Enterprise-class

Monitoring
Solution for
Everyone
ALL-IN-ONE
OPEN-SOURCE
DISTRIBUTED MONITORING

CONTENTS
About Zabbix Software .............................................. 2
Main Functions ........................................................ 3
Architecture ............................................................. 4
Installation Requirements ............................................. 5
Advantages of Zabbix Solution .................................... 6
Release Cycle .......................................................... 6
Useful Sources ......................................................... 7

Some Facts
Best of Breed 2nd time nominee by Gartner
among the worlds best low cost monitoring
solutions
Over 1 million downloads every year
More than 100,000 users and growing
Zabbix interface is available in more than 25 of the
most commonly used languages

About Zabbix Software

Zabbix Monitoring Solution is the ultimate enterprise-level open-source monitoring software. It is designed for monitoring
availability and performance of IT infrastructure components. Zabbix is capable of monitoring an unlimited number of metrics
and provide sophisticated analytics on the health of IT infrastructure. Being able to identify the source of an IT system problem
allows Zabbix users to act fast and reduce costs associated with downtimes.
Network Automation. Remote commands in Zabbix it is a powerful mechanism for smart proactive monitoring. If you
configure an action with remote commands, Zabbix will automatically execute a certain predefined script for problem solving.
Global Recognition. Zabbix Monitoring Solution is used worldwide by a vast number of companies that have chosen Zabbix
due to its real scalability, high and robust performance, ease of use, flexibility, and, of course, extremely low total cost of
ownership (TCO).
Read more about Zabbix Software on http://www.zabbix.com/product.php

Zabbix at a Glance
Zabbix is the ultimate enterprise-class monitoring solution with the following characteristics:
All-in-one solution
Monitors performance and availability of networks, applications and cloud resources
Supports small to very large distributed environments
Supports wide variety of architectures
Sends notifications or executes remote commands in case of current or potential problems
Rich visualization capabilities, featured by dashboard, custom graphs and network maps
Provides distributed monitoring options with the use of Zabbix proxies
Zabbix is a completely open-source* product with no vendor lock-in, suitable for use in environments of any size.
* Zabbix Monitoring Solution is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2).

Reasons to Choose Zabbix

A solid monitoring solution
for multiple OS platforms
Cross-platform
Extensive customisation
capabilities of Zabbix
allow to integrate it in any
environment
Modularity and flexibility

True open-source software

No vendor lock-in
Free for commercial and
non-commercial use
Phenomenal Zabbix
community support from
thousands of members
around the world

Scaling to large
environments
Able to process more than
3,000,000 checks per
minute
Scales up to hundreds of
thousands of monitored
devices
Reliable commercial support

Main Functions
Data gathering
Zabbix offers great performance for data gathering and can be scaled to very large environments. Data is gathered
using various methods, including Zabbix native agents and agentless options: SNMPv1, SNMPv2, SNMPv3, IPMI,
WMI, trappers, SSH, Telnet, web checks.

TM

Data storage

Notification

Once Zabbix has gathered the data it doesnt throw

it away, but stores it for later analysis, which can be
reused further for billing, custom reporting, forecasting
or any other purpose. Several methods of collecting
performance and availability information about
monitored infrastructure are available in Zabbix:

Zabbix allows not only to collect, store and analyze

information about monitored environment, but also to
inform responsible personnel about occurred incidents
through a variety of notification methods:

Agentless monitoring
Zabbix agent
SNMP and IPMI agents
Custom monitoring
VMware monitoring
Web scenarios
Java applications
Database monitoring
Calculated and aggregate information
Internal performance

by e-mail
by SMS
by Jabber
further notifications can be scripted and customized
depending on the context (examples: Skype, instant
messaging, voice, etc.)
Powerful escalation module supports building of
complicated workflows to assist delivering only
relevant alert information to responsible personnel at
the right time.

Visualisation
Zabbix offers rich visualisation capabilities that allow working with your data faster and smarter. Zabbix visualisation
provides:
User-defined screens and slide shows
Mapping
Graphing (including pie charts)
Full list and details on Zabbix functionality are available at http://www.zabbix.com/functionality.php
3

Architecture
Zabbix Proxy
Zabbix proxy is a special process that
collects data on behalf of Zabbix server,
taking some processing load off the server.
Zabbix proxy runs as a daemon process.

Zabbix Agent
Zabbix agent is a process deployed on
monitoring targets to actively monitor local
resources and applications (hard drives,
memory, processor statistics, network, file
systems, etc).
The agent gathers operational information
locally and reports data to Zabbix server
for further processing.
Zabbix agents are extremely efficient
because of use of native system calls for
gathering information.

Zabbix Agent | Modes

Passive mode

Active mode

Advantages of passive mode:

Advantages of active mode:

1. Ease of setup
2. Support for data collection with flexible intervals
3. Intuitiveness in communication
(request <-> response).
4. Simpler troubleshooting

1. Can be used behind NAT

2. Data buffering
3. Reduce load on Zabbix server. No load on Zabbix
pollers
4. More secure

Installation Requirements
CPU | Examples of hardware configuration
Zabbix server and Zabbix database may require significant CPU resources depending on number of monitored parameters
and chosen database engine.
Name

Platform

Vendor /
Server model

Database

Monitored
hosts

Small

CentOS

Virtual Appliance

SQLite

100

Medium

CentOS

HP ProLiant DL320e Gen8 E31240v2 1P 8GB-U P222 Hot Plug

4 LFF 350W 1TB x 2 SAS 7.2 PS
Server
(675422-001)

MySQL InnoDB

500

Large

Red Hat Enterprise

Linux

HP ProLiant DL360e Gen8 E52440v2 2P 64GB-R B320i/512 8

SFF 600GBx4 6G SAS 10K 460W
RPS Svr/S-Buy
(747094-S01)

RAID10 MySQL InnoDB or

PostgreSQL

>1000

Very large

Red Hat Enterprise

Linux

HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8 E52650 2.0GHz 8-core 2P 256GB-R

P420i/2GB 800GBx4 SSD FBWC
750W RPS US Server
(709943-001)

Fast RAID10 MySQL InnoDB

or PostgreSQL

>10000

Software | Back-end storage

Zabbix is built around a modern Apache or Nginx web server, leading database engines, and PHP scripting language.
Using Zabbix it is possible to store information in different databases, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite and IBM DB2.

Sizing
The table below contains real examples of required disc sizing for the most commonly used parameters:

Example of parameters (size)

Amount of history
(per month)

Amount of trends
(per year)

Amount of
configuration

100 hosts

10 GB

2 GB

1 GB

1 000 hosts

80 GB

17 GB

1.3 GB

10 000 hosts

690 GB

150 GB

3 GB

100 000 hosts

4.5 TB

1.3 TB

5 GB

* Assuming 50 metrics per host checked every 60 seconds

Advantages of Zabbix Solution

Technical benefits

Business benefits

Quick and easy installation

All-in-one solution
Real-time monitoring
Suitable for environments of any size
Flexibility
Instant notification mechanism
Anomaly detection
Superb community support

Low TCO
No vendor lock-in
Satisfaction with performance and scalability
Network visibility
Access to professional support services
Improvement of customer experience
Reliable commercial support

Release Cycle
Zabbix team is committed to a program of scheduled releases on a six-month basis. Every six months Zabbix releases a new
stable version.

The continuous frequency of Zabbix releases

During every year and a half Zabbix releases:

1 Zabbix LTS (Long Term Support) release.

2 Zabbix Standard releases.

Zabbix LTS releases are supported for Zabbix

customers during five (5) years i.e. 3 years of Full
Support (general, critical and security issues) and
2 additional years of Limited Support (critical and
security issues only). Zabbix LTS version release will
result in change of the first version number.

Standard Zabbix releases are supported for Zabbix

customers during six (6) months of Full Support
(general, critical and security issues) until the next
Zabbix stable release, plus one (1) additional month
of Limited Support (critical and security issues only).
Zabbix Standard version release will result in change
of the second version number.

Read more about Zabbix Life Cycle & Release Policy at http://www.zabbix.com/life_cycle_and_release_policy.php

Useful Sources
Installation
Zabbix software can be installed in your environment. Installation services are available for those customers who would like
Zabbix to be installed by an experienced Zabbix software engineer.
See Turn-Key Solution services at http://www.zabbix.com/services.php

Distribution Media
Zabbix is available in ready-to-deploy packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu. Visit our download
page at http://www.zabbix.com/download.php

Documentation
Zabbix documentation is freely accessible and available online and provides all important information you may need to know
about Zabbix software. Details at http://www.zabbix.com/documentation.php

Professional Services
Zabbix Team offers easy access to a number of Zabbix professional services, including software installation, integration, custom
development, consulting and training. For more information visit http://www.zabbix.com/services.php
Zabbix Partner Program is built to extend Zabbix services locally through a trusted network of professional IT companies. With
Zabbix global partnering program we ensure professional support to our diverse customer community in local languages
worldwide. More information at http://www.zabbix.com/partner_program.php

Zabbix SIA

Dzelzavas Street 117

Riga, LV-1021
Latvia

Worldwide
USA (Toll-free)
Japan
Fax
Web
E-mail

+371 6778 4742

+1-877-4-ZABBIX
+81-3-6895-7527
+371 6778 4741
www.zabbix.com
sales@zabbix.com