Greetings,
Have you have wanted to create a truly non-existent host in Zabbix, only to have the server mark it as not-available? Have you ever wanted to have a random 32 bit integer? Welp, I have created two new Zabbix internal items for just this purpose.
zbxping[<FOO>] simply returns a 1. The purpose here for for those times when you need to "virtual" host as an aggregation point or for certain SLA / OLA or mapping purposes. Historically, I have used these types of hosts when I wanted to aggregate specific data from a cluster of servers. Anytime the aggregated items stopped collecting for more than 10 minutes, the Zabbix server would mark the "virtual" host as not-available. By using this item, the Zabbix server always had at least 1 item that was returning data and so the server was always marked as available.
zabbix[random] simply returns a random 32bit integer. I am unsure how much use this will be in a production environment, but I have used similar functionality often in the past when doing heavy load testing on my Zabbix servers.
Have you have wanted to create a truly non-existent host in Zabbix, only to have the server mark it as not-available? Have you ever wanted to have a random 32 bit integer? Welp, I have created two new Zabbix internal items for just this purpose.
zbxping[<FOO>] simply returns a 1. The purpose here for for those times when you need to "virtual" host as an aggregation point or for certain SLA / OLA or mapping purposes. Historically, I have used these types of hosts when I wanted to aggregate specific data from a cluster of servers. Anytime the aggregated items stopped collecting for more than 10 minutes, the Zabbix server would mark the "virtual" host as not-available. By using this item, the Zabbix server always had at least 1 item that was returning data and so the server was always marked as available.
zabbix[random] simply returns a random 32bit integer. I am unsure how much use this will be in a production environment, but I have used similar functionality often in the past when doing heavy load testing on my Zabbix servers.