Zabbix Reviews

This is a network monitoring solution that I was playing around with to see if it would meet my needs.

Zabbix helped me to identify issues on the system, as well as ports that were open.

The most valuable feature is the support for monitoring Cisco switches. It is easy to use because there is a free template for it included.

The main problem with Zabbix is that you have to spend time writing templates for all of the products that you have. It would work great if I had the time to do it, but considering that I have all kinds of different devices, I don't want to spend the time doing it.

If they included more prebuilt templates of devices that are in use today, then it would be very helpful. For example, they have a template for a SonicWall 3600, but they don't have one for a SonicWall Tz300. They do have some base templates but they are not customized for these specific products. For some products, I was able to download one, but not for all of them.

The documentation needs to be improved.

The deployment is complex and should be simpler to complete.

I have been using Zabbix for about a month.

Once the product is started, it is stable.

I didn't really test the scalability. For me, it wasn't scalable because I only used it for the devices for which I had templates. I was the only person who was using it.

I did not contact technical support.

I was using Kaseya Traverse, which I bought because I have a large Kaseya installation. I thought that it would monitor sFlow, but it didn't, so I returned it and then replaced it with LogicMonitor.

Basically, the problem was that in order to support sFlow, I would have to have a virtual machine for each of the network switches that I wanted to monitor. So if I had 50 switches then I would need 50 virtual machines to monitor sFlow. When they told me that it supports sFlow, then technically, they are correct. However, what they didn't tell me was that for each switch, you have to create a separate collector, which didn't make any sense.

With SolarWinds NetFlow, you can have multiple switches with one collector.

After I downloaded Zabbix, it was a pain to set up. I would say that it is complex in terms of the instructions. I was getting errors, and apparently, I was not the only one. I had to look at two or three different websites to get it set up. I found that if you follow the steps that come with it, which were not very detailed, it did not work. I had to search through different forums in order to figure out the error that I was getting. By the time I had finished, it took me three or four hours to figure out why I was getting the errors, and I had to reinstall it four times in the process.

In total, I would say that the deployment took at least 12 hours.

I completed the deployment myself.

I was using the free, Community Edition.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Zabbix is to seek the help of somebody who has actually done it before. Otherwise, it's not worth their time. Also, find somebody who can provide you with the templates that you need, or who's got familiarity with building them. It is a good solution if you have the time to build the templates and figure it all out. This requires knowledge of SNMP, as well as all of the devices. Then, you have to put it into XML and create a template that Zabbix can use. It is not a straightforward solution.

The reason that I stopped using Zabbix and bought LogicMonitor is not that it didn't work well. Rather, I needed a solution that was complete, where I didn't have to do the development.

I would rate this solution a four out of ten.

In my primary experience with this solution, Zabbix was used to monitor the IT infrastructures of a SCADA system in electrical substations. It was about network supervision of routers and switches that are used to communicate with electricity installations through RTU (Remote Terminal Unit).

Zabbix has improved the quality of monitoring because of the user-friendliness of its Graphical User Interface, so is easy to use even for non-IT employees.

Customizable network maps and email alerts or the intuitive web interface had made Zabbix very useful. 

I really enjoy network traffic triggers that allow us to check traffic threshold from ISP.

They should open an SSH session from the web interface, and options to design 3d map will be nice.

I have been using Zabbix for four years. I discovered this very efficient network monitoring tool in a course from my engineering training and stuck to it!

Zabbix is very stable monitoring solution. Indeed, one of my first zabbix server, 3.2 version on Centos 7, is still working fine today (seven years later) and without any needs of maintenance or upgrade.

The only Zabbix support that I use is Zabbix Telegram and Discord Community.

Positive

Zabbix was my first love for network monitoring and I just adopted it. I did not previously try a different solution.

The initial setup is very easy, with a few command lines. For simple network monitoring, there is no need to install any special packets on the Linux server.

My first installation was Zabbix 3.2 on a CentOS 7 Linux Server. The very difficulty that I faced was the fear of the unknown!

i implemented this solution through a very small in-house team where no one was a Linux expert.

Zabbix is open source and free. There are no hidden costs for any features or licensing. So, I would advise hat other s use this product.

When I was looking for the best solution for our monitoring needs, before choosing Zabbix, i had evaluated other tools options like Nagios.

With regards to COVID-19, Zabbix's meetup and training were 100% online and were very helpful for keeping in touch with network engineers around the world, despite social restrictions.

We use the solution for network monitoring and status monitoring.

The calculations part is the most valuable. 

Improvement is needed as per customer requirements.

I have been using Zabbix for some time. 

It is a stable solution. 

The scalability is nine out of ten. It is recommended for medium enterprises. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes two to three years. 

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine point five out of ten. 

Our customers like Zabbix because it's an open-source tool, but integration with other tools is not that easy. The company that I work for employs talented people and a good integration team who can get the end-to-end implementation and integration done properly. 

Zabbix is basically network monitoring software. Often, we are working with various solutions that we are attempting to integrate with Zabbix, and at the same time, we're trying to integrate a couple of bots to take automation to the next level. 

We have been able to address all the monitoring challenges with Zabbix , which is in addressing all the concerns from the customers

Because Zabbix is an open-source tool, it makes it much easier for us to provide the customizations that customers want nowadays. The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the speed of the included APIs, that's the beauty of this product. It's an enterprise-level tool that allows you to monitor it with a number of devices and hosts. The integration capabilities and APIs are the best part.

Currently, we're looking for more AI and ML related capabilities, which is missing from Zabbix at this point in time. There are tools out there with plenty of AI and ML capabilities and this is something that Zabbix needs to come out with. That would make this a great solution to sell. Essentially, they are trying to achieve automation by introducing external RP bots. If Zabbix could fix this issue, it would be a fabulous solution for us to sell and for companies to use.  

We have been using this solution for three years.

Currently, we have a support agreement with technical support, and we're happy with it. We have taken up a paid service on support models with them as a partner, but lately, our own developers have been solving any issues. So, for slightly over six months, we have not contacted Zabbit for support. 

Positive

The setup was free and because we use multiple tools, it was very easy for us. We had some teething issues, but the community is very good and helped us with that. The Zabbix community is very reliable and is quick to supply you with information when needed. 
The online support that we received from the community was very good and the KD was good enough for us to get it deployed. We didn't experience many challenges because we already had some concrete knowledge surrounding it. 

Deployment depends on the setup; I believe we had it installed in two days. Our customization depended on what level we were taking it to. We did all of the integrations and customizations ourselves, as required, but I believe we finished the base implementation within two days.

We have about 10 engineers, three to four of whom are certified on Zabbix and they take care of all maintenance related issues.  

I would recommend this solution to anyone interested in enterprise-level monitoring and integration. The only improvement I would suggest revolves around its AI and ML capabilities. Those are the only problems, at this point in time, that I see with this solution. If these issues are addressed and included in a future release, then this will be an end-to-end, fabulous product for monitoring and automation.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give Zabbix a rating of nine, simply because the world is rapidly progressing toward an AI and ML environment. Whenever you check out a new product, from Moonsoft for example, most of the marketplace jargon revolves around AI. So, when we talk about AI, the customers are ready to just blindly buy the product without understanding if it is real AI and ML, truly capable of completing the task at hand. That's why we started using bots to automate steps; to show the customers that even Zabbix, as a solution, can be used for automation using bots. It's a tedious process, but it's a great method of comparison.  

We use Zabbix to monitor our physical, virtual, and network infrastructure.

Zabbix is our primary infrastructure monitoring and alerting tool. Thanks to Zabbix metrics we are not just notified of failures, but we have enough data for preventive maintenance optimization and capacity planning of our compute infrastructure.

The low-level discovery feature that lets us auto-configure the monitoring for various systems is a valuable feature.

The option for multiple monitoring protocols - we are using the native agent and SNMP - is valuable.

The flexibility to view and log the data history is valuable.

We can create custom metrics easily using the Zabbix sender utility. 

The quality of the templates (typically offered by third parties) is often poor, and they contain bugs. I encourage the Zabbix users to understand the template structure to be able to improve them.

The setup process for certain integrations can be challenging and there is potential for them to be improved or at least better documented.

The creation of custom metrics could be simplified.

Zabbix can use better documentation and support for troubleshooting.

I have been using Zabbix for two years.

Zabbix is very stable.

Zabbix meets our needs well for our small infrastructure of about 40 physical and 60 virtual systems.

We only used the product documentation, which could be better.

Zabbix was our first choice for infrastructure monitoring. We are using Prometheus/Grafana stack for metrics from other environments.

The setup process has a steep learning curve. The documentation provided lacks detail, and I encountered some difficulties during the integration steps. It took me a few hours to set up the database.

We implemented Zabbix ourselves. We are an experienced IT team, though.

Zabbix is free, open source software. 

I give Zabbix an eight out of ten.

Choose the templates to use carefully. Get to know the Zabbix templates and be prepared to modify/fix them because the templates available from the Internet are often buggy or incomplete.

We mainly use it for server monitoring, like checking how much storage is available. For network devices, we use PRTG.

The most valuable feature is that it provides network segregation for server monitoring. The server selection is easy to use in Zabbix in comparison to PRTG. We want to move the Zabbix servers into PRTG. We use PRTG for network devices and Zabbix for server segregation for the initial days.

Zabbix is not easy to configure, and upgrading is also an issue. But for PRTG devices, we can configure it on our own within half an hour. Besides, Zabbix is not easy to understand. The interface we need to check and what steps are to be taken to do so needs clarification. The new joiners need help learning to utilize it as they need to check the steps individually. Also, there were graphs in the earlier version, but the present version has blocks and no graphs.

I have been using this solution for four to five years.

There are some glitches with the stability. Currently, 30 servers are using it.

It is easy to scale. It will have a few comments, and after running that, it will install. I would give it a seven out of ten.

The initial setup of Zabbix is complex as it is installed on Linux machines. Besides, every package has to be installed individually. Even if one package is missing, it will not be installed. So everything needs to be checked. It's too much of a headache. The solution got deployed on the cloud.

My company makes payments to Zabbix regularly, but I am not sure.

I will rate this solution a seven out of ten.

• Monitor network assets
• Data links
• Disk space
• Physical servers
• More than 1k virtual machines
• Websites
• Logins into automated systems

• Assertive monitoring
• Customized messages
• Configurable screens
• Division by teams
• Customizable alerts
• Automated call opening
• Mobile connections
• Iintegrations

The discovery functionality is most valuable. Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures.

The product is already great. Wanting something more could take the focus off the product. However, the correlation of events would be a wonderful addition.

I have been using this solution for more than eight years.

We had no issues.

There are no scalability issues. The components scale.

We have not had any events that the team has not resolved.

The system has good documentation and a community full of talent. 

Positive

I have already used Nagios and PRTG. After using Zabbix, I did not try new tools. I adapted and believe it would be difficult to convert all the rules to another system.

It is easy to deploy. The installation process is well-documented.

The implementation was carried out by an internal team. We acquired knowledge by reading manuals.

It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation.

I had very good references for Zabbix, but I did have a look at Pandora FMS and Nagios.

I believe in the system's potential.

My primary use case is switch and database monitoring.

The most valuable feature is the protocol to manage anything.

An area for improvement would be the ease of doing aggregation from the value or different devices.

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

Zabbix is stable.

This product is scalable.

The initial setup was easy, and deployment took two to three months.

This solution is very good for data reporting. I would rate this solution as ten out of ten.