Beta 7 Templating

[Dave Miller]

I like the option of linking a template to a host and not being able to make changes to the linked host items, in Beta 7. But, this needs to be an option. The Beta 6 linking was actually copying from template to host. The Beta 6 concept needed tweaked not eliminated. I would like to roll out Zabbix for many of my clients. I need to be able to copy temples to hosts or hosts to templates, make changes, then “hard” link to a template, if desired. Zabbix is a great product. It needs to be flexible, if it is going to scale.

[raycast]

More Beta7 templating

I really favour templating, however I don't like the "single inheritance" approach of Beta7.
My "model" is totally based around services; I'd like to have templates for certain services on hosts.
E.g. a template "Mail server" which contains items like the smtp probe, a template "MySQL", a template "web server".
That way I can easily have mail servers which have a basic web server, too. Or web servers with and without MySQL. And mail servers with no web server, but MySQL. And pure MySQL servers.
The current inheritance model would mean that I need to do
web
web -> web+mysql
mail
mail -> mail+mysql
mail -> mail+mysql -> mail+mysql+web
mysql
With in this simple example the web probes defined in both "web" and "mail+mysql+web", and the mysql probes in both "web+mysql" and "mail+mysql" and "mysql".

Another issue I'm facing is with interfaces, maybe you can give me a hint here.
In one of the hosts, the network interface on the main board just died. We simply put in a second interface and the machine is back up. However, this machines "important" SNMP interface ID is now different. Any easy way to override the "relevant" interface number on a per-host basis?

[crs9]

I spent days and days working on my templates for beta7 and once I was happy with my template layout, everything deployed easily and quickly. I personally like the new system better. Raycast, I had a similar situation so I just disabled the items I didnt want on that specific host and then added the new host specific items like normal. I actually added more items to my templates then needed just so I could diable those things I didnt want.

[raycast]

disabling services

The overview->triggers page shows my disabled services as being down, in red. Not really an option for me then...

[edeus]

I suspect we are going to have to live with the templating as-is. I still cannot understand why it has been done this way. I am totally against the "new" way of doing item linking.

Everytime I want to monitor say, Free Disk space on C:\, I need to manually create this item over and over again? If the item parameter changes, as Zabbix items often do, I will need to manually go through and update each item! OMG!!!

I *have* to be missing something here. It cannot be this dumb, it defeats the purpose of having templates entirely. Please help my stupidity!

[ekenberg]

edeus: This is just what you don't have to do with the new templating. Just add "Free diskspace on C:\" to a template and link all the hosts to this template and you're set. Changes made to the template immediately affect all the relevant hosts. No manual repetition needed.

[edeus]

Ahh sorry. A lot has happened since I last looked at the problem - my mind wasnt thinking straight.

I see what some people mean by having to have duplicated items and just disable them as required.

I guess it would work - justs means that for every single unix server I have around 200 items, and 75% disabled per server. I guess this doesnt cause much excess server load?

Can someone confirm that disabling an item on the host level will not reenable when the template is updated? It would be a bit annoying if disabled items were just continually rechecked.

Thank you ekenberg! I knew I had to be thinking "dumb". I was so used to creating with multiple templates, the whole idea of having a virtually universal template escaped me. This method is still frustrating but as long as it works and makes it easier for the zabbix team to keep templates working, I am happy.

[raycast]

templating by disabling

I guess it would work - justs means that for every single unix server I have around 200 items, and 75% disabled per server.

And of course that it totally sucks to disable 75% of items whenever you add another host.

I also still would really like to have a way to use variables, like "primary network interface", for graphing and such.