Proxy and SNMP MIBs

[Shenanigan]

Hello everyone,

I've got Zabbix running successfully with proxies for distributed monitoring.

Server: CentOS 7
Proxies: Debian 10

I would like to monitor some SNMP devices which I believe require new MIB's to be installed, the first is a Netgear GS724v4. I have found the MIB's from the vendor website however I am not sure where they need installing.

Would I install these onto the relevant proxy for the device to be monitored or onto the main server?

Also, would I be right in thinking that the Proxy handles all monitoring for their devices (therefore would need the MIBs installing) and passes the results back to the server. Or the server uses the proxy as a traditional SOCKS/HTML type proxy to contact the end device directly.? I think it's the first.

I couldn't find an answer in the docs.

Thanks for your help.

[tim.mooney]

We're not currently using any proxies with Zabbix, but we'll probably be adding a few in the future, so my knowledge of proxies isn't as strong as some other areas of Zabbix.

I think (but am not 100% certain) based on the first paragraph of the proxy overview documentation that it matches your first case (proxy contacts the device(s) on behalf of the server, and then sends the results to the server).

As far as MIBs, I think (again, I'm not 100% certain) the answer is

1. if you're OK just using the numbers and you don't care about the names for each part of an OID, you probably don't need the MIBs at all.
2. if you're using SNMP polling and you want to use the names (rather than just the numbers), you probably need the MIB installed on the server. You might also need it installed on the proxy/proxies, but my guess is not. Please follow-up and correct me if you discover the MIB is needed in both places for polling using the names.
3. if you're using SNMP trapping and you want to use OID names as part of your matching, you probably do need the MIB on the proxies, since it's the snmptrapd on the proxy that determines what gets written to the intermediate file that the proxy reads and then sends along to the server.

If you find that any of these are wrong, please do follow-up with corrected information.

[LenR]

1. I push additional mibs files to our server and all proxies with Ansible, that ensures all mibs are available "everywhere". Like the other poster, if you just use the numeric "oids"? you don't need mibs.
2. The proxy maintains an inventory of hosts and items that is refreshed periodically from the server. Proxies can be either active or passive, so the inventory is either "pushed to" the proxy, or it "pulls" it from the server.
3. The proxy polls SNMP devices (and/or "normal" servers) and temporarily stores the items before sending them to the server. Likewise, this data flow can be either active or passive.

We have multiple SNMP proxies and define our network resources via API from an external inventory system. Network devices are randomly assigned to one of our main proxies.