19. Using Proxies to Monitor Remote Locations
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
The Zabbix server can do monitoring using lots of different methods—it can communicate with Zabbix agents, SNMP devices, and IPMI devices; run commands; and a whole lot of other things. A problem arises when the number of devices to be monitored increases—a single endpoint (our Zabbix server) is supposed to communicate with lots of others, and a large number of connections can cause problems both on the Zabbix server and in the network components between the Zabbix server and monitored devices.
It gets worse if we have to monitor remote environments—be it a branch office, another data center, or a customer site. Zabbix agents? Port 10050 must be open to all servers. SNMP? Port 161 must be open to all devices. It becomes unmanageable real quick.
A solution is to use Zabbix proxies. A Zabbix proxy is a remote data collector process that is capable of collecting data using all the methods the Zabbix server supports. In this chapter, we will set up a Zabbix proxy, use it for data gathering, and discuss the best methods to determine whether the proxy itself is available.
The Zabbix proxy first appeared in Zabbix version 1.6, back in 2008. Since then, it has proven to be a very good solution. When the Zabbix proxy first appeared, it supported connecting to the Zabbix server only, similarly to active agent. Zabbix version 1.8.3 introduced a capability of the server to connect to the proxy, and now active proxies and passive proxies are available. While the Zabbix agent can communicate with the server in both ways at the same time by having active and passive items on the same host, the Zabbix proxy communicates with the server only in one way at a time—the whole proxy is designated active or passive.
The proxy mode does not change the direction of connections to or from the monitored devices. If using active items through a proxy, the agent will still be the one making the connections, and if using passive items, the agent will be accepting connections. It's just that instead of the server, the agent will now communicate with the proxy.
In both active and passive mode, server-proxy communication requires a single TCP port, to a single address only, to be open. That is much easier to handle on the firewall level than allowing connections to and from all of the monitored devices. There are more benefits a proxy may provide—but let's discuss those once we have a proxy running.
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