Call for discussion on ZABBIX 1.6

[eran]

My list:

1. Ability to associate a web scenario with a template so it could be run against all the servers that are associated with that template - this is a great way to monitor web farms.
2. Be able to send meaningful alerts with the values that actually caused the failure. For example if a value goes above a certain threshold, I would like to get that value as part of the alert. I know that can be done today by creating a new action for each trigger and putting the values there, but it would be much better to be able to format the message in the trigger itself and have the action just send it.
3. WMI monitoring for windows (same idea as the perf counters only much stronger).
4. Improve DB performance and reduce DB load.
5. Collect the full response data of failed web tests (including all headers) so it can be analyzed later.
6. Loading of web tests in a browser environment (maybe mozilla) and not using LibCurl so AJAX applications can be tested.
7. Ability to run web tests from remote agents.
8. Automatic sending of daily (scheduled) summary reports and charts/screens by email.

That's it, other than that I love zabbix.

[Dmitriy Kirhlarov]

suggestions

I would like to see new macros {PORT} (in ideal, I want possibilitie to make my own macros) and more active using macroses.
For examples:
- I want check freshness of ssl certificates for different services (https, ldaps, imaps, smtps) and get expiration notification 10 days before. Currently I'm doing this with external check_http (from nagios-plugins package) but I need create one Item per port in my template.
- Macros for SNMP community can be VERY useful, I think.
- Update intervals too.

WBR.

[Logicwrath]

WMI support for Windows monitoring.

Configuration Management. The ability to add config records to a monitored item. Multiple config records per item.

Agents that encrypt traffic and have the ability of sending the traffic over the internet without a VPN. I currently use a lot of IPsec VPNs but not all remote sites have one. This would be great!

A month end report that I can customize. Something I can auto-generate and send to customers giving them piece of mind. I could probably build something in crystal although a delivered report would be nice.

I would really like it if I was able to integrate zabbix into another open source CMS system like Joomla/Mambo or Drupal etc...

A complete backup feature set. The ability to backup everything but the logs and schedule an FTP upload to an offsite server.

Better FreeBSD support as this is my nix OS of choice.

This could be off topic but I have been looking for a free solution similar to splunk. The ability to pull data either by snare agents or zabbix agents and index it on the zabbix server with google or splunk like search capabilities. Yea, I know this is deep left field but hey its worth a shot. I still have some research to do regarding the existing event log functions of the zabbix agent.

[bbrendon]

A complete backup feature set. The ability to backup everything but the logs and schedule an FTP upload to an offsite server.

I've seen this request a few times now. A few lines in a script and you're done. Zabbix is super-duper-duper easy to backup. Just run a few commands like mysqldump,tar,scp.

[Logicwrath]

Yea, I guess I could figure out what tables I need to backup and use mysqldump to create a scheduled task on my server to handle it but this would also be cool feature to easily add and polish off the system.

[Logicwrath]

I wanted to add another vote for hard disk SMART tools integration I read earlier as well. This would be a cool feature for the agent.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/

[Logicwrath]

I wanted to add another vote for hard disk SMART tools integration I read earlier as well. This would be a cool feature for the agent.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools/

Additionally, it would be nice if there was integration with one of the VNC flavors for 1 click VNC takeover on Windows machines. That would be awesome.

[rreilly]

Escalations.... Escalations.... Escalations...

[rreilly]

better navigation for graphs and/or include a zoom like feature that OpenNMS and Cacti have..

[morgan]

1.A Standardized API to handle active requests to add triggers, templates, hosts, etc to the configuration via the "Central Node". This would allow auto-discovery to work as well as handle the ability to make an automated provisioning action (new server) to notify the zabbix server to add/configure the system. While auto-discovery is nice in many cases, this would be beneficial under certain architectures.

I could also see this as simply a flexible (definable) interface to an action subset (so you'd have Discovery/Triggers/API-Action).

(I haven't seen any documentation of this feature in the current version(s)).

2. Enhanced "macro" support for notifications (ability to do pseudo scripts) that handle expressions when sending notifications.

3. Templated UI, allowing for a re-skinned (more easily) interface making callbacks to "core" functions to display the data.

4. API for data retrieval (live). Same as the above api, but retrieving information from the database in a more-useable format than hooking directly into the database and needing to then parse host-ids etc. While this can be done with a media-script and provide an "active" action when something happens, it would be nice to poll the data out into a custom defined location for presentation to a 3rd party.

5. Secured communication (SSL etc) for Agent->server and Server->server and server->agent.

I have more but these seem like the things that are most glaringly missing (from my "dream" monitoring system). This coupled with the Escalation module will make this tool much nicer.

[Frodo]

Only wish for me at this time is:

High quality update packages with good documentation.
For me i it is very important that an update to a newer release works without loss of data or graphs or anything else.

[swaterhouse]

It would also be nice if agents could update themselves. This could either be an automatic upgrade (i.e. each agent looks for updates and pulls newer versions on its own) or pushed to the agents from the server.

Scott

[swaterhouse]

Just thought of another one.

I just added a template to the wiki that has some values in a Value Map. It would be nice if any linked value maps would also get included in the export.

Scott

[globifrosch]

Zabbix "proxy" on windows

for monitoring in distributed environments, i would like to have a "Zabbix proxy" that can be installed on windows. This Proxy forwards agent-data to the central server and holds check-informations.

At the moment i do this with active checks, but every server/wks has to be able to connect to the internet.

or even better, zabbix-server on windows.

[morgan]

Triggers should have a NOT dependancy vs. an exclusive true dependancy.

IE:

I want to base all the triggers on ICMP PING (an icmpping) check. However, since the Value is a "1" for "OK" and "0" for "Failed" (and yes I like that, I know I could add a modifier to swap the two) I need two triggers:

1) Success (that is an "OK" state for all dependancies)
2) Failed State (for more severe state, I'm wanting to page a higher prio alert when this happens).

It would be easier if the Dependancy could be "!(ICMP FAILED)", requiring only a single trigger. This would greatly simplify a number of things.
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There should also be a "tuneable" sync timer allowing the node-to-node sync to happen at an arbitrary interval defined by the zabbix config (or within the database) vs. the Hard-Coded 120 second sync for configs, 10 seconds for events, and 5 seconds for the history.

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Perhaps move to an XML-RPC style (config) sync vs. the trapper doing the sync with it's own XML parser internally. This would allow for an API-like update and have the PHP utilize that vs. directly injecting into the db. This could also allow any other application to (when properly auth'd) add/remove/retrive data from the Zabbix servers. This would be more in line with ideal vs. the proprietary API or CLI interface.