StartVMwareCollectors uknonw parameter

[etormon]

Hello,

We are trying to monitor VMware, however when we setup StartVMWareCollectors to any value in config file , Zabbix does not start and we get the following error:

zabbix_server[121605]: zabbix_server [121605]: unknown parameter "StartVMWareCollectors" in config file "/etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf", line 319

Zabbix version 4.2.8

Any help will be appreciated,

Eliana

[tim.mooney]

Are you using official packages from zabbix.com, or did you compile Zabbix from source code?

When you start up zabbix_server, one of the first things it writes to the log is some messages about what features were compiled into (enabled in) the product. It looks something like this:

2880:20200515:162618.017 Starting Zabbix Server. Zabbix 4.4.7 (revision 77fb8c7ee0).
2880:20200515:162618.026 ****** Enabled features ******
2880:20200515:162618.026 SNMP monitoring: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 IPMI monitoring: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 Web monitoring: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 VMware monitoring: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 SMTP authentication: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 ODBC: NO
2880:20200515:162618.026 SSH support: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 IPv6 support: YES
2880:20200515:162618.026 TLS support: NO
2880:20200515:162618.026 ******************************


If yours doesn't say "VMware monitoring: YES", then your version wasn't compiled with the necessary support to monitor VMWare. I don't remember all the software libraries that need to be present specifically for VMWare, but I'm sure it's covered in the documentation. It probably includes libxml-devel and libcurl-devel (or curl-devel, on some distros), but there might be other stuff. Check the docs.

[etormon]

Thanks Tim, my answer below.

eliana

[etormon]

We installed using yum, didn't compile it.

Below the features from logfile and VMware monitoring is enabled, that is why I open this post:

17227:20200519:012717.504 Starting Zabbix Server. Zabbix 4.2.8 (revision cb5d5b10f4).
17227:20200519:012717.504 ****** Enabled features ******
17227:20200519:012717.504 SNMP monitoring: YES
17227:20200519:012717.504 IPMI monitoring: YES
17227:20200519:012717.504 Web monitoring: YES
17227:20200519:012717.504 VMware monitoring: YES
17227:20200519:012717.504 SMTP authentication: YES
17227:20200519:012717.504 Jabber notifications: NO
17227:20200519:012717.505 Ez Texting notifications: YES
17227:20200519:012717.505 ODBC: YES
17227:20200519:012717.505 SSH2 support: YES
17227:20200519:012717.505 IPv6 support: YES
17227:20200519:012717.505 TLS support: YES
17227:20200519:012717.505 ******************************
17227:20200519:012717.505 using configuration file: /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

Thanks in advance,

[tim.mooney]

Ok, thanks for ruling that out.

In my zabbix_server.conf, the parameter is StartVMwareCollectors . Note that the 'w' is not capitalized. Try it that way and see if it makes a difference.

[etormon]

My fault!! I have checked that a thousand times and didn't see the mispelled.

Thanks a lot, have restarted and zabbix is working fine. Now to continue with VMware monitoring configuration.

eliana

[aib]

just a side note - don't forget to start from vCenter configuration and attach all templates to vCenter host for auto-discovering of all VM, datastorages, and hypervisors.
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation.../vm_monitoring

[etormon]

Thanks Aleksey

eliana