What is Active-Active mode in Zabbix?

[Akansha123]

What is Active-Active mode in Zabbix?

I could find information about Active checks and Passive checks, but no information about Active-Active mode.

[bbrendon]

I don't recall anything in the product or documentation about active-active mode.

[Linwood]

The term usually applies to clusters, where both nodes of a two node cluster run a specific service and can handle requests at the same time, hence "active-active".

I don't know if people are running Zabbix in that fashion or not (I do not recall seeing it).

One could run a database in that fashion for zabbix to update if any of it's databases supported active-active clustering (as opposed to one node being in standby).

[bbrendon]

One could run a database in that fashion for zabbix to update if any of it's databases supported active-active clustering (as opposed to one node being in standby).

The context in which he was asking isn't in relation to clusters. He's asking about agents.

[Akansha123]

The term usually applies to clusters, where both nodes of a two node cluster run a specific service and can handle requests at the same time, hence "active-active".

I don't know if people are running Zabbix in that fashion or not (I do not recall seeing it).

One could run a database in that fashion for zabbix to update if any of it's databases supported active-active clustering (as opposed to one node being in standby).

Thanks or the reply!

Could you let me know how to run database in Active-Active mode?
Does that mean multiple agents will be sending data to multiple servers at the same time?

[Linwood]

Thanks or the reply!

Could you let me know how to run database in Active-Active mode?
Does that mean multiple agents will be sending data to multiple servers at the same time?

No, let's back up.

The first question to ask is this:

What problem are you actually trying to solve?


However, taking your question at face value let me ramble a bit:

Agents talk to the Zabbix Server, which in turn talks to the database.

It is conceivable you could have the database distributed on two nodes in an active-active setup, and share the load across a cluster. I see there is some clustering support for load balancing in Postgresql, and I see discussions of it using HAProxy as a front end for Mysql, but I have zero experience with these products in a clustered mode. Just search for either and "cluster" and "active-active" or "load balance" and you will see a lot.

The larger issue is that to my knowledge Zabbix itself does not load share in terms of the server components. Anyone know if otherwise? Meaning that one zabbix server generally runs on one system. So you could have agents talking to one zabbix server and it conceivably talking to multiple database servers in a load balanced arrangement.

I am not aware of a way to have agents talking to two zabbix server nodes that comprise one virtual server in an active/active setup. Active/Active provides load balancing AND high availability. Active/Passive provides only high availability.

Now Zabbix can be partitioned by using proxy servers. This is most frequently done for more efficient network load. It offers the ability to have intermediate zabbix servers that accumulate data, and forward it to a primary zabbix server. Agents still talk only to one (a proxy usually) and each proxy talks only to one back end primary zabbix server. This is not really load balancing (as the proxy relationship is statically defined) though it does spread the load; it is not high availability either.

It is also possible to have zabbix set up in a cluster in an active-passive mode, here's an old writeup on it:

https://www.zabbix.org/wiki/Docs/howto/high_availability

This addresses only high availability by having a failover server, it does not load balance in an active-active mode. IN theory the back end database in that example could itself be clustered for either high availability, loading balancing, or both.

Perhaps someone else will jump in as to whether it is possible to have the zabbix server itself in an active-active mode. I am not aware of it.