In the previous article, we discussed eight common open-source monitoring software tools, among which Zabbix and Prometheus are currently the most favored and widely applied in the market. So, as open-source monitoring platforms originating abroad, how have Zabbix and Prometheus managed to gain not only popularity among foreign enterprises but also significant influence in the domestic monitoring market? Next, let’s briefly analyze why Zabbix has won the favor of enterprises both domestically and internationally. (We will introduce Prometheus in subsequent articles and won’t elaborate on it here.)

Zabbix is an enterprise-level open-source distributed monitoring solution that supports collecting millions of metric data points from tens of thousands of servers, virtual machines, network devices, and more. It possesses the functionalities commonly found in commercial monitoring software, such as performance monitoring for hosts, network devices, and databases; monitoring of general protocols like FTP; multiple alerting methods; and detailed reporting and charting. Zabbix supports automatic discovery of network devices and servers, is distributed-capable for centralized display and management of distributed monitoring points, and is highly extensible, with the server providing general interfaces that allow enterprises to enhance various monitoring aspects through secondary development.

1. Open Source and Free

Zabbix is a completely open-source and free enterprise-level monitoring solution, requiring no payment or commercial license. All enterprises can use it free of charge. As the saying goes, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players for profit.” Since enterprise operations aim for profitability, the open-source and free nature of Zabbix has become one of the key reasons many enterprises choose it.

2. Comprehensive Solution

As an enterprise-level monitoring platform offering a complete solution, Zabbix’s powerful features cannot be overlooked:

• Data Collection: Availability and performance detection, automatic discovery, support for multiple collection methods including agent, SNMP, JMX, and telnet, support for active and passive mode data transmission, and customizable plugins and data collection intervals.
• High Availability: Low device performance requirements for the server, support for proxy-based distributed monitoring and centralized management, automatic discovery for automated monitoring, open interfaces for high extensibility, and easy plugin development.
• Alert Management: Support for multi-condition alerts, multiple alerting methods, multiple template groups, and template inheritance.
• Alert Settings: Alert cycles, alert levels, alert recovery notifications, alert pauses, time-based thresholds, maintenance cycles, and single-machine deactivation.
• Graphical Display: Allows for custom creation of multi-metric views, network topologies, custom panel displays, and custom IT service availability.
• Historical Data: Configurable historical data queries and built-in housekeeping data cleanup mechanisms.
• Security Audit: Features secure user audit logs, permission authentication, and user restrictions on maintainable lists.

3. Diverse Monitoring Scenarios

Zabbix can adapt to monitoring scenarios of various scales. In medium, large, and ultra-large monitoring scenarios, distributed deployment is essential, and the presence of Zabbix Proxy significantly enhances its scalability. Especially in today’s hybrid and multi-cloud environments, Zabbix can unify monitoring solutions.

More importantly, theoretically, Zabbix’s distributed solution supports unlimited expansion, meeting the monitoring needs of ultra-large-scale devices. The deployment of Zabbix Proxy extends the capabilities of the Zabbix server while reducing network bandwidth pressure. With a proxy handling approximately 100 nodes’ conventional operating system monitoring metrics, network IO is only around 200Kb, significantly reducing bandwidth pressure.

4. Powerful Network Discovery

Zabbix also supports automatic discovery of network devices, file systems, network interfaces, and SNMP OIDs. After discovery, Zabbix Agent automatically registers devices, which is of great significance for monitoring large-scale network device access and can significantly improve monitoring efficiency.

5. Flexible Customization

Zabbix offers flexible customization capabilities. For example, its alerting mechanism allows users to configure alerts for almost any event and customize alert notifications based on escalation plans, recipients, and media types. Using macro variables can also make alert notifications more efficient and useful, enabling users to respond quickly to server issues.

6. Rich Visualization Options

Zabbix supports combining multiple monitoring items into a single view, creating custom charts, network topology diagrams, and dashboard-style displays of custom aggregated graphics and slideshows, providing higher-level display views of monitoring resources (business views).

7. Swift Web Interface

Zabbix adopts a PHP-based web frontend, with all reports, statistics, and configuration parameters accessible through web-based frontend pages. The web-based frontend ensures users can access the monitored network status and server health from anywhere. After appropriate configuration, Zabbix can play a crucial role in monitoring IT infrastructure, applicable to both small organizations with a few servers and large enterprises with numerous servers.

Summary

Overall, although Zabbix is merely an open-source software, its powerful features have equipped it with the capability to rival commercial monitoring solutions. Coupled with its lack of commercial copyright restrictions, absence of worries about after-sales support, support for secondary development, and ease of use, it’s hardly surprising that enterprises find it hard to resist. What do you think, folks?