Zabbix Reviews

The solution is open-source. 

The infrastructure monitoring is great. Then, Zabbix being open-source, and with the whole platform, we have good network monitoring there. You have these ping monitors, synthetic monitors, that are really helpful.

The solution can scale well.

Technical support is great.

The pricing of the product is reasonable.

For internal monitoring and network monitoring the solution is really good.

It's open-source software, and due to that, they really don't have legacy service monitorings like APM, or build-on capabilities, and the pure part of the transaction-related data. It is good for internal network monitoring, however, it's not for the service we are monitoring, microservices.

The stability could be better.

Basically, they need to provide automated monitoring, synthetic monitoring, and then APM monitoring as well as more on microservices or technology space, maybe like Java, .NET, Datadog, et cetera - these kinds of add-on instrumentations. They need to work somewhat on the dashboard and alerting side. Dashboards are not that good. They can improve on them.

With Zabbix, I just started as an open-source strategy moving from the enterprise version. It has been six months.

It's not extremely stable. 

n terms of infrastructure, you have to tune based on your requirements. You're monitoring 1,000 or 10,000 systems, so it depends on what you're monitoring, and you have to tune it. They don't have a tuning table or sizing recommendations. However, they have the beta version of it. Certainly, on the console side, they need to improve a lot in terms of stability and performance, and bottlenecks of the product. Whatever data we process with Zabbix goes to Postgre or MySQL. Right now, we are trying to use Postgre. They are using it to do a lot of time scaling stuff so that we can support SQL data. However, it seems like they have limitations with the Postgre database.

The solution is scalable. We have admins and users and 50 IT people on it. However, the systems we are monitoring are more than 10,000. You can monitor more than 10,000 UIs. That's our target.

We are using the open-source version and therefore we don't get technical support. However, if someone wants to opt for it, they can get it and technical support is great, even though we haven't used it yet.

The pricing is very reasonable. Zabbix is very cheap. Compared to other tools like Nagios and others, Zabbix is very cheap.

If a company wants to implement the solution, I suggest they go with the latest version. It is a stable version. Preferably they should use it with the database, and not the AWS database, as it doesn't give you time scaling. You have to install your own Postgre and you can apply the time scaling feature in that. That way, you can add your data competition to Zabbix. 

You have to do a lot of tuning on cache and view sizing. If your clients are on a remote site, you usually use proxies. Therefore, data will be sent to proxies, and then from proxies, it will be sent to the server. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

I use the solution for network monitoring. When I was in engineering school I used this solution and I found it really good. I wanted to bring the functionality of this solution to my community to show the engineers in my enterprise. There is not a lot of understanding of network monitoring and I am hoping to bring to them my knowledge. 

The solution's design has recently changed and it is visually pleasing with more color, for example, there is blue, black, and white. If you are a new user it is very simple, you do not need to be highly technical to use it. You can rapidly learn how to use this solution.

When using this solution in enterprise monitoring, you are able to see that there are some issues with equipment that could be causing a problem. Sometimes you want to make a root command that you do not want to be executed automatically. What we have tried to do is open an SSH session directly from the solution's interface but it is not possible. I have heard from others that there are scripts that can manage this task easily but I have not figured it out. In the area of the solution where you write the command, it is not very user-friendly and could be improved. We want the ability to write commands and execute them manually.

Additionally, I would like the ability to be able to have network mapping for this solution. I use network mapping to monitor networks and there are not very many tools that are able to do it or if there is a tool, it is not easy.

The color scheme of the interface could improve by allowing more variations or user customization.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The solution is stable. 

We have approximately 10 people using the solution in my company.

In my community, we were previously using Nagios and Cacti.

The solution is free. However, many open-sourced tools start out free but eventually start charging, I hope this solution stays free. 

I rate Zabbix an eight out of ten.

We - msp - use this solution for enterprise-wide monitoring and alerting for network devices, appliances, Linux, Windows, Exadata, ODAs, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and MySQL databases.

We detect problems before the customer does and before it actually happens using the predictive functions in Zabbix. Zabbix gives us a single point of truth.

The most valuable features are the low-level discovery, auto registration, host discovery, integration with other tools, and the zbxdb plugin for database monitoring

Very good templates

I would like to see a more flexible mobile client, and better HA out of the box.

It would also be very interesting to have a GUI on the proxy server[s]

I have been using this solution for eight years.

Stability of the product (servers and agents) was one of the key factors we checked. The agents normally have a low footprint and are very resource friendly.

Especially when using postgres with the timescaleDB option, the performance improved a lot because data deletion is now done by dropping partitions, which saves lot's of database time. We are confident that zabbix kan keep working for us while we grow. In the end, the bottle neck will be the database but we see a lot of options to stretch this.

Zabbix support works through various channels and works responsive. We are also very glad with the community support where we also share our experiences. Currently there is an active community in Telegram https://t.me/ZabbixTech

Earlier we used all kinds of other tools, all for a part of the stack. Oracle enterprise manager for oracle databases, PEM for postgres databases, SCOM for Windows, prtg for network, appman for applications. This required to run and maintain all those tools .... Now consolidating to 1 saves a lot of time and gives a single point of truth.

The initial setup is easy. Making it completely HA required some work but if you are familiar with the redhat tools it is not hard.

We implemented the zabbix solution our selves. A team consisting of a Linux admin and a postgres dba that both know Linux and zabbix setup the infra structure. The other teams gave input for their metrics, thresholds and views.

Combined with the other tools that we phased out the ROI will be within 1 year. One of the things we save a lot of money on is the replacement of SMS by an other notification service.

Make a POC, start simple and let it grow. The servers are created with good performance by design. Memory for the caching, both on the database as on the zabbix server are important. As database backend choose postgres with timescaleDB. This save many hours housekeeping processing. For proxies, sqlite will do nicely. Involve a dba for the database setup.

We checked the above mentioned options. Zabbix came out as a winner. Simple, good web application, no need for fat clients which makes maintenance simpler. Zabbix does not have the nicest GUI, compared with some above but it is certainly acceptable, especially when pricing is taking into account. Especially with the postgres database in combination with the timescaleDB options is has an excellent performance. It has a clean database design and handling.

If state of the art reporting is important, integrate with grafana. It can be done via the api and directly on the zabbix database.

If performance and scalability is important, use postgres with timescaleDB as database backend. This wins hands down compared to mysql.

The primary use case is the cost. Typically speaking, our customers have a plethora of tools and they find it very difficult to manage their business services with a selection of tools. In most cases, they're able to replace all of their tools with one — Zabbix. 

We counsel groups and we recommend using Zabbix — we're a reseller.

We focus on Zabbix. When a customer needs it integrated with Microsoft, or ServiceNow, or other solutions, then we help them out from a consulting perspective. We focus on and we recommend Zabbix. Which is an enterprise monitoring solution.

I take care of sales and marketing.

If the customer requires integration, then there are easy ways of integrating Zabbix with JIRA, ServiceNow, ITSM, and all other sorts of different solutions.

The most valuable aspect of this solution is the fact that it is enterprise-level, scalable, and free.

Just being free isn't enough, obviously. You have to be able to respond to a considerable number of enterprise requirements and be secure. Security is part of the enterprise requirements. The fact that Zabbix can offer those things, and it's free, is why our customers choose it.

When our customers don't choose to go with Zabbix, it's usually been because they're looking for a solution that also contains mainstream AI, AIOps, if you wish. AIOps is a fully noted marketing buzzword, which can mean all sorts of things for different people. When I use that term, I'm talking about the requirement to analyze in-depth enterprise data. Zabbix is not an analytics platform.

We've never had any issue at all integrating Zabbix with any of the existing enterprise tools, whether it be ITSM, JIRA, or an analytics tool like Splunk — it's never been an issue. Their design team does a very good job allowing people to get access to the Zabbix database and to the Zabbix Schema, which defines the data that's stored in.

In the latest version, which is just about to be deployed, they are adding the capability of doing APM (Application Performance Monitoring). That's a feature that has currently been lacking — we'll have to see how it goes.

I have been using Zabbix for one year.

It's a very reliable platform and we've never had any issues regarding the scalability or the stability of Zabbix. We've seen customers (not our customers) that have got huge implementations of millions of objects which are being managed. We've never had any issues with scalability.

Zabbix is not a licensed software. People don't buy licenses for Zabbix. Technically, we are a reseller. So what is it that we resell from Zabbix? The answer is their service. Either their contractual support, their annuity based support, or their technical support. We can get them involved in certain implementations if the customer requirements require that.

Zabbix technical support is sold separately.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's a powerful tool; it's applicable to many different domains, through networks, through infrastructure, through applications, through containers, virtual resources, and cloud-based applications — it can be applied to all of them. The initial implementation is usually something we never have an issue with. It's a very easy-to-download package. Implementation requires experience. Deploying Zabbix is very easy, but if you don't know what you're doing, you can make an awful mess. That's where and why we offer our consultancy — to help people to make sure that they don't end up with petabytes of monitoring information on the first day. Which of course no one has any time to go through and handle. 

Speak to a Zabbix expert before you get started because there are so many options in terms of architecture for deployment that you really need to understand relating to how Zabbix can give you those options and why they're useful. Options might include encryption or distributed architecture, so delegating monitoring responsibilities close to the objects that have been managed using proxies is a good idea. There are choices to be made so if you don't know the product and you are speaking to someone who does, then listen, because they can advise you properly to get the best benefit out of the software. Zabbix is a free package, you're not paying for any licensed software; the expense of Zabbix over time is related to how it's deployed and used. If you don't deploy it right, then you'll spend more time fixing your mistakes than actually using the software.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Zabbix a rating of eight.

I am not giving them a higher rating because they don't have analytics. They're getting there. They're becoming more and more proactive. They just added something which was very important called 'application performance monitoring'. From an enterprise perspective, they still lack the analytics capabilities, but that's not necessarily an issue unless you're looking to choose one tool that does everything.

I was using Zabbix as a monitoring tool at my previous job, although I have left that company and am no longer using this type of product. We were using it for monitoring routers and a few thousand other devices. We had visibility as to their status.

The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring.

If Zabbix had a better dashboard then it would be nice.

I had been working with Zabbix for three years.

The stability is very good.

We had between 20 and 30 users and more than 2,000 devices.

I have not personally been in contact with technical support.

Prior to using Zabbix, we used Nagios. We switched because it became unstable and clumsy when we grew to have more than 2,000 devices. Zabbix was much better in terms of scalability.

I don't recall all of the details related to the initial setup, although I remember that it was not quite easy. We had to conduct quite a few searches on Google during the process in order to properly understand how to install it. If I remember correctly, there were a couple of errors.

We had two engineers who were responsible for maintenance.

Overall, I think that Zabbix is an awesome tool and I would use it again, rather than another one. For us, Nagios was a disaster and Zabbix was the savior. We didn't require any functionality that it didn't already have. My only complaint is that the dashboard needs to be improved.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have a lot of servers (about 10,000). We monitor and manage them using Zabbix.

It has rich functions.

The financial setting is the most valuable feature, since Zabbix can use old data to current data to set the threshold. We can use previous data to set the threshold.

I want Zabbix to improve the UX/UI. Zabbix doesn't use a JavaScript chart for images, and I want them to improve this.

Performance is really stable.

It is scalable.

We don't use technical support. We have a contract, but we don't use it because there are not many problems.

We switched from our previous solution because of cost.

I installed Zabbix, and it was easy.

It is free, which allows us to reduce costs.

Our choices were Geneos, Nagios, Zabbix, Centreon, and Cacti. We chose Zabbix because we did a proof of concept, and Zabbix was the best. It had the richest functions, and it was free.

I would rate this solution as a 10 out of 10. It is the best product. I really love Zabbix because it has a lot of functions and works well. My advice is to use Zabbix.

When selecting a vendor, the number of customers is very important along with the price.

I use Zabbix on my Raspberry Pi and it is set up to monitor our network. We are testing it at the moment to see how it responds to our network, which includes laptops and workstations.

I have not gone into great detail with the product, although I expect to be doing that within the next months.

It is not hard to integrate.

I am having difficulties connecting it to Grafana, as well as some of the other plugins like Kibana. 

I have been using Zabbix for the past year.

The stability is okay, although, at this point, I'm only using it on a Raspberry Pi. I need to set it on a higher level server to see exactly how it responds on the network and how to deal with it. In this testing phase, it is stable, but when I'm ready to put it live into production then we will see how it reacts.

I haven't tried to scale it, yet. I am the only one using it because I'm performing the testing.

I have not been in contact with technical support.

The basic setup is very easy. I installed it in a Raspberry Pi with a Linux version. It took perhaps 20 minutes to install, at the most.

This is a product I can recommend to others.

Overall, I think that this is a great tool, although I need to spend more time with it to see exactly what the different features are, and how I can use it to implement my network better. There are a few glitches that need to be fixed, such as making the plugins easier to install.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

This is a network monitoring solution that I was playing around with to see if it would meet my needs.

Zabbix helped me to identify issues on the system, as well as ports that were open.

The most valuable feature is the support for monitoring Cisco switches. It is easy to use because there is a free template for it included.

The main problem with Zabbix is that you have to spend time writing templates for all of the products that you have. It would work great if I had the time to do it, but considering that I have all kinds of different devices, I don't want to spend the time doing it.

If they included more prebuilt templates of devices that are in use today, then it would be very helpful. For example, they have a template for a SonicWall 3600, but they don't have one for a SonicWall Tz300. They do have some base templates but they are not customized for these specific products. For some products, I was able to download one, but not for all of them.

The documentation needs to be improved.

The deployment is complex and should be simpler to complete.

I have been using Zabbix for about a month.

Once the product is started, it is stable.

I didn't really test the scalability. For me, it wasn't scalable because I only used it for the devices for which I had templates. I was the only person who was using it.

I did not contact technical support.

I was using Kaseya Traverse, which I bought because I have a large Kaseya installation. I thought that it would monitor sFlow, but it didn't, so I returned it and then replaced it with LogicMonitor.

Basically, the problem was that in order to support sFlow, I would have to have a virtual machine for each of the network switches that I wanted to monitor. So if I had 50 switches then I would need 50 virtual machines to monitor sFlow. When they told me that it supports sFlow, then technically, they are correct. However, what they didn't tell me was that for each switch, you have to create a separate collector, which didn't make any sense.

With SolarWinds NetFlow, you can have multiple switches with one collector.

After I downloaded Zabbix, it was a pain to set up. I would say that it is complex in terms of the instructions. I was getting errors, and apparently, I was not the only one. I had to look at two or three different websites to get it set up. I found that if you follow the steps that come with it, which were not very detailed, it did not work. I had to search through different forums in order to figure out the error that I was getting. By the time I had finished, it took me three or four hours to figure out why I was getting the errors, and I had to reinstall it four times in the process.

In total, I would say that the deployment took at least 12 hours.

I completed the deployment myself.

I was using the free, Community Edition.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Zabbix is to seek the help of somebody who has actually done it before. Otherwise, it's not worth their time. Also, find somebody who can provide you with the templates that you need, or who's got familiarity with building them. It is a good solution if you have the time to build the templates and figure it all out. This requires knowledge of SNMP, as well as all of the devices. Then, you have to put it into XML and create a template that Zabbix can use. It is not a straightforward solution.

The reason that I stopped using Zabbix and bought LogicMonitor is not that it didn't work well. Rather, I needed a solution that was complete, where I didn't have to do the development.

I would rate this solution a four out of ten.