The current ICMP Ping template pings one of the defined interfaces of a host, per default the first one. This is not very helpfull for hosts where no agent is running, e.g. if you want to monitor a external website.
For such situations you have to define two interfaces for a host. The first interface is the external host with its ip address or fqdn, because you need this host for the web checks. A second agent interface has to be configured with a n ip address of a running agent, e.g. to use this interface for ICMP Ping checks. But just using this second host agent interface does not help to ping the external host, because if you specify no target for the ping item only this agent interface is pinged. To work around this I create a ICMP Ping template where the ping target can be specified as a host macro. This executes the ping item on the given agent interface, but the wanted target, the external host, and not only the agent interface is pinged.
Can the ICMP Ping template be extended to specify a target using a host macro?
Or even better: Can the Zabbix server itself execute ping items like it is done for web scenarios and use the hostname or ip adress specified in a normal agent host interface?
I don't know if I understood something wrong regarding ping items, host interfaces and so on, but I only good a working setup with sense making checks with my own template where the ping target can be specified. Only this way the ping target was the wanted target and not the ip address of the given agent host interface.
For such situations you have to define two interfaces for a host. The first interface is the external host with its ip address or fqdn, because you need this host for the web checks. A second agent interface has to be configured with a n ip address of a running agent, e.g. to use this interface for ICMP Ping checks. But just using this second host agent interface does not help to ping the external host, because if you specify no target for the ping item only this agent interface is pinged. To work around this I create a ICMP Ping template where the ping target can be specified as a host macro. This executes the ping item on the given agent interface, but the wanted target, the external host, and not only the agent interface is pinged.
Can the ICMP Ping template be extended to specify a target using a host macro?
Or even better: Can the Zabbix server itself execute ping items like it is done for web scenarios and use the hostname or ip adress specified in a normal agent host interface?
I don't know if I understood something wrong regarding ping items, host interfaces and so on, but I only good a working setup with sense making checks with my own template where the ping target can be specified. Only this way the ping target was the wanted target and not the ip address of the given agent host interface.