History and Trends Archives

[pascl]

Hello,

We need to migrate our hosts from SNMP monitoring to Agent monitoring. But we would not to lost histories and trends generated by SNMP monitoring. Is there a way to archive or stay on line the histories and trends ? (for a limited time based on expiration of trends, but for many months)

Thank you in advance for your help, yours ideas.

pascl

[kloczek]

Zabbix can reassign old data on unlink (without delete items data) from one template and link it to another one is able to reassign existing data series when item key is the same.
As long as you have all hosts using the same SNMP template you can:
- rename current "<SNMP template>: to "<SNMP template> orig"
- copy "<SNMP template> orig" to "<SNMP template>"
- manually change all items in "<SNMP template> orig" template to new keys definitions. names and change item type from SNMP to "zabbix agent" or "zabbix agent (active)" (my suggestion is to move to active monitoring on this transmission)
- delete all triggers, graphs, screens from "<SNMP template> orig"
- rename "<SNMP template> orig" template to new template name with agent items
- import new agent template to populate all new screens, graphs, triggers and other metadata like items sampling period or items and triggers descriptions

Even with above procedure you will have difficulty with continuity of old data generated by LLDs because LLDs on populating new items keys definitions is not able to figure to reassign old data series items generated by LLS to new items keys definitions.
Maybe zabbix support team can provide you some other workaround to do LLD items reassignment.

To minimise necessary downtime my suggestion is to setup new temporary/non-prod zabbix server with added only one host monitored over existing SNMP template and prepare all necessary renames. delete graphs, screens and triggers as sequence of zabbix API calls. When you will be happy about whole procedure and final result on non-prod zabbix stack replay then everything on prod one.
On prepare such API calls sequence you can use my zapish or any other scripting language binding (depends on what you prefer on writing necessary script).

Other variant of above with only one zabbix stack is to use existing one and play with unlik without delete current SNMP template -> rename items and delete triggers, graphs, screens -> link to new agent based template. This scenario may be even better as it will minimise time when exact host will be not monitored correctly.
Of course before you will start all transition you need to have already installed and configured agents on all hosts.

Nevertheless biggest issue now is with all data series collected by items populated by LLDs.

I know that it is planned to add to each items UUIDs which may dramatically simplify such transition (item A data from one template can be reassigned to another one template on unlink->link as long as they would have the same item template UUID). With those UUDs it will be possible to prepare fully deterministic templates migrations/upgrades and solved issues with reassignment of the LLD items data as well series. Without UUDs it will be always hard.
I have no idea what is the current of the progresses to implement adding items UUIDs .. and/or is it planned to add this in next major version.
Maybe someone from zabbix dev team or even Alex can add some comment here.

[pascl]

kloczek,

Thank you so much for your complete and detailed answer. You have specified important informations which will be useful.
We will work and test your procedure. We have some LLDs on SNMP hosts, and if I understand correctly your description, probably there is no other option than migrate items (LLDs items) directly on database... Reassignation old data on unlink can only be done on non-LLDs items.

Of course, i will stay you in tune.

Thank you
Pascl