Introduction:

When running production workloads, it’s critical to have real-time monitoring and alerting in place. Zabbix is a powerful open-source monitoring solution that can help you track system health, performance, and availability across your entire infrastructure.

Adding Zabbix Agents to Other Servers:

Zabbix agents are lightweight daemons that collect metrics (CPU, memory, disk, process status, etc.) and send them to your Zabbix server.

Installation:

On Linux servers (Ubuntu/Debian):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install zabbix-agent -y

Configuration:

Edit the agent config file:

sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf

Update the following:

Server=<Zabbix_Server_IP>
ServerActive=<Zabbix_Server_IP>
Hostname=<Unique_Hostname>

Restart the agent:

sudo systemctl restart zabbix-agent
sudo systemctl enable zabbix-agent

Configuring Alerting:

Once metrics are flowing, you’ll want to get notified when something goes wrong. Zabbix supports multiple channels like Email and Mattermost.

Email Alerts:

• Go to Administration → Media types → Email
• Configure your SMTP settings (SMTP server, port, username, password)
• Test email delivery
• Assign email media to users under Administration → Users

Mattermost Alerts:

• Generate a Mattermost incoming webhook URL
• In Zabbix, create a new Webhook media type
• Use the webhook URL with a JSON payload like:

{
  "text": "{ALERT.SUBJECT}\n{ALERT.MESSAGE}"
}

• Assign it to users who need alerts

Start Monitoring Your Infrastructure:

Once agents are installed and alerts are configured, you can:

• Create triggers (e.g., high CPU load, low disk space)
• Define actions (send alerts, escalate issues)
• Visualize metrics with dashboards and graphs
• Set maintenance windows for planned downtime

Conclusion:

With Zabbix agents deployed, and alerting set up across Email, Slack, and Mattermost, you now have full visibility into your infrastructure. Proactive monitoring not only helps prevent outages but also improves performance tuning and capacity planning.