how to proceed with zabbix templates

[richlv]

this is a topic i've been thinking about for a while.

as many might have spotted, the default templates that are shipped with zabbix are not... perfect

one approach might be to fix them gradually - remove incorrect item here, fix incorrect parameter there and increase interval over there.

the problem with this approach is maintainability of templates - it's a bit too hard.

second approach would be to remove most of the existing templates, keeping maybe a few most recent, clean ones. and redesign removed ones from the scratch.

thinking about how i usually go about templates in zabbix - and that is never using the built in ones but designing my own taking default ones as example - i'm starting to prefer the second approach, as i believe it would result in a much better end result.

opinions ?

[zalex_ua]

It's really hard question.
After thinking a couple of minutes I decided that I'll try to answer tomorrow

[masteinhauser]

Even though I am a very recent user of Zabbix, I can understand your point and certainly felt the surprise and frustration of the current templates. I've been working to rewrite many of them for 2.0(we're on 1.9.6) to take advantage of many of the new features.

I would love to help with the effort and am in full favor of option 2 as I feel it would provide the highest new-user satisfaction.
Some of what I've completed and am actively working on is here:

https://github.com/masteinhauser/zabbix

We've moved from Cacti to Zabbix as we were experiencing scalability and maintainability problems. Zabbix has blown beyond our expectations and hopes due to it's configuration ability but also was far higher in frustration than expected due to the initial templates.

Just my $.02.
-Myles

[richlv]

looks like "templates from the scratch" it is
will have to work on this some more after the zabbix conference. if you'd like to help, chime in on #zabbix at freenode.

first step will be finishing, testing & fixing data.sql creation script for trunk that's currently used for appliance. next - poking developers to fix xml import/export for templates =)

[masteinhauser]

Sounds like a good choice. When I finally have enough time from homework and work to breath again I will do what I can to help out. Might be a few weeks for me, but I'd really like to improve these.

I'll be giving a presentation in November about Zabbix and I would like to show the attendees how easy it can be to get started.

[frater]

I have several templates to offer (Linux, standalone, Windows)


I am using some external scripts for both agent and server, though.
But I would love to see them incorporated into Zabbix...

agent:
net.iptables.cksum checksum on iptables
net.ipv4.cksum checksum on the ipv4 interfaces
vfs.file.regcount[/var/log/messages,DROP] shows the occurences of a regexp in a file
vfs.file.regtop[/var/log/messages,"SRC=[0-9.]*","DROP"] shows a top 5 of occurences of a regexp in a file
listenport[25] amount of processes listening on a specific port
net.ping[ 192.168.1.20 ] pings a host from agent
topcpu shows name of the process eating cpu and the files it has open

server:
smtpup[{HOST.CONN1}, 587 ] makes a real smtp session and is able to wait a while
dnsverify[{HOST.DNS1}, {IPADDRESS1} ] checks if DNS of host corresponds with the IP that's given in Zabbix
httpspeed[https://{HOST.CONN1}/Remote/ ] checks both speed and validity of a webpage
certexpire[{HOST.CONN1}, 465] age in days of certificate (gives -0.5 if it is unable to fetch it)