Zabbix , triggers, responsible admin

[zeds]

Hi!

I am preparing to replace existing monitoring system (mon) with zabbix.
I must duplicate mon's functionality in zabbix - when trigger appears monitoring person see whom to call.
I thought - thats what zabbix trigger comments section are for!

There are some problems I encountered:
We have many servers , each server has its own set of admins which typically consist of two unix/windows admins and some DBA/App Admins etc. This means - I cannot write responsible persons in templates i.e. "Windows Servers", because there will be many windows servers with different admin sets.

Then I thought OK, probably I could write a comments with host level macros i.e. host macros {$ADMIN1} and {$ADMIN2}, but for host level macros are not expanded in comments section.(zabbix 2.0.3) The same story with user defined macros.

of course - I can always write individual triggers for each server. While currently test installation is quite small installation with ( 20 test servers ,and ~2500 monitored items ) - in the future I think it will be quite hard to manage installation without using a standard templates.

Does anybody have an idea how to accomplish this reasonably easy way ?

P.S. Why zabbix macros do not expand in trigger comments and URLs ? May be there are some hacks for this ?

[m_gularte]

Hi!

I do not know what you will do to solve this problem... But have you considered use "actions"?

Create a user for each administrator, create an action for each administrador or groups and when a problem occurs, i'll have to look at actions and find the affected server in the list. You could also send an email or sms, doing that, there is no reason to know who the responsible is, because he will receive a message as soon the zabbix notice the problem. "when trigger appears monitoring person see whom to call." Don't need anymore =p.

By the way, sorry my poor english ^^.

Good Luck

[zeds]

yes, this was a way I did things for myself in my previous job. Actions w escalations. Currently however I am in a new job - and people here have a nice cocktail of their own habits,wishes and company procedures based on previous monitoring system.
In previous system they just moved mouse over "alert" and whole procedure with phones, limits and working times showed in popup. They liked it very much.

[heaje]

We've had to work through a very similar issue. What we did was build a small database that holds all the information for a particular server (team it belongs to, contacts, phone numbers, etc). Then for Zabbix we built a custom script that returns the information about a host when you left click on the name on the dashboard and select the appropriate script. The script was added under the "Administration"->"Scripts" section of Zabbix.

If you're handy with perl/php/python/etc. then this small thing is pretty quick to whip out.

[eskytthe]

You could use Host inventory
http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/...osts/inventory

You can update (Admin) fields etc. via the zabbix api, if you maintain the information another places.

Host inventory will be a menu on the hosts if information is put into it.
BR
Erik

[qix]

Also, I believe it is possible to use the inventory fields as macros in the messages you setup for actions. This will allow you to send notifications with the telephone number of the responsible person in the message.