Bad documentation part of the Zabbix business model?

[vanessa]

Hello. I'm only interested in discussing the actual question stated in the title of this thread. I won't get into meta-discussions about whether it's a legit question (don't expect an answer). If you disagree, then make your point and stay on topic.

To sum it up: I've notice that the documentation often seem vague or leave out important details, and sometimes contain not any useful information.

In order to get adequate information, you'll often have to buy courses or support.. or do a lot of trial and error. Yet, when it comes to installing the software and getting hooked in the first steps, it's easy.

Is this intentional to drive selling of training and support? If you don't think so, then it's fine to say no. But I'm still asking, I'm getting such an impression.

I am coparing Zabbix documentation to other OSS-projects with far less resources.

[cyber]

When you have a product, that has load of features, then mastering it will take time. Docs, theres a lot of it, cannot memorize it all. And not every page is crosslinked with every other... With the documentation, I have found, that lots of people basically open the book from the middle and expect to understand the storyline. There are basics you have to know to get to more advanced topics. I have been using the tool for .. oh.. over 15 years, I still open the docs almost daily to verify some things or I am just used to, so I dont have to memorize everything, just need to know where to find things... And I cannot remeber right now a case, when I have not found the answer.

So, in conclusion, I would say, you are wrong.. More practice and you will be fine..

[zaicnupagadi]

So far I think best book for me is the "Zabbix-4-Network-Monitoring-3ed" written by Richard Olups and Patrik Uytterhoeven. It explains in the most details how the "backend" works. What is your choise when it comes to the best book?

[vanessa]

Can the documentation be edited by anyone? Is there like a wikimedia or something? Or how does it work?

[cyber]

I don't think you can freely edit online docs, but you can definitely send suggestions to documentation team. In every page footer, there is "Have an improvement suggestion for this page? Select the text that could be improved and press Ctrl+Enter to send it to the editors." so you can follow that.
You can join translator team... https://translate.zabbix.com/ Probably gives you more options to communicate with doc team also...
You can find some numbers about documetnation here. https://assets.zabbix.com/files/even...anslations.pdf
or listen to same presentation from Summit '22 https://www.youtube.com/embed/2GLiIF...t=0&autoplay=1

I was thinking about this topic yesterday a bit more... TBH, the more I think about it, the more ridiculous this approach looks like.. How can something bad increase your sales? Just does not compute in my head.. Must be very new concept and so cleverly marketed, that noone notices...

[ISiroshtan]

From my personal experience I would say Zabbix documentation is pretty good. It's not written as self-learn course, where you can start from top and read to bottom, getting more and more understanding(except probably installation part), but more like technical reference book where you can research specific features, information about their use, etc

I was starting working with Zabbix from scratch with no training. Working with it for almost 10 years now. Going from managing simple distributed server - proxy installation and just importing-assigning templates to designing monitoring templates from scratch for closed proprietary products and integrating Zabbix with plenty of 3rd party systems. Documentation was my best friend in this journey.(Tho had more cases then I'm eager to admit where I struggled with understanding something to then find it explained in documentation)

I did attend the training and got certified as ZCS last year just because my company was paying for it. Essentially all information provided was present in documentation, just was presented in more concise/logically structured way.

P.S. cyber I did have a few cases where Zabbix behavior was not explained by documentation, had to ask about it during ZCS training and got answer to half of it (tho it were pretty edge cases)

[cyber]

Maybe I am too "average" user, not pushing limits.. So I don't step on edge cases..

[vanessa]

There's one more very suspicious thing regarding how functional it is once you go beyond 20-100 linux boxes or so.
The default caches are very small (like 16MB or something in some cases). Once you go over like 10-100 linux units or so, the server crasches because the various caches are too small.

These caches seems to be stored on disk, and the argument for it can't be that it's "to save disk space" when the log files can grow several gigabytes in a few days with the default settings (which is another odd default behavior).

[ISiroshtan]

Caches are not stored on disk. They are in-memory, either filled up as needed during operation or loaded from DB on startup

I would argue setting them high as default could result in issues on labs and test environments where people just want to see functionality before deciding if they want to use it as a product.

I've not seen the cache full error for a long time, but I think log about it was pretty telling what the actual issue is, no?

[cyber]

First thing after installing a Zabbix instance is to apply zabbix server monitoring template to it. If proxies are there, then also to those... You will see right away, if some cache is filling up, you can increase it right away. Until it becomes stable... But as said crash data in log will tell, which one needs increasing also.

I absolutely have too much of History cache.. (2G)

[vanessa]

After working with this system and reading the documentation for a while, I am absolutely sure that details are left out in purpose. Some information aren't even documented at all. I find this to be a very disingenuous and unethical way to profit. Please find a more ethical model that adds value to the customers instead of scamming them like this.

There are small things that easily can be documented, but aren't. Some things are intentionally vague (you'll have to really try and be deliberate to be vague like this over and over again). A significant portion of the stuff you'd reasonably expect to be documented in a reasonable way somewhere, is nowhere to be seen. But coincidentally, you'll find ads for support on the same official resources.

[cyber]

One day you may be able to remove that hat...

I can agree, that these docs are not perfect, but trying to blame Zabbix for doing this on purpose just blows my mind...

[cyber]

zaicnupagadi commented
Yesterday, 09:40
So far I think best book for me is the "Zabbix-4-Network-Monitoring-3ed" written by Richard Olups and Patrik Uytterhoeven. It explains in the most details how the "backend" works. What is your choise when it comes to the best book?

Not really possible to quote you nicely, if you comment post... But Ihave never read any Zabbix book

[markfree]

Zabbix has recently released a survey about their documentation.
This might be a good time to provide feedback.