In this chapter, we covered a great and easily-maintainable solution for larger-scale data collection—Zabbix proxies. Zabbix proxies are also very desirable for remote environments. Similar to Zabbix agents, Zabbix proxies can operate either in active or in passive mode, reducing the hassle with configuring firewalls.
Let's recap the main benefits of Zabbix proxies:
- Connections between the Zabbix proxy and the Zabbix server are done on a single TCP port, thus allowing us to monitor devices behind a firewall or devices that are inaccessible because of network configuration.
- The Zabbix server is freed up from keeping track of checks and actually performing them, thus increasing performance.
- Local buffering on the proxy allows it to continue gathering data while the Zabbix server is unavailable, transmitting it all when connectivity problems are resolved.
Remember that active agents must point to the proxy if a host is monitored through that proxy. Passive agents must allow incoming connections from the proxy by specifying the proxy IP address in the Server parameter. The zabbix_sender utility must also send data to the proper proxy; sending data to the Zabbix server is not supported for hosts that are monitored through a proxy.
It is important to remember that proxies do not process events, do not generate trends, and do not send out alerts—they are remote data-gatherers, and alerting can happen only when the data is delivered to the Zabbix server. Additionally, proxies do not support remote commands. While scheduled for implementation in Zabbix 3.2, we will have to wait for that version to be released to know whether the development was successful.
With proxies taking over the monitoring of hosts, it is important to know that they are available, and it is also important to be silent about hosts behind a proxy if the proxy itself is not available. We discussed several ways this could be done, including proxy-buffer monitoring to avoid sending alerts when the proxy has collected a lot of data during connectivity problems, and value-sending is behind.
Zabbix proxies are easy to set up, easy to maintain, and offer many benefits, thus they are highly recommended for larger environments.
In the next chapter, we will finally discuss that NONE sign you might have noticed next to all hosts and proxies in the configuration section under Agent encryption. It refers to encryption configuration, which is a feature that was added in Zabbix 3.0. Zabbix supports pre-shared key and certificate-based TLS authentication and encryption. Encryption is supported for all components—server, proxy, agent, zabbix_get, and zabbix_sender. We will set up both pre-shared key and TLS-based encryption.