network monitoring

[tmnewton]

Hello and thanks for any help or direction you can give me. Right now, I am using Nagios for monitoring, Cacti for graphing, and want a single solution. I have zabbix installed and working correctly, but I am having a difficult time following the flow of using templates, items, actions, etc... Is there a guide somewhere that better explains this flow? It appears that zabbix will do everything, including diagramming. I have read for weeks now on trying to understand how the flow works and am just missing it. Thanks again for any help.

[MrKen]

There is a wiki which may be of some use to you http://www.zabbix.com/wiki/

A quick explanation:
Host --> Items --> Trigger --> Action

Host: The device to monitor (router, server, PC, gateway, etc.)
Items: The parameters or metrics that you want monitored on that host.
Trigger: The tripwire that the items should not cross. (cpu load too high, low disk space, etc.)
Action: What zabbix should do if a trigger is fired - send alert, execute script.

Templates:
Templates are linked to a host. (See configuration --> Hosts)
A template will usually contain items to monitor. It may also contain triggers, and sometimes include graphs as well.
Remember that a template is just a template. Meaning that it is possible that some of the items on the template do not relate to your environment and will give an Unsupported Error message. You can just disable those items, or maybe you need to alter some of the item detail (like change Apache to Apache2).

You can create your own custom templates in Configuration --> Hosts, by choosing Templates, then Create Template, be sure to put it in the 'Template' Group. In Configuration --> Items you then choose your Template and create items manually, or you can copy items from other Hosts or Templates to your new template. You can do the same with Triggers and Graphs.

You can always see graphs (simple graphs) of your data in Monitoring --> Latest data. However, if you want custom-made graphs with pretty colors, you will need to make them yourself in Configuration --> Graphs.

Finally, Screens. At the time of writing, Screens cannot be included in templates, so unfortunately you need to create your own screens manually.

Hope this is of some use to you.

MrKen

[richlv]

Finally, Screens. At the time of writing, Screens cannot be included in templates, so unfortunately you need to create your own screens manually.

note that you can mark screen items as dynamic, which will allow you to switch the same screen to use with other host's data