Proxy limitations
by Andrea Vacche, Patrik Uytterhoeven, Rihards Olups
Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Table of Contents
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Zabbix: Enterprise Network Monitoring Made Easy
- Credits
- Preface
- I. Module 1
- 1. Getting Started with Zabbix
- The first steps in monitoring
- Zabbix features and architecture
- Installation
- Summary
- 2. Getting Your First Notification
- 3. Monitoring with Zabbix Agents and Basic Protocols
- 4. Monitoring SNMP Devices
- 5. Managing Hosts, Users, and Permissions
- 6. Detecting Problems with Triggers
- 7. Acting upon Monitored Conditions
- 8. Simplifying Complex Configurations with Templates
- 9. Visualizing Data with Graphs and Maps
- 10. Visualizing Data with Screens and Slideshows
- 11. Advanced Item Monitoring
- 12. Automating Configuration
- 13. Monitoring Web Pages
- 14. Monitoring Windows
- 15. High-Level Business Service Monitoring
- 16. Monitoring IPMI Devices
- 17. Monitoring Java Applications
- 18. Monitoring VMware
- 19. Using Proxies to Monitor Remote Locations
- 20. Encrypting Zabbix Traffic
- 21. Working Closely with Data
- 22. Zabbix Maintenance
- A. Troubleshooting
- B. Being Part of the Community
- 1. Getting Started with Zabbix
- II. Module 2
- 1. Zabbix Configuration
- 2. Getting Around in Zabbix
- 3. Groups, Users, and Permissions
- 4. Monitoring with Zabbix
- Introduction
- Active agents
- Passive agents
- Extending agents
- SNMP checks
- Internal checks
- Zabbix trapper
- IPMI checks
- JMX checks
- Aggregate checks
- External checks
- Database monitoring
- Checks with SSH
- Checks with Telnet
- Calculated checks
- Building web scenarios
- Monitoring web scenarios
- Some advanced monitoring tricks
- Autoinventory
- 5. Testing with Triggers in Zabbix
- 6. Working with Templates
- 7. Data Visualization and Reporting in Zabbix
- 8. Monitoring VMware and Proxies
- 9. Autodiscovery
- 10. Zabbix Maintenance and API
- C. Upgrading and Troubleshooting Zabbix
- III. Module 3
- 1. Deploying Zabbix
- 2. Distributed Monitoring
- 3. High Availability and Failover
- Understanding high availability
- Understanding the levels of IT service
- Some considerations about high availability
- Implementing high availability on a web server
- Configuring the Zabbix server for high availability
- Implementing high availability for a database
- Summary
- 4. Collecting Data
- 5. Visualizing Data
- 6. Managing Alerts
- 7. Managing Templates
- 8. Handling External Scripts
- 9. Extending Zabbix
- 10. Integrating Zabbix
- D. Bibliography
- Index
While proxies have many benefits, they do have some limitations, too. Well, pretty much one main limitation—they are only data collectors. If the server cannot be reached, the proxy cannot do independent notifications. They can't even generate events; all logic regarding triggers is processed on the server only. Remember, proxies do not process events, send out alerts, or execute remote commands. Remote commands, discussed in Chapter 7, Acting upon Monitored Conditions, are currently scheduled for Zabbix 3.2—but one would have to see that version released to be sure about such a feature being implemented.
Let's talk about how proxies operate a bit. We'll cover three things here:
- Synchronization of the configuration
- Synchronization of the collected data
- Operation during maintenance
By default, proxies synchronize the configuration once per hour, and this period can be set in the zabbix_proxy.conf configuration file. Look for the parameter named ConfigFrequency, which by default will look like this:
# ConfigFrequency=3600
This means that a Zabbix proxy can lag in configuration up to an hour, which might sound scary, but once a production installation settles, the configuration usually doesn't change that often. While testing, you might wish to decrease this period, but in a stable production setup it is actually suggested to increase this value.
The collected data is sent to the server every second by default. That can be customized in the zabbix_proxy.conf file with the DataSenderFrequency parameter.
Note
The active proxy won't connect to the server every second if it has no values to send—a 1-second interval will be used only if it has data to send. On the other hand, if it has lots of values to send and cannot push them all in a single connection (which means 1000 values), the next connection will be performed as soon as possible without waiting that one second.
Regarding host and host group maintenance, when a host is in maintenance without data collection, data is still sent by proxy, but the server discards it. This way, changes in the maintenance status do not suffer from the default one-hour delay for configuration sync.
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