Installing zabbix agent on non server hardware

[thasan]

Hi All,

I was wondering what the viability of installing a zabbix agent on say - a cisco switch or f5 load balancer is. I know these devices can be polled via snmp/cpe/ipmi/ etc but as a theoretical proof of concept, I was wondering if an agent installation has any advantages over using any of the other protocols? I saw on another thread that it is if you have a precompiled agent and add it as 'autostart' in expert mode on cisco ....so it seems to be 'theoretically' possible (see comment from msbit):

https://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14722

[jamesNJ]

Personally, I think you should avoid loading anything to a vendor device like Cisco unless it is supported/endorsed by the vendor.

Theoritically, if the zabbix agent was compiled and supported host specific metrics, the agent would give you more information, plus the ability to run remote commands, monitor processes (if you knew what to look for) and possibly monitor local log files.

However, much of what you want from modern devices is likely available from snap and/or using simple checks, or telnet/ssh checks.