Zabbix - Open Source Network Monitoring

ZABBIX is all-in-one 24x7 monitoring solution without high cost.

ZABBIX is software for monitoring of your applications, network and servers. ZABBIX supports both polling and trapping techniques to collect data from monitored hosts. A flexible notification mechanism allows easy and quickly configure different types of notifications for pre-defined events.

New in ZABBIX 1.4

• Installation Wizard

Installation Wizard automatically checks pre-requisites, database connectivity and generates configuration file for WEB front end.

• Support of new database engines

Support of SQLite has been implemented. It allows use of ZABBIX in embedded environments.

• WEB interface improvements

Speed and usability of WEB interface has been improved very much.

• New notification methods

Native support of Jabber messaging has been introduced.

• Distributed monitoring

ZABBIX distributed monitoring is made for complex environments consisting of different locations. ZABBIX supports monitoring of unlimited number of nodes. Centralized configuration allows easy configuration of all nodes from a single location.

• Auto-discovery
ZABBIX distributed monitoring module allows easy deployment of ZABBIX systems. The discovery support IP ranges, service checks, agent and SNMP checks for efficient auto-discovery.

• Many-to-many template linkage

More flexible host-template linkage saves time and make configuration of hosts more flexible and straight forward.

• Database watchdog

ZABBIX server will automatically warn group of users if database is down and continues normal operations when database is back.

• WEB monitoring

WEB monitoring module allows flexible and easy monitoringof availability and performanceof WEB sites and WEB based applications. It supports passing of GET and POST variables.

• XML data import/export

New XML data import and export functionality is an excellent way of sharing templates, hosts configuration and items/triggers related information.

• Support of Windows Vista

ZABBIX Windows agent supports Windows Vista, both 32 and 64 bit versions.

• More flexible actions

Multiple operations (notifications, script execution) per action are supported. Choice of action calculation algorithm was introduced.

• Server-side external checks

Server-side external checks can be used to introduce custom checks executed on ZABBIX server side.

• New user permission schema

Old user permission schema is no longer support. It was replaced by new more efficient, yet simple, schema working on level of user groups and host groups.

• Support of hysteresis

ZABBIX support use of different trigger expressions for going to ON and OFF states.

• Support of slide show

Several screens can be grouped into a slide show for better presentation.

• ZABBIX server can spread load across several servers

Groups of server side processes (discoverer, poller, HTTP poller, trapper, etc) can be located on different physical servers for better performance and availability.

• Other improvements

See Release Notes for a complete list of improvements.

Overview

ZABBIX offers functionality that will make your IT resources look more transparent, and it will also help to easily identify performance and availability problems. ZABBIX greatly increases the productivity of system administrators by providing simple-to-use monitoring system.

Key features

• Open Source solution
• Runs on AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Linux, MacOS X, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, Tru64/OSF
• SQL database for storing configuration, collected data and trends
• Web interface offers minimal learning, ubiquitous access
• Instant drill down from real-time status of IT Services to historical trend and statistics
• Data visualisation and mapping
• High performance native ZABBIX agents for performance and integrity monitoring for virtually all platforms (UNIX, Win32)
• Monitoring of "agentless" environments
• Assuring and monitoring SLA for IT Services
• Monitoring of SNMP (v1,v2,v3) devices

IT Services

ZABBIX's unique technology allows you to relate your applications and underlying servers or network to a IT Service such as application, location, server, network device, region, etc. This technology allows you to correlate your business to your IT infrastructure and identify the impact of your IT infrastructure to the delivery of business service to your customers.

Data visualisation

ZABBIX provides excellent visualisation of statistical and real-time information, ranging from simple graphs to complex views containing graphs, maps and text information. All graphical information is accessible from WEB interface. The wealth of information available such as the trend analysis (days to threshold), the historical graphs and histograms allow you to make informed decisions about the weaknesses and performance of your IT infrastructure.

Application monitoring

Enterprise applications such as Oracle, WebSphere, WebLogic, Exchange, Apache, etc. can be monitored using SNMP. In many cases, agentless technology can be used, cutting down on the deployment and management costs.

ZABBIX agents can be easily extended to perform monitoring of any aspect of your applications. It is matter of writing a shell script which would return required data back to the agent.

Server monitoring

Virtually all server platforms are supported including but not limited to UNIX, Win32 and Novell Netware. ZABBIX native agents take care of CPU utilisation, memory utilisation, disk usage, network I/O, temperature of CPUs and mainboards, status of processes, etc. All real-time performance data is immediately available by WEB interface.

Network monitoring

ZABBIX supports monitoring of Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, Nortel, Foundry and other routers as well as firewalls from Netscreen, Fortinet, Cisco or Checkpoint. Any network devices (routers, hubs, printers, etc) having SNMP support can be easily monitored by ZABBIX.

ZABBIX makes possible creation of network maps which give very clear representation of monitored network infrastructure. The maps show network devices, connections, statuses of the devices, and reasons if a device is not available or has any problems.

Integration of Fault and Performance Management

The need to effectively integrate fault and performance management is becoming increasingly apparent to IT organizations seeking to ensure quality delivery of business services. ZABBIX generates real-time notification of threshold violations based on scheduled performance tests.