Zabbix Reviews

We use it in a traditional way. We replaced an older system based on Nagios, and we had problems with false positives. We install the Zabbix agent on the client hosts and set up automatic installs. The agent is added to these other client hosts, and we have the infrastructure in place to support static servers. 

Then we write the rules to tell Zabbix how we want it to report, and then let it run. If we've got a critical error, someone will be notified. Otherwise, we get an email message that a server is having a problem. 

Sometimes, the problems resolve themselves, and sometimes, they don't, and we have to take action. But it's mostly hands-off for the most part. It's doing very well for that.

It has improved our overall server performance monitoring. We know right away when there are problems. It has built-in statistics, so we can identify if there's spiking. We can see what's happening every day around the same time and check the configuration to see if there's something that's malfunctioning and needs to be fixed. As we get better at diagnosis, we can go back and look at the history of the systems to pinpoint problems.

I can pull up graphs using the parameters I want to check. You can see the current day, week, or month. It's all built-in. We use it to bring up graphs of specific parameters.

Sometimes, the documentation is a little bit awkwardly written. The language barrier and translation to English can sometimes make it difficult to understand what they're trying to get at. It's just a language thing.

We can usually figure it out, but that's the biggest thing I can think of. Other than that, it's been extremely reliable. 

We have been using it for four years now. 

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten; it's still really stable. We rarely have problems. And it's always been something else, like the database acting up or whatever. It's usually an external thing. It's usually not the Zabbix code itself.

Scalability is good. Zabbix uses proxies to manage incoming data from hosts. Since the system is receiving a lot of data, that could potentially put a real load on the server. The proxies handle some of the load from their respective clients and then feed that to the main server. 

For checks, Zabbix prefers that you use checks based on the data that's automatically flowing from each host rather than doing explicit checks or things like... don't go on this server and run a command except for a check. Just use the built-in checks, and we mostly do that. 

Some people when they switch over to Zabbix, they're not used to that. They're used to always adding regular checks, but sometimes it won't work. So, you can change it to be more on the passive check side, where the hosts don't have to do anything, and it's actually displayed on the server.

We've almost never used their direct customer service. We use their forums if we have issues that aren't super critical but still need addressing. It's mostly community support, which is free, and we can get a bit of information by asking questions there. It's not really direct support, but more like community support.

We actually paid for support for the last couple of years and decided that we've got it under control. We're not paying for support anymore, so we feel confident enough to manage it ourselves.

Positive

The previous product was really outdated and, literally, it was broken. It should have been updated years earlier.

 It was running but struggling. For example, it would get behind on its checks, and once it got too far behind, it would just throw them all away and start over. It was constantly missing things. It was clearly overloaded and not designed for our scale, so we were happy to move away from it. The difference after switching to Zabbix has been night and day.

I used to get paged at least once a day, sometimes multiple times. Now, with Zabbix, there might be weeks without any pages. We've never had a problem where we missed an alert.

It's great that the checks are much more intelligent. For example, rather than just saying, tell me when the load goes over five, you can say, "Tell me if the load is over five for more than ten minutes." So, if it doesn't go over five for ten minutes, you'll never get notified. It only waits for a combination of conditions to be true before it alerts you. That really cuts down a lot on the false positives.

We used a heavily customized Nagios. I wouldn't compare this old version to whatever is current so this is not a criticism of Nagios.

I'm not the person who set it up. We have a person in charge; he did most of the work. And then a lot of us – most of us do our tech work on the templates and things. We don't really work on the core of the product.

It's a small team. One main person and then two or three support people help them with specifics, like setting up the databases and things like that. So, supporting those kind of tasks. So, it's maybe three or four people. And many of us know how to use most of the features. Some people are better at things in other situations, so we just need to fully share that knowledge.

The main person's role is systems administrator. 

We have one to two people who perform maintenance. The person who runs the updates isn't the main developer. We have another admin who is really good at that. We'll all connect to a remote call like a Zoom call and watch the update process. This lets us share information about how the system is working.

For pricing, it's free. We don't pay anything for it. They open-source the code, and people pay for support. We purchased support for a year but never used it. We dropped support again since we have a tight budget.

It's been very reliable.

I would recommend Zabbix to others. We've been very pleased with how well it's worked and how much of an improvement it is on the system we had before. It's night and day.

I would rate it a nine out of ten. Nothing is perfect. One thing is a little clunky about it. We provide this hosting service to a bunch of different groups, and by default, you can only see the servers that are in our group. So, when we log in with our normal IDs, all we can see are the servers from our monitoring group. If I want to see other servers, I have to log in differently. (Turns out I had a parameter set incorrectly, and this problem is solved now)

Many of my customers want to replace enterprise products from Micro Focus, IBM, Computer Associates, eMT, etc., with Zabbix. They don't want to pay a high price for many modules and pieces of software, so they switch to an open-source product. 

I work for a software development company that produces a product, but it's not like Zabbix. We make an umbrella people-management solution, but we also integrate Zabbix. We typically offer customers a people management and business intelligence solution integrated with Zabbix for monitoring. We tell them Zabbix can meet all their monitoring needs, including servers, websites, applications, networks, etc. 

I like the Zabbix Interface. There are links to every menu. You can choose a node and right-click to pick a suite or go to alarms, support, graphs, etc. The software and server monitoring are excellent. The reporting has also improved considerably compared to the older version. 

Our customers also like that they don't have to use multiple modules. Micro Focus and major vendors typically require you to buy several modules and plugins. Our customers do not like that. We offer them a single product for all their monitoring needs. 

Zabbix needs to work on the network monitoring part. The competing products provide a network map. Zabbix lacks an adequate networking map. It has a map but it's static, it's not dynamic.

I have sold Zabbix for three years.

I rate Zabbix eight out of 10 for stability.

I rate Zabbix 10 out of 10 for scalability.

Implementing Zabbix is difficult. I've deployed many solutions over the years, and Zabbix is the hardest to implement. You have to do some development to get it to work with IBM, Micro Focus, or HP products. 

You can find some plugins or an integration package in the Zabbix community, but you'll always need to custom-develop something. Enterprise products aren't open-source, so creating a new integration is challenging. You may need to pay for software production professional services, which are expensive.

Many people in my country fail to implement this product. They say, "This is open-source, so I can implement it myself." However, it isn't easy in the beginning. An IT technician who has no experience with network or server monitoring tools will find it difficult to plan this implementation. They call us for help.

You need one person to implement the product, but you need help from the customer side. We need someone familiar with the customer's network, database, etc. The person implementing Zabbix needs to know Linux and have some programming knowledge. 

My customers are large enterprises monitoring thousands of devices. With commercial software, they must pay incredibly high licensing fees, and support costs are worse. 

When they replace their solutions with Zabbix, the return on investment is immediate because they don't pay support or licensing fees. They're saving more than $1 million in some cases. Some customers are paying upwards of $2.5 million for software support alone. These commercial solutions usually have several modules that are difficult to maintain and upgrade. 

It is open-source, but you can buy official Zabbix support. I will purchase this for my customers upon request. 

I rate Zabbix nine out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing Zabbix, you need to understand that deploying an open-source solution can be challenging. You must carefully plan your implementation. 

If you don't have a plan, you'll need to restart over and over. The planning phase is crucial, and millions of free video tutorials are online. I suggest studying these before starting a Zabbix project. They explain how to plan your deployment and install Zabbix. 

I used Zabbix for transaction monitoring.

Zabbix is good for discovery.

I had problems using Zabbix when working with SUSE Enterprise; many companies use SUSE.

I have used Zabbix for eight years.

The solution is very stable.

The scalability depends on the infrastructure and different contexts, including security.

I have seen strict security contexts, and scaling the solution required creating multiple Zabbix servers. The solution is not easy to scale with multiple networks and sites.

Eight to nine people are using Zabbix in our organization.

I previously used Nagios before Zabbix and switched because Nagios required more clicks for monitoring. There is a lot of work when working with Nagios because it needs much maintenance. It was a large deployment, and I didn't have templates or standards for the kinds of hosts required.

The initial setup is very easy. It takes one day to install and deploy the solution when done very well with the right parameters. Two people are required for deployment. And since maintenance is easy, it requires one person. However, the number of people needed to maintain the solution depends on how large the setup is.

Support for Zabbix is a little expensive. Support is probably for large companies. If you have 20,000 hosts, the support costs around €95,000 for a year.

I never used technical support and relied on documentation and the community instead. The documentation was good. Zabbix is a good choice if you have a good team on Linux and a good team in general because the support is expensive for Zabbix.

If you're planning to choose Zabbix, start with a small deployment for the first five years. I rate Zabbix a nine out of ten.

Our use case for Zabbix involved installing an agent-based tool to manage and control our workstations. We needed to gather information about parameters such as configurations. Zabbix proved highly flexible and adaptable to our needs, although there was a learning curve due to scripting requirements. However, the tool is easy to deploy and offers flexibility in usage and configuration.

We use Zabbix to monitor our organization's IT infrastructure and workstations. We don't use Microsoft Intune since it's expensive. The tool's real-time alerting system has proved crucial for us, particularly when a new device joins a network that is not one of our own devices. It notifies us about the presence of this new device, allowing us to investigate further. Additionally, it alerts us about disk usage, memory usage, and the software installed on the machine. 

The most valuable feature for me is its configurability. Zabbix provides a shell I can install on every machine, giving me control over them. This highly configurable shell allows me to customize it according to my needs. For example, I wanted to know all the software installed on each machine in detail, not just from the registry. So, we created a custom script for this purpose. We deployed the script, which runs monthly, providing details of all installed software and updates on each machine.

Tasks that would typically take three or four days to complete can now be completed in a single day. For example, if I ask my team to provide an inventory of all online assets and their status, Zabbix can generate this report within a day. Previously, such a task would take longer, around three to four days.

The customizable dashboard provides the core information we need at a glance, such as the number of devices, locations, and network details. Additionally, it allows for drill-down functionality into specific devices, offering detailed information about the operating system, users on the device, and other relevant details.

Integrating networks with our current IT infrastructure system was very easy. Zabbix uses a MySQL database, and since our team has significant skills in MySQL, we were able to pick it up and start using it with no problems at all.

In the next release, I'm hoping for features targeted towards larger users with more customizable options. Despite this, I think pre-canned reports that can be used straight out of the box would be beneficial rather than having to configure each report individually. Additionally, a deeper dive into software configurations on the machines would be useful, although I understand there may be challenges in implementing this due to scripting requirements. More documentation would also be appreciated.

I have been working with the product for two years. 

The stability is really good. It seems lightweight and doesn't interfere with other processes running on the machine. As far as I can tell, none of our users have returned to me with any issues regarding the tool.

My company has 150-200 users. We've scaled from zero to over 200 devices, and I believe our Ubuntu server and VM can handle further scaling by increasing the computing power. While we haven't tested it extensively, I'm confident it has good scalability. We do have plans to increase the number of network users. I intend to add another hundred users, but they will be from remote sites. My next project will involve exploring whether Zabbix can operate across virtual private networks

I need to go to other remote buildings, check our network, and retrieve usage data from all devices in those locations. This is something we haven't done before.

I believe the team contacted the technical team for assistance during some initial configurations. The responses were timely and helpful. I don't recall if it was through calls, but I think it was mostly via email or chat. 

Our deployment took about ten days, including setting up different servers. If we had to install agents on all machines manually, it would have taken us much longer, possibly turning into a three—to four-month project. Additionally, the system is easily updateable, allowing us to patch the agent and incorporate new monitoring components as needed.

The tool's licensing is good. 

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. I recommend people start using it and dive into it. You'll see value almost immediately.

We primarily use it for monitoring, but also for some other things.

In terms of customization and integration, we have more flexibility. We can automate configurations, define deletion rules, and customize based on your needs. The client interface allows for further configuration, making it quite comprehensive.

Architecturally, we can even extend to the cloud using Suncoast servers and proxy servers to communicate with WorkRock or the supervisor. The compatible database list makes configuration straightforward.

User-friendliness is another strong point. We have a customizable dashboard. We can define metrics directly in the web portal, avoiding editing configuration files. This provides several advantages, especially when managing multiple collections.

There are areas of improvement. The database grows really fast. So, when you install Zabbix, you have to deal with some issues, like the database. We become pretty big very fast. 

This leads to optimization challenges, requiring manual deletion of network components like SNMP. We should work with SNMP. It's not as simple as configuring the host incident.

Configuration can also be difficult. The use of a workflow in the configuration of items or triggers makes it difficult to use an item in a mature way. It's hard to set up a dynamic workflow. While workflows exist, setting them up for specific data sources like network items can be a hurdle. You may need to find alternative methods, which isn't ideal.

For some customers, there are some personal customization challenges. But, for me, it's okay.

I have been using this solution for a year. We use version 6.0, which is the next recommended version. We don't do long-term tests, so it is a middle version.

The latest long-term support version we're using is 6.1.0.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. 

There are around less than 20 end users in the company. These include admins, managers, and engineers. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

I work with the public community like a public forum. So, when I have a request, I use the public community forums. We usually find solutions within a day or two, depending on availability.

Neutral

There are many options available. Today, you can use alternatives that provide better-detailed information. For instance, we have alerts concerning specific issues. I'm using Azure as part of this organizational setup. 

In Zabbix, for metrics, the latest release is better, and we can also find some metrics. Essentially, we don't incur any cost of the same magnitude. In Zabbix, images allow us to view the bot system today for Windows, Linux, infrastructure, and networking processes.

The installation itself took about one to two hours. The lack of clear step-by-step procedures. There are procedures, but they're not very detailed or user-friendly.

There is a team of admins to supervise the product. 

Zabbix itself is free, but professional support is paid. They have different pricing tiers based on the category and enterprise level. You can find the detailed pricing policy on their website.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for monitoring issues and availability.

This product is very easy to deploy. It is easy to deploy as a Docker if you do not want to do a full deployment. 

The initial setup, while not simple, is easier than other products.

It offers native support of VMware ESXi integration.

The solution is stable.

It's free; it's open-source. 

The documentation has been very useful. The community is quite helpful as well. 

The networking monitor is not too easy to work with. It's like switch monitoring. It's okay, yet not perfect. It's something they could improve on. I'm still using SmokePing since the network monitoring isn't so great.

The initial setup isn't exactly easy.

I've been using the solution for one year. 

I've found the product to be quite stable and reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. I do not have issues with it crashing or freezing. 

I cannot speak to the scalability of the product. My scale is quite small. I've never reached the limit o the server. 

I'm the only one who uses the product right now. I only use it in my personal lab and therefore have no plans to expand usage right now. 

I've never dealt with technical support. I cannot say how helpful or responsive they are. 

A long time ago, I used Zenoss. Zenoss basically focused more on larger enterprises. The community version of Zenoss was less well-maintained. Zabbix has a better community. That was a major reason for switching. 

The implementation process was okay. No monitoring tool is easy, I would say. It's not extremely easy, and yet, it's not extremely complex like some of the other tools. There's a moderate level of complexity during deployment. The entire process takes a couple of hours.

For my level of usage, I only need one person, and that is me, to handle any maintenance tasks. 

I handled the implementation personally. I did not need the help of or use integrators or consultants.

In terms of ROI, it's been providing faster troubleshooting when there are issues. It provides a good dashboard to show global health. 

This is an open-source product, which makes it free to use. 

I'm a customer and end-user. 

We're currently using the latest update of the product. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

We deploy it for our customers.

The main use case is monitoring of the workplace services. That means lot of VDI systems, little machines, and all that stuff around office routers, switches, and even printers for example.

The Zabbix agent is one of the highlights. It's easy to deploy and self-registering into the system. This is very helpful. Using the template and the discovery, it's very easy to find examples from the community and make some changes if you need to, and deploy it and roll out. While the discovery is very easy, all the important things when getting connected is pretty straightforward.

The initial setup is very easy.

There is less computing power needed for scaling.

The solution is stable. 

It is open-source.

One of the real benefits is the API. You can do anything with an API; it makes life much easier. If you want to get reports or if you want to document something or you want to add something, you can use the API for that. That's really, really helpful.

The service module started with version six. There is room for improvement, due to the fact that this first step looks nice, yet it can be improved here for a better combination with the services and the dashboard. 

The event correlation could be better. From day one, we're using the API to create tickets for our operations, however, the correlation is not good, not there. A lot of the time, in that case, we are opening a few tickets for one problem, and then the correlation functionality is very, very limited.

The reporting is lacking. It is there, however, it's not a real reporting from my perspective. Reporting in Zabbix means you create a dashboard and then you can schedule that and you get it as a PDF. It's probably not the reporting most operations need especially if you need more data for importing Excel or whatever. Reporting is even, in a lot of ways, missing. In the other end, we are using the API to do that now. That said, the issue there is you need the developer to do that if you decide to go that route.

I have one year of experience with this solution.

The stability is good. I would rate it five out of five since we have no issues. It's been running well since the first day. We did two release updates in the meantime, however, there was no reason to restart something. The performance is very good. 

We have around 50 people using the solution. It is mostly the operation teams from different departments.

I was wondering if an open-source solution would scale well, since we have experience more with a lot of other enterprise tools, including Broadcom and HP. There are others which need much more resources to monitor the same devices, I would say. However, if you go to an enterprise solution like Broadcom or HP or ScienceLogic or BMC, you need much more infrastructure for monitoring than you do if you use Zabbix. In this sense, I can say it scales well. 

I'd rate the scalability five out of five. 

We haven't used the support from Zabbix so far. At the moment, all we are doing is using the manuals to troubleshoot. The documentation is good. Otherwise, we are using the community forum if we have any questions especially for creating templates or something like that. The community forum is great.

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's easy, not overly difficult. 

We started with just one single device, one single server, since we did not have too many devices. We have, I'd say, around about 2000. However, we found it enough to monitor them all with one device. We have one device for a UI, for the application and for database as well and it's just one single server. We started with that and figured out, from the performance, it was more than enough.

The deployment, just for the application, took less than a day. It was quick. There was not too much to do. 

Our team managed the deployment. We did not need outside assistance. 

The solution is an open-source product. We are using that version and have yet to purchase a license, which we may do further down the line - maybe a year for now.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The good thing is that it is easy to test. This is one of my favorite benefits and why I like open-source software. You can test it very well without signing contracts with enterprise vendors, for example. New users should put it on their laptop and try it out. It doesn't need much resources and you can discover your home network or your lab if you have something. 

I use Zabbix to monitor the threats in the IT infrastructure. 

Zabbix helps to save time. 

The solution needs to add remote features. 

I have been using the solution since 2017. 

I rate Zabbix's stability an eight out of ten. 

My company has 20 users for the product, but around 60 people enjoy the benefits of it. I rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. 

I have yet to reach out to the support. 

Zabbix's installation is easy. It is also easy for customization. 

The tool's licensing costs are yearly. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.