Web Monitoring Notifications

[knarfling]

I am playing around with the Web Monitoring function in 1.4.2. From reading the forum and playing around, I have figured out a little bit and have been able to create a simple scenario. However, as stated on the home page, monitoring is not very useful unless there is a way to notify someone when the scenario fails.

Unfortunately, I am not sure how to create an action in case the web page fails. Actions seem to be based on either auto discovery or triggers. Triggers are based on items. Is there a way to base an item or a trigger on a Web scenario? or create an action directly from Web Monitoring?

Thanx for any help

[knarfling]

Never Mind

Never Mind. My Bad.

I did not see the automatic items under web.test.in and web.test.fail right away. Now that I see that items are automatically created, I can run triggers and notifications against those.

Thanx

[workinonit]

I am playing around with the Web Monitoring function in 1.4.2. From reading the forum and playing around, I have figured out a little bit and have been able to create a simple scenario.

Which post are you looking at? I am trying to find out how to setup web monitoring. The documentation is a little sparse in this regard.

[knarfling]

My Understanding

Although I can't remember which posts I looked at to glean the information, here is my understanding. I am sure someone can correct me if I am wrong.

When you create a Scenario, you can create it against a host, a group or a template. If you use a group or a template all hosts in that group or that are linked to the template will have items created.

The Application refers to the application where the items will be created. For example Availability might be used if you are simply monitoring if there is a specific web page available.

The Name on the main screen is the name of the scenario. This will be used in one of the items created and can be used in a trigger expression.

Update interval is how often should Zabbix try to access the web page.

Agent is who Zabbix should pretend to be. For simple pages this may not matter much.

Status is whether or not this whole scenario is active or inactive.

Variables are where you can set specific information to be sent to the web site in the Steps section.

The Steps section is where the real action occurs. Multiple steps can be used. For example, one step may be to log into a specific site and check for a response. Then other information could be posted to the site in a second step and other responses checked.

On the Steps popup there are several fields.

The name is the name of the individual step.

URL is the address of the web site you want to check.

POST is where you can send data that you do not want to or cannot include in the URL. You can specify static information or variables from the scenario screen.

Timeout is how long you can wait for a response before returning an error.

Required is words or phrases that are required to be on the page. For example, If I were checking a status screen and looking for the word "Green" somewhere on the page, as long as the web page had the word green in it, the test would succeed. If I had the word "green" in the required field and the page changed to display "red", the step would fail. I could base a trigger off of the web.test.fail item and be paged when the web page changed.

Status codes are the acceptable status codes for the page. For a simple check just to see if a page is there, the Required field could be blank and the Status could have a 200 in there. As long as the page returned a 200, the step will not fail. Any of the standard http status codes can be entered.

Once the add button is clicked, you will be taken back to the scenario page and can enter more steps. If there are multiple steps, these steps can be moved up and down as needed to place steps in a specific order.

In my testings I show that several items are created.
web.test.in[<scenario_name>,<step_name>,bps] - gives download speed for step. If step_name is missing, gives the download speed for the entire scenario.
web.test.fail[<scenario_name>] - 0 or 1 depending on whether the response or status codes matched.
web.test.rspcode[<scenario_name>,<step_name>] - returns the http response code (200,404,503,...) of the url in the step_name.
web.test.time[<scenario_name>,<step_name>,resp] - returns the amount of time it took to view complete the step.

This is not a definitive guide, and there may some incomplete or inaccurate info here, but this is the way I understand Web Monitoring.

Hope this helps.

[workinonit]

Its a start

Thanks for the explanation but to be honest, you lost me after variables. I know nothing about web testing so I have some learning to do. I guess what would help is seeing a screen by screen example. I will keep searching the forums as well to see what I can find.

[knarfling]

Don't get hung up on variables

Hang in there. Remember to test a simple page, you do not need half the stuff on the screens. Some of the things there are for monitoring complex multi-step pages. If you normally have to log in to a web page, then fill out a form and hit submit in order to see the page you want to test, then you have to worry about posting and maybe variables. If you want to check to see if a web page is there, ignore the variables section and leave it blank.

I realize that I didn't include screen shots, but it wasn't intended to be a comprehensive tutorial. To get a feel for it, experiment a bit. Simply create a scenario, give it a name and leave most of the fields blank. Click on steps, give the step a name and enter a URL. If you know a word that should appear on that page, enter it in the required field. Save the step, save the scenario and then have a look at Monitoring.

As you experiment, you will understand more and more. Soon, you may be the expert at Web monitoring and can put together a tutorial for other people.

[workinonit]

Thanks. It would be nice if Alexi could elaborate more in the documentation. I did get a simple check to work.

[Alexei]

More documentation on WEB monitoring will be available soon.

[workinonit]

Excellent!

[cbidwell]

Documentation of Web Monitoring

Do the developers have a time frame as to when the web monitoring docs will be available?

Thanks!

[Alexei]

I donwloaded updated ZABBIX Manual 1.4 Rev 10. It has a chapter on WEB monitoring. Please let me know in case of any errors or missing information.

[mindas]

I think the web scenario example syntax (.pdf manual release 011, page 155) is incorrect.

{host: web.test.fail[Scenario]}.last(0)#0

must be written as

{host: web.test.fail[Scenario].last(0)}#0

At least my Zabbix instance complained on the first and worked on the second.

Regards,
Mindaugas