Active vs. Passive monitoring

[thomasmathiesen]

I am a newbie, and I've been pulling my hair because the Zabbix manual is made for people who already know zabbix. My problem today was understanding passive vs. active monitoring, and I'll share what I learned here (so that you can keep your hair);

Passive monitoring
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The agent will answer the server when the server asks for a reply.
Example: Server asks; what is your agent version. This question is sent to the TCP port that the agent listens to, and the agent answers the server.

Note that this method should be used on a LAN.

The default config files are made for passive monitoring.

Active monitoring
-----------------
The agent will answer the server, but the questions are not sent to the agent. The agent connects to the server every now and again (every 2 minutes by default I reckon), and gets a list of questions that the server has. It will answer the questions and disconnect.

Note that this method should be used for hosts that you monitor over the internet (and that the server cannot access because of NAT etc.). No firewall holes needs to be opened.

..ok.. got dancing lessons (going to marry in a month). Will continue my "tutorial" after that.

/Thomas

[thomasmathiesen]

Config files

ACTIVE AGENT

/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf:
Server=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
ServerPort=10051
Hostname=myhost.mydomain.com
StartAgents=5
DisableActive=0
DebugLevel=3
PidFile=/var/tmp/zabbix_agentd.pid
LogFile=/tmp/zabbix_agentd.log
Timeout=3
#CONFIG FILE END

Explaination:
server = the IP address of the server that runs zabbix_server. To test connectivity, telnet from the client to the server on the port (that you choose to use.. by default 10051 for active)

server port = default 10051 (see above)

hostname = hostname of the agent. On linux, run "uname -a" to find your hostname. It must reflect the name in your host configuration on the zabbix server.. so this is a possible pitfall (even though a dns server sees your server as www.mydomain.com, the machine itself, may see itself as server1.myispsdomain.com).

disableactive = well.. it would be the same as "enable active".. but someone chose to call it disable active, so it will have to be 0 if it is to be not disabled.

The rest of the stuff you can leave like mine, as it will be ok for most machine (ps: I am talking linux.. not windows).