Zabbix Reviews

To monitoring our prod, pre-prod, and test environments.

Simple, we know everything about our infrastructure, problems, etc.

• DBforBIX
• Auto-discovery.

It's OK for me as is, but some frontend improvements would be nice.

More than five years.

Monitor systems and networks devices and web applications. Increase monitoring by including powershell script and automation on incidence responses.

We are now more pro-active before an issue appears to our customer because all the layers are now converged by Zabbix monitoring.

In addition, this monitoring product is easier to maintain, configure and less expensive in the total cost of ownership than the others.

The most valuable features are its performance (scalability) in monitoring, the monitoring centric (agent compatibility with the large vendors OS, SNMP, IPMI, JMX), VMware monitoring, web monitoring, capacity planning and the proxifying monitoring.

The capacity planning feature and SLA monitoring need to be improved.

The capacity planning feature should give to administrator recommendations regarding the actions to be done on systems to ensure scalability and stability. In addition, currently this feature only provides basic information (disk usage time left, cpu consumption forecast, etc.). You cannot predict easly the capacity planning of virtual infrastructure or scale-out network storage.

There were no stability issues experienced because the server component is compiled in C and is separated from the web dashboard (PHP).

There were no scalability issues experienced because Zabbix is optimized for a high performance. The Zabbix server and the Zabbix proxy use various data caching solutions, giving them great performance and reducing the load on the back-end database.

We have a partnership with a solution integrator, so we don't open a case directly with Zabbix LLC.

Previously, we were using Nagios coupled with Centreon. We switched because Centreon has some paid features and so, there are some hidden costs. In addition, we needed to use an agent in our client OS because some metrics are deprecated by SNMP and are only available via WMI; WMI is known for its performance problem in monitoring.

The setup was very simple, it is very well-documented and packaged for a lot of Linux distribution.

This product is free, i.e., no vendor lock and all the features are included without the Enterprise Edition. However, just like the other products used in production, it's better to subscribe to a support contract.

We looked at other solutions; stay with Centreon's newer version.

The only advice is:

• To read the documentation before implementing.

• Test the software with the appliance (i.e., only for testing and not for the production environment).

• Participate with the community on the forum.

This software is the most powerfull monitoring tool that I know. Actually since 2005, when I started to work with ZABBIX, this software keeps growing and growing. Each new version ZABBIX SIA company (who maintain this software) delivers improvements and new features that help IT professionals to take care of their infrastructure. Some of the main features:

• Automated network discover (ICs, servers, switches, routers, etc)
• Automated item/metric discovery (partitions, network interfaces, users, databases, virtualhosts, etc)
• Flexibility to 'learn' things (is trivial to extend ZABBIX features)
• All things (historical data, configuration, etc) are in database
• Automated inventory hosts (hardware and software)
• Web monitoring (a robot to check websites)

ZABBIX is a 'all-in-on' monitoring solution. We don't need any other monitoring tool since we use ZABBIX.

Actually we are ZABBIX partners (premium and training) to Brazil and LatAm and our goal is to help other companies using ZABBIX.

I think ZABBIX needs improved report functions. Since ZABBIX version 1.8 we are using the ZABBIX API to integrate ZABBIX data with others tools (Pentaho, QlikView, etc.) when ZABBIX built-in reports are not enough.

I've been using ZABBIX since 2005.

None.

None.

In some scenarios/projects we need to adjust ZABBIX components (agents, proxies, nodes, GUI, database, etc) in line with each one. What I mean is that we need to know ZABBIX and also know the customer's environment to have a successful deployment without stability and scalability issues.

Customer Service: ZABBIX SIA has almost 70 partners around the world and services are delivered in local customer languages :)Technical Support: ZABBIX SIA partners has levels (Reseller, Certified and Premium) and Premium partners are the best ones :)

Yes, we used a lot of other monitoring tools (6 at the same time with distinct functions). We switched to ZABBIX because:

• ZABBIX is a 'all-in-on' monitoring solution
• ZABBIX is 'true open source'
• ZABBIX is 'Commercial/Professional' supported
• ZABBIX has a 'centralized' approach. All things are done using the ZABBIX GUI

Its depends, if the customer environment is complex, the initial setup will be same. Here (at Unirede) the initial setups are always straightforward because we already have good expertise with ZABBIX and infrastructure areas.

In-house team.

Our setup was done with a in-house team and the costs are a 'ZABBIX Certified Specialist' to take care. But we are a ZABBIX Premium Partner and our customers choose ZABBIX (instead other commercial softwares) mainly because a ZABBIX deployment is not too expensive ;)

Of course. We need to check other oprions all the time. Some software we evaluated: Nagios, Zenoos, HypericHQ, PandoraFMS, BigBrother/Quest.

People need do a POC (Prove of Concept) to check if ZABBIX will fit in their needs. We also have a lot of blogs talking about 'Monitoring Solutions' and a lot of 'comparisons', but I think the best way to start is to choose to work with a ZABBIX Partner around the world and talk about your needs.

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.

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!

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.

On-premises

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.

On-premises

• Stability
• Flexibility
• Expandability

My favorite features are auto-discovery and LLD (low-level discovery) with Zabbix (and with some programming experience), you can monitor absolutely everything.

Also, it is worth mentioning the good quality of documentation and great community support.

Before we implemented Zabbix, we were blind.

I'd like it if they'd have implemented some sort of SNMP auto-discovery.

Almost seven years (from version 1.8.2).

There were some issues, then I made an upgrade from version 1.8 to 2.4.
I had to migrate existing MySQL DB (that is sitting under the hood) from one engine to another.

Yes. But again, it was an upgrade issue.

From the very beginning, I used distributed monitoring that was based on the Zabbix nodes conception, but they got rid of the nodes since version 3.0.0.

So, I had to change Zabbix Nodes with Zabbix Proxies. Finally, I have found out that the Proxies have better performance, stable matching, and are easier to configure than the Nodes.

I know they have one but I never had a chance to use it.

Before Zabbix, It was another Open Source solution: Nagios. Actually, I set them both up simultaneously.

So, I had a chance to compare them side-by-side. Finally, I chose Zabbix.

Setup is the very first step. This step you have to perform just once. The process is easy and straightforward, but the product itself is not easy to use.

I would suggest reading documentation before the installation. It has a steep learning curve.

The monitoring of IT infrastructure is not a piece of cake. Don't think you can install it with a couple of clicks and be done.

To implement have a good implementation, you have to read the documentation thoroughly.

Like any other Open Source product, you can spend some money on support, but the product itself is free of charge.

No, I did not evaluate other options before choosing this product.