The right way to handle host with two IPs - one public and one private

[dlublink]

Hello,

Most of the hosts I wish to monitor have two interfaces. One public and one private ( rfc1918 ).

The zabbix service always runs on the private interface. I check for basic things like CPU usage, etc... via the private interface.

However I also need to test reachability (ping ) on the public interface, test if certain services are running and are answering ( example script that logs into FTP and returns the time it took to run ).

What is the correct way to do this ? In Nagios I have two different hosts "mycoolhost" and "mycoolhost-public". Should I do the same with Zabbix or is there a better way to do it?

Thanks.

[martijnatlico]

That is what we do for hosts with two SNMP interfaces (one for the OS and one for the management card), I think it's your only option.

[dlublink]

solved

Hello,

After a lot of digging around, I found that a good way to do this is to use the macro feature of hosts.

In the macro tab of a sample host, I have :

{$PUBLICIP} => 8.8.8.8

The public IP is never used for SNMP, Zabbix Agent, or anything else, therefore this solution works fine.

When I write my templates, I simply type {$PUBLICIP} in place of the IP address in the command/key I wish to run.

Hope this helps someone else in the future.


relevant xkcd