GSM/LTE modem choice

[jmhalder1]

I'm interested in setting up a modem for SMS messages for escalation, and higher severity issues. The current documentation claims that Zabbix has only been tested with 2 GSM modems:

• Siemens MC35
• Teltonika ModemCOM/G10

These are both ancient, EOL modems. Does anyone have a recommendation for a LTE modem that can be used solely for SMS? I see a few people using Gammu to provide a TTY interface for messaging. I'm in the US, and will likely be using a AT&T sim card. I've been using Zabbix for 4 years, always virtualized. I'm going to be installing it on a physical box for the sake of obfuscating it from our virtualization stack. I'll likely be setting it up on SLES 12 SP5, or Ubuntu Server. Any advice would be great. Or if there is a better out-of-band solution all together that could get a SMS to me, I would entertain that too.

[jmhalder1]

I'm considering just grabbing a Netgear AirCard 340U, as it's LTE capable, and I believe supports linux, and will give me ttyUSBx (I think) to hit with. I think I might be able to use it with Gammu. There just isn't much information on this. I know I could maybe use another paid SMS service, and statically route it out the WWLAN usb card, but I'd rather not. I want a LTE card since AT&T will be discontinuing at the end of 2021.

[Sven]

This is a few years ago... . I used a USB dongle I bought from a supermarket, a pay as you go SIM and wrote a script with Gammu and then used that.

It worked... not pretty... and now I have more experience, I'd look at improving it.

[jmhalder1]

Yeah, part of our current monitoring solution includes a NOC calling us if stuff goes down. They have POTS lines coming into our small datacenter. Getting SMS is going to be pretty important to us, I know there are other ways to get that done outside of directly sending SMS, but it needs to work if our WAN connection is down for some reason. Since none of this is "supported", I might have to go down the path of using WWAN for sending other types of notifications out.