host availability listed in 'hosts configuration' section

[mconigliaro]

i searched around the forums and found a bunch of people asking about host availability in the hosts section, but i never really found the answer i was looking for.

from what i can tell, as long as a zabbix server is able to communicate with a zabbix agent, the availability of that host will be listed as 'available.' this is good. however, the availability of hosts doing agent-less simple checks (eg: icmp pings) are always listed as 'undefined,' even if the simple checks are returning a value. is this a bug or is this the intended behavior?

i also came across a post that led me to believe there's a way to define how this availability is determined. if thats the case, does anyone know where that setting is? thanks.

[Alexei]

Agent-less hosts shouldn't be listed as having status "Uknown". Something is wrong here, however I'm not aware of any bugs.

You may define your own trigger (for example, "Host myhost is not availably") for host availability. It may depend on result of ICMP ping ,TCP ping, host status, whatever. ZABBIX administrator defines what is availability.

Reachability is something different. Host is unreachable if ZABBIX server is unable to receive required data from the host (simple checks, ZABBIX agent, SNMP) because of network errors only. ZABBIX administrator cannot control how ZABBIX defines reachability.

[mconigliaro]

im actually referring to the "availability" column when i browse to hosts.php. the status on all hosts is "monitored," but availability is either "available" (if the agent is installed) or "unknown" (if the device is a template or agentless).

[yas]

can zabbix server auto detect my host on network plz help I've added a new host but in the Availability column
its status is "Unknown". Port number is 10050....

[alixen]

Hi,

I am reviving this old thread since, after upgrading to 1.8.3, I still have a few hosts whose availability is "unknown".

Those hosts are neither monitored via SNMP, IPMI or Zabbix agent. All checks are simple checks (icmpping, tcp,..) or external checks.

This is a bit misleading since they are counted as "Unknown" instead of "Available" in "Hosts info" screen element.
This is weird : Zabbix "knows" that they are available since they are at least answering to ping.

Is there a way to mark hosts as "available" as soon as any check, including simple and external checks, is returning OK ?

Regards,
Alixen

[richlv]

the three availability icons refer to three item types, so probably not - unless new icons are introduced for other types

[alixen]

Hi,

the three availability icons refer to three item types, so probably not - unless new icons are introduced for other types

I think I have not been clear enough.
I refer to:

host availability as reported in "Hosts info" screen element.
See first attached screenshot: there are 19 "Unknown" hosts but all of them are actually available (Zabbix is collecting data without error).
host availability as reported in "Item configuration screen".
See second attached screenshot: host availability is reported as "unknown" although icmpping item is OK.


The first one is the more important because it looks like Zabbix is having problems getting data from those 19 hosts.
I have lost some time checking all items on thoses hosts to be sure that they were correctly collected.

I hope I am more understandable now ;)

Regards,
Alixen

[richlv]

oh, _that_...
well, i'm not sure there's much to do about it.
for example, the ping item would show up as being ok always, no matter whether ping fails or not - it would only show some problem status if the system was misconfigured and pinging would not be possible at all.
that means it can't be used for host availability control.
so in this case adding another category of host availability could still be the solution. it could be defined as simple checks, and would be controlled based on ping success, and maybe on tcp ports being open. still, that wouldn't work if you wanted to check that some port is closed...

[alixen]

Hi,

I don't understand why a host being reachable via SNMP or Zabbix agent is an indication of it being available but being reachable via ping is not.

For me, an host is available as soon as it is reachable via any protocol (even external checks).

BTW, I have manually set host availability for those 9 hosts to available directly in the database. It spares me a few questions from my users.

Regards,
Alixen