Active agents
by Andrea Vacche, Patrik Uytterhoeven, Rihards Olups
Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Table of Contents
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Credits
- Preface
- I. Module 1
- 1. Getting Started with Zabbix
- The first steps in monitoring
- Zabbix features and architecture
- Installation
- Summary
- 2. Getting Your First Notification
- 3. Monitoring with Zabbix Agents and Basic Protocols
- 4. Monitoring SNMP Devices
- 5. Managing Hosts, Users, and Permissions
- 6. Detecting Problems with Triggers
- 7. Acting upon Monitored Conditions
- 8. Simplifying Complex Configurations with Templates
- 9. Visualizing Data with Graphs and Maps
- 10. Visualizing Data with Screens and Slideshows
- 11. Advanced Item Monitoring
- 12. Automating Configuration
- 13. Monitoring Web Pages
- 14. Monitoring Windows
- 15. High-Level Business Service Monitoring
- 16. Monitoring IPMI Devices
- 17. Monitoring Java Applications
- 18. Monitoring VMware
- 19. Using Proxies to Monitor Remote Locations
- 20. Encrypting Zabbix Traffic
- 21. Working Closely with Data
- 22. Zabbix Maintenance
- A. Troubleshooting
- B. Being Part of the Community
- 1. Getting Started with Zabbix
- II. Module 2
- 1. Zabbix Configuration
- 2. Getting Around in Zabbix
- 3. Groups, Users, and Permissions
- 4. Monitoring with Zabbix
- Introduction
- Active agents
- Passive agents
- Extending agents
- SNMP checks
- Internal checks
- Zabbix trapper
- IPMI checks
- JMX checks
- Aggregate checks
- External checks
- Database monitoring
- Checks with SSH
- Checks with Telnet
- Calculated checks
- Building web scenarios
- Monitoring web scenarios
- Some advanced monitoring tricks
- Autoinventory
- 5. Testing with Triggers in Zabbix
- 6. Working with Templates
- 7. Data Visualization and Reporting in Zabbix
- 8. Monitoring VMware and Proxies
- 9. Autodiscovery
- 10. Zabbix Maintenance and API
- C. Upgrading and Troubleshooting Zabbix
- III. Module 3
- 1. Deploying Zabbix
- 2. Distributed Monitoring
- 3. High Availability and Failover
- Understanding high availability
- Understanding the levels of IT service
- Some considerations about high availability
- Implementing high availability on a web server
- Configuring the Zabbix server for high availability
- Implementing high availability for a database
- Summary
- 4. Collecting Data
- 5. Visualizing Data
- 6. Managing Alerts
- 7. Managing Templates
- 8. Handling External Scripts
- 9. Extending Zabbix
- 10. Integrating Zabbix
- D. Bibliography
- Index
We talked about active and passive agent configurations. In this topic, we will explain a bit more in depth the active agent setup in Zabbix. Remember when we create items in Zabbix, we can create Zabbix items as passive and active.
You will need a Zabbix server and you must have the software for the agent installed on the machine that you would like to monitor. This can be the Zabbix server or another machine. The agent needs no configuration. We will explain you how to go about the same in this recipe.
- The first thing we do is make sure that our agent has the proper configuration setup to work as an active agent. Make sure that in the
zabbix_agentd.conffile theServerActiveoption is set and points to the Zabbix server. - Make sure that our server can be reached on port 10051. Verify that the port is open in the firewall!
- Next in the agent configuration file we need to set the hostname; this name must be unique and must be set exactly the same as in host configuration on the server. This can be found under Configuration | Hosts.
- Restart the
zabbix_agentoption (service zabbix-agent restartfor Red Hat 7 users this issystemctl restart zabbix-agent.service). - Check the agent log in tail
-f /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.logfor errors. - You are now ready to add an active item on your host. Go to Configuration | Hosts | Items | Create item.
The active agent will initiate the communication with the Zabbix server and pull out a list of items it has to check from the server.
The agent knows from the ServerActive parameter in the zabbix_agentd.conf file, what servers it has to contact. The option RefreshActiveChecks is the parameter that will control how many times the agent has to ask for this list. The standard value is 120 seconds. This means, that if we change something in our Zabbix configuration in an active item, it can take up to 2 minutes before our active agent will be aware of the change and 1 minute extra for the Zabbix server to refresh its cache. (CacheUpdateFrequency)
The active agent also has the advantage of having a buffer. The standard value that data is kept is 5 seconds but can be increased up to 1 hour with the BufferSend parameter.
When we make use of the active agent, it is possible to send our checks to more than only one server or proxy. We can do this by adding a list of comma-separated IP addresses to the option ServerActive in our agent config file.
If you configure the agent as an active agent, then it's best to not fill in the Server option in the agent configuration file as this is for the passive agent. (Be careful with this, as Server and ServerActive are two different options in the configuration file).
- If you would like to know more about protocols being used, how communication between agent and server is set up and so on then you could look into the Zabbix documentation.
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/2.4/manual/appendix/items/activepassive
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