What's the go-to method/guide to monitor SNMP devices without official templates?

[ZabTheo]

Hi all,

We have a number of devices which don't seem to have out of the box templates with Zabbix, or they are heavily outdated and no longer suitable.

I have tried using the "Mib to Zabbix Template" tools out there, but they are also very outdated and I can't get them to work as intended.

Is there a current method or guide from Zabbix which explains step by step how to build templates for devices connecting via SNMP?

Thanks!

[kyus]

You'll need to find the MIB files for the device you want to monitor. Then you can install them and use snmpwalk against the device.
From there it's pretty much hand-picking the OID's you think are useful to monitor.

The items you are going to use are basically SNMP Agent: walk[] for tables and discovery and get[] for individual OID's.

Assuming you are on 7.0+ you can check these docs:

https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/7.0/en/manual/config/items/itemtypes/snmp

https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/7.0/en/manual/discovery/low_level_discovery/examples/snmp_oids_walk

Just a side note: recently I read a Zabbix blog post about a tool that creates Templates from SNMP checks, but as of now I don't think it is available yet. And yes, building the templates manually is tedious.
In my opinion the most important thing is to only create items for metrics that are truly relevant for your environment.