix in my workplace to monitor the infrastructure.

We are able to monitor our virtual infrastructure, virtual machines, windows servers, databases, and the network using a simple network management protocol. We are able to pull almost all the metrics that we want, receive notifications, and have them integrate with telegrams for certain devices that are critical, such as UPSs.

Zabbix does not draw automatic mapping of the network, this is something they should add in the future. There is a lot of effort that is involved in tailoring some of the settings which could be made easier. 

I have been using Zabbix for approximately four years.

Zabbix is scalable because depending on the size of your infrastructure you can have distributed proxies servers across your network that will feed to the main server for the metric. It is similar to branches, where you can have one product for each branch and then the central server speaking in your central location, it works perfectly.

Our entire IT department is using Zabbix, which is 15 people, but we have approximately 600 devices being monitored.

I have never had an issue that I needed to contact support. However, everything I have needed was able to be found online from the community or the Zabbix site manuals. Zabbix does offer support based on a subscription.

I was using Centurion previously but I decided to switch to Zaddix because of costs. I was using the community edition of Centurion and it was very limited but with Zabbix, you can have an enterprise-class monitoring solution for free. I did research quickly and then I phoned Zaddix to see if they could solve all my problems without having to pay anything. This is when they confirmed I could and then I switched.

The initial setup was easy. It took approximately three hours to get the server up and running.

By using Zabbix you minimize the cost of operation because you recieve an enterprise-class monitoring solution for free.

The solution is free to use but they offer support as a paid service. If you can go read the manuals and do the fine-tuning based on your needs, you do not need to pay anything and you will have a full solution.

I have evaluated PRTG and SolarWinds.

You do not need to spend a lot of money on solutions that have similar functionality, such as PRTG or Solar Winds. With Zabbix, you receive a free enterprise-class monitoring solution for free, as long as you know how to use it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate Zabbix a nine out of ten.

I used Zabbix for transaction monitoring.

Zabbix is good for discovery.

I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE.

I have used Zabbix for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability depends on the infrastructure and different contexts, including security.

I have seen strict security contexts, and scaling the solution required creating multiple Zabbix servers. The solution is not easy to scale with multiple networks and sites.

Eight to nine people are using Zabbix in our organization.

I previously used Nagios before Zabbix and switched because Nagios required more clicks for monitoring. There is a lot of work when working with Nagios because it needs much maintenance. It was a large deployment, and I didn't have templates or standards for the kinds of hosts required.

The initial setup is very easy. It takes one day to install and deploy the solution when done very well with the right parameters. Two people are required for deployment. And since maintenance is easy, it requires one person. However, the number of people needed to maintain the solution depends on how large the setup is.

Support for Zabbix is a little expensive. Support is probably for large companies. If you have 20,000 hosts, the support costs around €95,000 for a year.

I never used technical support and relied on documentation and the community instead. The documentation was good. Zabbix is a good choice if you have a good team on Linux and a good team in general because the support is expensive for Zabbix.

If you're planning to choose Zabbix, start with a small deployment for the first five years. I rate Zabbix a nine out of ten.

We use Zabbix mainly to monitor the status of interfaces in our Juniper suite. When an interface goes down or when traffic on an interface drops, Zabbix triggers an alert to our Telegram. We're not using it for performance monitoring, just for interface monitoring.

The most valuable function for me is the auto-discovery of interfaces in devices. When you integrate devices into the tool, it automatically finds the interfaces, which is very helpful for my job. Integration and configuration run smoothly in my experience with Juniper and Aruba devices.

I'm using the free version of Zabbix, and I'd like to see more customization options, especially for setting trigger thresholds.

I have been using the product for seven months. 

I rate the tool's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. We have around 600 devices. 

I haven't contacted the tool's support. 

When comparing Zabbix and PRTG, I prefer Zabbix for scalability, but PRTG is better for customization.

The initial setup is quite simple, though it might be a bit confusing if you're unfamiliar with the Zabbix interface. We're using the desktop version, installed on a virtual machine and integrated into our network.

I use the tool's free version. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

I'm using it to have a global map overview of all my machines. We also use it in simple scenarios to check that our applications are up. We haven't really created that many dashboards at this time, but our next mission is to create good dashboards to efficiently track the VM performance.

There is a problems page that shows us every warning or problem that occurs on our VMs globally. The map screen is also really useful because this is something that was missing. I don't know every other tool in the market. So, I don't know if this is a good point of only Zabbix, or other tools are also doing it, but from my point of view, this is the most useful page that I use, along with the problems page that efficiently lists the problem, recovery time, ending hours, starting hours, and so on.

In terms of user-friendliness, large maps could be more interactive. We should be able to click on some areas and move some objects. It would make it simpler to see things while analyzing some dedicated parameters.

It has been six months.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We have 15 to 20 users of this solution. It is used by the IT department. So, the operations teams, which is my team, and the system admin team, which is in charge of the infrastructure and the network, are its users.

I have never contacted them.

We used Centreon previously.

I was not a part of the deployment project, but I didn't hear that the deployment was complicated. The tool is very detailed, and maybe the configuration needed afterward to do the setup everywhere might be heavy.

From a user's perspective, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

Our use case for Zabbix involved installing an agent-based tool to manage and control our workstations. We needed to gather information about parameters such as configurations. Zabbix proved highly flexible and adaptable to our needs, although there was a learning curve due to scripting requirements. However, the tool is easy to deploy and offers flexibility in usage and configuration.

We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine. 

The most valuable feature for me is its configurability. Zabbix provides a shell I can install on every machine, giving me control over them. This highly configurable shell allows me to customize it according to my needs. For example, I wanted to know all the software installed on each machine in detail, not just from the registry. So, we created a custom script for this purpose. We deployed the script, which runs monthly, providing details of all installed software and updates on each machine.

Tasks that would typically take three or four days to complete can now be completed in a single day. For example, if I ask my team to provide an inventory of all online assets and their status, Zabbix can generate this report within a day. Previously, such a task would take longer, around three to four days.

The customizable dashboard provides the core information we need at a glance, such as the number of devices, locations, and network details. Additionally, it allows for drill-down functionality into specific devices, offering detailed information about the operating system, users on the device, and other relevant details.

Integrating networks with our current IT infrastructure system was very easy. Zabbix uses a MySQL database, and since our team has significant skills in MySQL, we were able to pick it up and start using it with no problems at all.

In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated.

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The stability is really good. It seems lightweight and doesn't interfere with other processes running on the machine. As far as I can tell, none of our users have returned to me with any issues regarding the tool.

My company has 150-200 users. We've scaled from zero to over 200 devices, and I believe our Ubuntu server and VM can handle further scaling by increasing the computing power. While we haven't tested it extensively, I'm confident it has good scalability. We do have plans to increase the number of network users. I intend to add another hundred users, but they will be from remote sites. My next project will involve exploring whether Zabbix can operate across virtual private networks

I need to go to other remote buildings, check our network, and retrieve usage data from all devices in those locations. This is something we haven't done before.

I believe the team contacted the technical team for assistance during some initial configurations. The responses were timely and helpful. I don't recall if it was through calls, but I think it was mostly via email or chat. 

Our deployment took about ten days, including setting up different servers. If we had to install agents on all machines manually, it would have taken us much longer, possibly turning into a three—to four-month project. Additionally, the system is easily updateable, allowing us to patch the agent and incorporate new monitoring components as needed.

The tool's licensing is good. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. I recommend people start using it and dive into it. You'll see value almost immediately.

We deploy it for our customers.

The main use case is monitoring of the workplace services. That means lot of VDI systems, little machines, and all that stuff around office routers, switches, and even printers for example.

The Zabbix agent is one of the highlights. It's easy to deploy and self-registering into the system. This is very helpful. Using the template and the discovery, it's very easy to find examples from the community and make some changes if you need to, and deploy it and roll out. While the discovery is very easy, all the important things when getting connected is pretty straightforward.

The initial setup is very easy.

There is less computing power needed for scaling.

The solution is stable. 

It is open-source.

One of the real benefits is the API. You can do anything with an API; it makes life much easier. If you want to get reports or if you want to document something or you want to add something, you can use the API for that. That's really, really helpful.

The service module started with version six. There is room for improvement, due to the fact that this first step looks nice, yet it can be improved here for a better combination with the services and the dashboard. 

The event correlation could be better. From day one, we're using the API to create tickets for our operations, however, the correlation is not good, not there. A lot of the time, in that case, we are opening a few tickets for one problem, and then the correlation functionality is very, very limited.

The reporting is lacking. It is there, however, it's not a real reporting from my perspective. Reporting in Zabbix means you create a dashboard and then you can schedule that and you get it as a PDF. It's probably not the reporting most operations need especially if you need more data for importing Excel or whatever. Reporting is even, in a lot of ways, missing. In the other end, we are using the API to do that now. That said, the issue there is you need the developer to do that if you decide to go that route.

I have one year of experience with this solution.

The stability is good. I would rate it five out of five since we have no issues. It's been running well since the first day. We did two release updates in the meantime, however, there was no reason to restart something. The performance is very good. 

We have around 50 people using the solution. It is mostly the operation teams from different departments.

I was wondering if an open-source solution would scale well, since we have experience more with a lot of other enterprise tools, including Broadcom and HP. There are others which need much more resources to monitor the same devices, I would say. However, if you go to an enterprise solution like Broadcom or HP or ScienceLogic or BMC, you need much more infrastructure for monitoring than you do if you use Zabbix. In this sense, I can say it scales well. 

I'd rate the scalability five out of five. 

We haven't used the support from Zabbix so far. At the moment, all we are doing is using the manuals to troubleshoot. The documentation is good. Otherwise, we are using the community forum if we have any questions especially for creating templates or something like that. The community forum is great.

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's easy, not overly difficult. 

We started with just one single device, one single server, since we did not have too many devices. We have, I'd say, around about 2000. However, we found it enough to monitor them all with one device. We have one device for a UI, for the application and for database as well and it's just one single server. We started with that and figured out, from the performance, it was more than enough.

The deployment, just for the application, took less than a day. It was quick. There was not too much to do. 

Our team managed the deployment. We did not need outside assistance. 

The solution is an open-source product. We are using that version and have yet to purchase a license, which we may do further down the line - maybe a year for now.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The good thing is that it is easy to test. This is one of my favorite benefits and why I like open-source software. You can test it very well without signing contracts with enterprise vendors, for example. New users should put it on their laptop and try it out. It doesn't need much resources and you can discover your home network or your lab if you have something. 

I use Zabbix to monitor my server and network infrastructure. It was set up to monitor cloud interfaces and ensure high-speed performance. The dashboards allow the support team to see interface status and are configured with porting.

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration. Initially, setting it up might seem challenging, but using pre-made templates makes integration with switches easier. By leveraging templates, configuration becomes more straightforward and efficient.

To improve Zabbix, adding more features to support the monitoring of modern workloads like containers would be beneficial. Many environments are shifting away from traditional setups to remote and customized infrastructures. Enhancing Zabbix to accommodate these changes would make it more appealing and user-friendly. This would help organizations like mine in selecting the most suitable monitoring solution.

I have been using Zabbix for about four years.

Zabbix is a highly stable solution. Despite occasional minor issues, it consistently delivers on its core features.

Zabbix offers good scalability and flexibility, although there have been some issues with database scalability over time. Configurability is straightforward but sometimes requires separating the database from the Zabbix virtual machine for easier management. Improvements in database scalability would enhance the overall scalability of Zabbix.

I would rate the technical support as an eight out of ten. It is quite good.

Positive

Zabbix is good for monitoring networks, while Prometheus is better for modern workloads like containers. Choosing depends on what you need to monitor. For diverse infrastructures, it is tough to pick one. Cost and engineer feedback help decide.

The initial setup of Zabbix was complex because of the need to customize it for our environment. It was challenging to integrate with our devices until we found templates to help with configuration. It took around two to three months to deploy the solution completely due to configuring many dashboards and integrating switches. Initially, it required two engineers to deploy and maintain, alongside support staff for ongoing operations.

Zabbix's licensing and pricing are good for our needs.

Zabbix helps manage application performance by providing easy-to-manage job reports and configuring alerts for network issues. It reduces turnaround time for issue resolution by 70%-80%. Managers and support teams receive updates on interface status, leading to quicker escalation and resolution. Zabbix also generates reports and dashboards showing link availability and downtime records, facilitating customer reporting and making processes more efficient.

The alerting and notification system in Zabbix is highly effective. It ensures that we are notified only when necessary, reducing unnecessary monitoring. Email alerts enable us to quickly respond to issues, even when away from the dashboard. This subscription system has significantly improved our response time to link failures.

Before using Zabbix, ensure that your database setup is appropriate for your environment, especially for larger setups. Consider hosting your database separately for security and performance reasons. Utilize templates provided by Zabbix to simplify the setup process, as they can streamline infrastructure configuration.

Overall, I would rate Zabbix as a nine out of ten. It is a great tool.

As a network services provider we use Zabbix to monitor network infrastructure and customer services. I have also set instances for a number of government institutions to monitor their entire ICT Infrastructure. I will focus on the largest instances, the service provider use cases.

I used Zabbix to monitor network devices, servers, databases, virtual machines, services and applications. For the network services provider, I run an instance for our internal infrastructure and another instance for monitoring our customer services so they can have access to monitor the state and status of their services, SLA, view utilization graphs on demand or in real time and produce needed reports and also receive alerts when problems happen

We could easily monitor anything on our infrastructure and customer services using Zabbix as a consolidated solution for all the network infrastructure and customer services monitoring needs , as Zabbix is highly flexible and customizable to fit the specific needs of organizations.

Zabbix has greatly improved  operations and maintenance by helping management and technical teams be more proactive. They can easily spot problems or undesired states on the infrastructure or customer services

With the Zabbix out-of-box multitenancy support,  customers can have restricted access to their service utilizations and other operational data in real time or on demand. The feedback from customers shows they are very happy and they appreciate how easy it is to learn using it.

Time to work on issues is greatly reduced, as Zabbix provides powerful alerts and details into what is happening in our network. Issues that could take weeks to resolve can now easily be spotted in a few minutes as all essential metrics for all devices are monitored in real time.

Zabbix fits well with the multi-vendor environment and it has a lot of out-of-box templates that can be customized to fit our needs.

We can easily provide infrastructure status reports with Zabbix. We can produce reports even for old devices that were not properly and consistently monitored since they were installed.

Zabbix is highly customizable and flexible, which makes it easy to have all our monitoring needs accommodated. Many elements like auto-discovery, dashboards, templates, graphs, maps, metrics, SLA's can easily be customized to fit specific needs

Zabbix has a powerful API that support integration with third party software, automation and creating new applications. It can be easily integrated with other  tools as a data ingest, processing or visualization platform. The API allows for utilizing better software in specific areas that Zabbix may be lacking like Grafana which allows for more customizable dashboards.

Auto Discovery and Custom Actions are greatly helpful in doing mass discovery, the grouping of hosts, and templates association. The flexibility in setting discovery rules and actions is really helpful for complicated use cases.

Multi-tenancy support which a result of granular use roles, automatic actions, tags, and host grouping. User permissions can be limited to specific sections, services, applications, device groups, access level etc. This has proven to be very helpful for our customer's services monitoring instance.

Out-of-box templates that are customizable, can be changed or modified to suit specific use cases. Additional items can be added to these templates and more filtering or pre-processing rules can be specified in these templates

It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps. Although more powerful solutions can be used, Zabbix caters for all our needs in that area as it provides the flexibility we need.

Zabbix provides regular updates and a clear and timed roadmap. Very helpful as our c company can see whether  expectations will be taken care in coming releases of the software.

Although Zabbix is great, the documentation is a bit lacking. The documentation gets a bit messy between versions and is not too detailed, the learning curve is steep and can be difficult for first-timers, especially when they run into issues.

Zabbix depends on other open-source projects, so it would be a good idea to add more information on fine-tuning a Zabbix instance especially the essential details when working with specific choices of OS, database, webserver etc. I had to do most of the things with limited resources in the fine-tuning of the database, OS, and other packages. Although not entirely a Zabbix issue it is a good idea to provide guidance on the basics.

Automatic maps. It would be great if Zabbix could create automatic topology maps using discovery protocols like LLDP or CDP.

Automatic Updates of host templates. It would save a lot of time if that could be done with new releases while keeping personal configurations intact.

Out of box high availability setting for all sections of Zabbix

I have been using Zabbix for four years

This is a very stable solution. It is a low maintenance solution and if finetuned and optimized properly can handle a heavy workload with minimum resources.

This product is highly scalable.  HA and redundancy can be set for database, proxy and front-end.

Zabbix experts provide great ideas on the open-source forums for the products. The Zabbix community, including the CEO and the technical experts, are friendly. Since they are doing great with the community, I am confident they are doing great with their optional Technical Support which we have not subscribed to.

Positive

I had used other solutions before but the licensing was too expensive for our company and still, other solutions were limited because we have a multi-vendor environment.

The setup is a bit complex but can be done with the right  skills. More important than the initial setup is optimization and finetuning which requires multiple skills.

We implemented it in-house. I primarily worked on the database, Zabbix server, Zabbix proxy, frontend and other server side stuff. I also prepared agent and SNMP configuration scripts for other Engineers to implement on network devices and servers.

I can confidently say that our ROI is 100%.

Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed.

Zabbix provides support although we have not subscribed to the support. We implemented the instances on our own and we also operate and maintain them on our own.

We had to evaluate several options including SolarWinds NPM, PRTG, OpenNMS, Cacti, Nagios, and Zenoss Core. We used Huawei U2000, Cisco Prime and PRTG for some devices before we switched to Zabbix.

Overall, Zabbix is a great product. I have been using it for almost two years, and I am very happy with it.