Monitoring Multiple Clients over the Internet

[painintheass]

Hi,

I hope someone can help me with this issue. I want to monitor a couple of PCs on a remote site which is not part of the Company WAN but they have a DSL Line with a Firewall, now how will I go about doing this to monitor about 10 PCs?

I know I should configure the Agent to be active, meaning that the Agent sends data, I can't remember the correct wording, but my issue is how will Zabbix know which client is which especially if the data comes from one Public IP (DNAT enabled)?

Can the Zabbix Server listen to multiple ports i.e. say from port 10050 to 10200? If this is the case I can specify to say that host x will send from IP 10.0.0.1:10050 host y from IP 10.0.0.2:10051 etc, have I faalen out of the bus with this??????

Is there a solution to this and if so can someone point me in the right direction, it'll mean alot if I can do this because I've got about 3 sites in total that I want to monitor and they all have different Public IPs with about 10 - 15 PCs inside that I want to monitor.

[Alexei]

I can't remember the correct wording, but my issue is how will Zabbix know which client is which especially if the data comes from one Public IP (DNAT enabled)?

ZABBIX server identifies hosts by Hostname set in zabbix_agentd.conf.

[painintheass]

OK, so if multiple client send data from 1 IP, i.e. the public IP, Zabbix will ignore the IP and go according to the Hostname? What about if the Server requests something from the client how will I have to set up my Firewall because I can't Reverse NAT the Port 10050 to 10 different clients or won't I have to worry about that I just need to allow port 10050 to the internal network?

[painintheass]

In addition to my previous post:

Couple of questions.

If I understood correctly Zabbix will ignore the src IP eventhough the IP is the same for all agents and work on the hostname?

What about if the server polls the agent, how will that reach an agent because I can reverse NAT one port to 10 different PCs?

The most important thing that I need to know is if 10 Agents poll 1 server with 1 IP, the Public IP, will the server know from which Agent it came from and how will bi-directional communication take place?

[Alexei]

If I understood correctly Zabbix will ignore the src IP eventhough the IP is the same for all agents and work on the hostname?

Yes.

What about if the server polls the agent, how will that reach an agent because I can reverse NAT one port to 10 different PCs?

I see no problem provided all agents have unique IPs.

[painintheass]

OK wait, All agents have their unique IPs internally but as soon as the polling goes out to the internet the adresses are DNAT to one external IP which is then received by the server so in actual fact when PC x, PC y, PC z with internal unique IPs, send the request to server which is at the main office, remember there is no VPN connection and no WAN - only the Internet, the IPs of PCs x, y and z will be translated to 10.0.0.2 for arguments sake and that is my problem how will Zabbix, in that scenario, know which is which and how will communication take place between PCs x, y,z and the Server?

Else, when the Agent connects to Server, will the communication link stay open until all data has been sent or does the Agent just send the request to Server and then closes the connection and waits for a reply from the server? Am I making sense in what I'm trying to find out, my English leaves much to be desired, I know