Templates: what do you use?

[MarkusL]

Hi there!

Templates:
I would be very interested what you guys use? Do you use most of standard-templates or are you building all templates new on your own?

We design every template new; do not use any of the given standard-templates. And it´s really really hard work.
If I had to sum up, I would guess:
- 2% installation and fine-tuning zabbix-server / zabbix-proxies
- 20% getting and fine-tuning templates for basic infrastructure zabbix-server and -proxies with all dependencies betwenn them (ups-systems, switches, routers, wan-connections, etc.)
- 75% writing our templates for all kind of stuff (hardware, network, apps, the whole thing we admins have to deal with every day,...)
- 3% get new coffee or something,...


The "problem" we see is the following: you can only monitor something, if you REALLY understand, how it works (find the right items and trigger-expressions) and what / how it acts / cooperates / depends with other things (trigger-dependencies).

Saying that, the logical next step is: all your knowledge is at the end of the day somehow integrated in your monitoring-system.



What do you think about that? How is it handled in your company?
Are you aiming a "perfect" monitoring on your site, that tells you quite exactle whats going on or better NOT going on (and only the one thing -> trigger-dep. / nodata :-))?
Or are you happy with ping- / service-down-messages?



Kind regards,

Markus.

[untergeek]

I'd say we're in a similar boat where I work. We don't do everything from scratch, but we adapt it to suit our needs.

[sire]

The templates currently shipped with Zabbix are more like examples. In our company we do rework the default templates to meet our requirements.

[attilla]

I'm building everything from scratch.

[Jason]

We do a lot of our things from scratch as unable to find templates available.

We use the standard windows & linux template for generic monitoring on servers, but have customised those to include extra things.

[Mojah]

We design every template new; do not use any of the given standard-templates. And it´s really really hard work.

We do it the exact same way. Sometimes have a look at the default templates for ideas or inspiration, but every item on our templates has been hand picked and customized to fit our needs.

The "problem" we see is the following: you can only monitor something, if you REALLY understand, how it works (find the right items and trigger-expressions) and what / how it acts / cooperates / depends with other things (trigger-dependencies).

I don't see it as a "problem" but more of a good thing: you -need- to know what you're monitoring. If you're not an expert at that particular service, you can't monitor it. It forces us to dive deeply into the security & performance of every application.

Saying that, the logical next step is: all your knowledge is at the end of the day somehow integrated in your monitoring-system.

True, and that's what we notice as well. Since we know every bit of the application we want to monitor (Apache, Nginx, HaProxy, Varnish, Memcached, ...) every trigger can have comments on the exact commands we need to run to help troubleshoot the problem. If gives us much quicker responses since the Zabbix Triggers usually contain the fix to the problem or enough info to debug it.

[frankymryao]

We use no standard templates.

What is the most tough thing for making templates is the diversity of every condition. For example, mysql needs mysql_3306, mysql_3307, mysql_3308 template and squid needs squid_8080, squid_8081 template. For us, we made 55 templates our own.

In my opinion, self-making template is very important. You can monitor servers' basic item(cpu, memory and etc.) and any applications' items(resin, nginx, squid and etc.).

[Axilla]

This is the 2nd company I have setup a zabbix system for, and the first thing I did was delete ALL templates and import my custom ones. Then created any new ones that I may need.

[eskytthe]

http://zabbixtemplates.com/

(later at zabbix.org also as I understand)

[cheezus]

http://zabbixtemplates.com/
(later at zabbix.org also as I understand)

Nice! Templates are all over the freaking place. The team here needs to setup a section just for templates and consolidate them all. And no I'm not talking about the wiki because templates are scattered in a million places in that thing.

[westwind]

Yes, this is very important to have a section for Custom Templates. I'd call it "templates exchange (or share)".
We are using custom templates for our customers. we've got Windows servers, network devices, and web apps.
the first thread in this new section would have this title: Recommended Templates to use.

But I'm not good yet in zabbix to start up that thread.

HS

[untergeek]

I've got something I've been hoping to have contributors use:

https://github.com/untergeek/zabbix-grab-bag

I only have a few things there so far, but it can grow. I've even had a few additions and pull requests from others, so by all means, add to the pool!

[c.mammoli]

I think a central repository for user contributed templates is a priority.
Your repo has some nice templates but there are other users with github repos. Some other have a website or just post them on the forum.

Each time I need to search for a template it's a gigantica PITA