In the template list, you can see many predefined templates. Should you use them as is? Should you modify them? Or just use them as a reference?

It depends. Carefully evaluate the default templates and decide whether you really want to use them as is. Maybe item intervals are too low or the history storage period is too high? If there's anything you would like to change, the suggested approach is to clone those templates and leave the defaults as-is. That will allow you to update the official templates later and always have the latest version for reference.

Regarding keeping them in sync, the easiest way is XML import, and we will discuss that in Chapter 19, Working Closely with Data.

And talking of community-supplied templates, this is something many of you will want to improve. The user who supplied the template might have had completely different requirements; they might have misunderstood some aspect of Zabbix configuration or handled an older device that does not expose as much data as the one you are monitoring. Always evaluate such templates very carefully and don't hesitate to improve them. I've added some URLs at the end of this chapter to get you started including the official page from Zabbix to share templates.