Zabbix deployment best practice

[CarlosTech]

hi all,

I'm new to the forum and new to Zabbix in general. Have heard and read a lot about how great Zabbix is but never had the opportunity or need to install it (used PRTG at my last place)

However i'm in need of a monitor in my new place and Zabbix is top of the list. I've had a search through the previous posts but cannot seem to find anything telling me what the best practice is on setting up Zabbix... what i mean by this is:
having a database server separate to the Zabbix application server?

we're a very small setup potentially growing, so currently i've got approximately 100 - 120 devices to monitor (ranging from switches, to servers, workstations etc.)

i'll be monitoring the usual, memory, CPU, up time etc. so i don't anticipate having huge amounts of data.

from what i've been reading my plan was to setup the following:

-MySQL server (Ubuntu, 4GB ram, 120GB drive, 2 core single CPU) - VMWare VM.

-Zabbix APP / Front end server (same spec as above)

My train of thought is that i don't want the DB server side of things impacting the Zabbix app / (performance wise) front end and also if something happens to the latter the DB is still intact (and separate per say)

Thanks in advance
C.

[LenR]

We went through this discussion in the 2.x era, but I don't think it's changed much. Our systems:

• Zabbix "node" consisting of mysql and zabbix server, monitor as little as possible here
• Zabbix frontend web/php, even more than one if you want to load balance
• Proxies for monitoring, 5 large ones, some small for network access

5300 NVPS, Database is 3.2Tb, Zabbix servers are VM's.

[bbrendon]

You're in vmware and you have a small environment. Just start with one server and scale out if necessary.

You'll probably need more than 4gb of ram though right off the bat.

[CarlosTech]

thanks guys, got Zabbix installed and running as a trial on a single server.. will see how it goes.. but may well look as separating the solution for the prod environment.