Zabbix vs The Firewall

[dledeaux]

I've been playing around with Zabbix now and reading quite a bit of documentation, but I can't seem to come to a conclusion if it is going to be a solution for me or not.

I'm an MSP and I'm in the process of rolling out a Windows based appliance that will sit on customer's networks. These networks may not not always have static IPs, but they will always be firewalled and I do not want to mess with firewall configs on their side.

So, what I need is for the zabbix agent to feed the zabbix server at my office information regarding the state of the appliance. I have all of the necessary firewall configs done on my firewall at my office and it works as long as there is bi-directional communication.

I have read many things which imply that this is possible, but in all of my testing it seems like the zabbix server really wants to poll the agent for information.

Do I need to set up a proxy at my office, have the agents feed that and have the zabbix server poll the proxy? If so, can the proxy and the server exist on a single machine?

Or am I just overlooking something very basic?

[Padawan.AVT]

Well, why don't you try to set up VPN server on your side and connect from proxy zabbix to it?

The scheme will be very simple:
a multiple agents on customers network will pass the data to zabbix proxy. In it's turn zabbix proxy host (wich will also reside on client's network) can connect to your VPN server and thus pass data in a very easy way.


Also using of VPN technology guarantees any security level you need and do not require fixed IP address on client's side.

[vinny]

You have 2 solutions to overcome these pb :
* use of proxy is recommended for remote network : as u said, the agent are polled by the proxy, and the zabbix master gets proxy information

* use of active checks : connection to the zabbix server is opened by the agent. The server does not poll agents.

vinny

[dledeaux]

Ok, so active setup, which is what I thought I had configured but my server shows no data from my test agents.

Maybe I have something configured wrong, but here is my zabbix_agentd.conf
(IP addresses changed to protect the innocent)

Server=172.40.216.218
Hostname=DAVID-20AF16CDC
ServerPort=10051
ListenPort=10050
StartAgents=3
DebugLevel=5
PidFile=/temp/zabbix_agentd.pid
LogFile=/temp/zabbix_agentd.log
Timeout=3
RefreshActiveChecks=120
DisablePassive=1

And a log entry

  6060:20090719:145433 zabbix_agentd started. ZABBIX 1.4.4.
  5132:20090719:145433 zabbix_agentd listener started
  5020:20090719:145433 zabbix_agentd collector started
   544:20090719:145433 zabbix_agentd active check started [71.40.6.218:10051]
   544:20090719:145433 In init_active_metrics()
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:6]
   544:20090719:145433 In refresh_metrics('172.40.216.218',10051)
   544:20090719:145433 get_active_checks('172.40.216.218',10051)
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:238]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:6]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:238]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:6]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:238]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:44]
  5020:20090719:145433 In GetCounterName() [index:2]
   544:20090719:145433 Sending [ZBX_GET_ACTIVE_CHECKS
DAVID-20AF16CDC
]
   544:20090719:145433 Before read
   544:20090719:145433 In parse_list_of_checks() [ZBX_EOF
]
   544:20090719:145433 In disable_all_metrics()
   544:20090719:145433 Parsed [ZBX_EOF]
   544:20090719:145433 In process_active_checks('172.40.216.218,10051)
   544:20090719:145433 In get_min_nextcheck()
   544:20090719:145433 Sleeping for 60 seconds

Server config is pretty much out of the box except for changing the username/password lines on the mysql configuration.

Any ideas?

[Jason]

As well as making your agent active have you tried making the template that applies to it use active rather than passive checks? I.e. edit the items on windows template and do a mass update to change the type to agent (active)?

[dledeaux]

*facepalm* Ok, the combination of setting the templates to active and *ahem* upgrading from the 1.4.4 agent available for download on the Zabbix website to the 1.6.4 agent fixed my problems.

Thanks all!