Modbus protocol

[Roman Filippov]

It is necessary to add modbus monitoring next to SNMP, JMX, IPMI. Since there is no special difference, it is about the same thing.

[cyber]

Except... modbus needs an agent to do the work, all the other you listed do not need it...

[Roman Filippov]

Why would that be?
What kind of monitoring work is not performed by the agent or serever? SNMP or IPMI or else?

[cyber]

Why would that be?
What kind of monitoring work is not performed by the agent or serever? SNMP or IPMI or else?

SNMP, IPMI. JMX, these are performed by server/proxy. JMX with the help of java gw... They do not need Zabbix agent to function... Modbus stuff is a plugin for agent2. I have never used it, its just not my area of work... For all I can see, it might aswell be because usually you have somekind of computer connected to your devices and it would be easier to read modbus data locally there and not bother building server/proxy with that functionality... It is more secure that way and not everything is available over ethernet ..

[Roman Filippov]

SNMP, IPMI. JMX, these are performed by server/proxy. JMX with the help of java gw... They do not need Zabbix agent to function... Modbus stuff is a plugin for agent2. I have never used it, its just not my area of work... For all I can see, it might aswell be because usually you have somekind of computer connected to your devices and it would be easier to read modbus data locally there and not bother building server/proxy with that functionality... It is more secure that way and not everything is available over ethernet ..

HM, So what's the difference for zabbix? between SNMP and Modbus TCP/IP?

[cyber]

All I know about modbus, is that it exists.. I can only assume things here. First and foremost, if modbus support is built as agent plugin, it was probably easiest way to do it. I can assume, that building support for it into server/proxy is much more complicated thing. Doing it in a secure and reliable way ... The other side can be the amount of clients, who would need it. Do we need another type of host because of this? I am not sure, if a normal host with a plugin installed can do everything...

[Roman Filippov]

I agree that this is probably difficult, but adding another protocol to zabbix when it has already been solved and perhaps does not look like a difficult problem. Especially since I'm not the only one who needs it.