Zabbix was created by Alexei Vladishev, and currently is actively developed and supported by Zabbix SIA.

Zabbix is an enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution.

Zabbix is a software that monitors numerous parameters of a network and the health and integrity of servers, virtual machines, applications, services, databases, websites, the cloud and more. Zabbix uses a flexible notification mechanism that allows users to configure email based alerts for virtually any event. This allows a fast reaction to server problems. Zabbix offers excellent reporting and data visualization features based on the stored data. This makes Zabbix ideal for capacity planning.

Zabbix is free of cost. Zabbix is written and distributed under the GPL General Public License version 2. It means that its source code is freely distributed and available for the general public.

Overview

Zabbix is a highly integrated network monitoring solution, offering a multiplicity of features in a single package.

Data gathering

·         Availability and performance checks

·         Support for SNMP (both trapping and polling), IPMI, JMX, VMware monitoring

·         Custom checks

·         Gathering desired data at custom intervals

·         Performed by server/proxy and by agents

Flexible threshold definitions

·         You can define very flexible problem thresholds, called triggers, referencing values from the backend database

Highly configurable alerting

·         Sending notifications can be customized for the escalation schedule, recipient, media type

·         Notifications can be made meaningful and helpful using macro variables

·         Automatic actions include remote commands

Real-time graphing

·         Monitored items are immediately graphed using the built-in graphing functionality

Web monitoring capabilities

·         Zabbix can follow a path of simulated mouse clicks on a web site and check for functionality and response time

Extensive visualization options

·         Ability to create custom graphs that can combine multiple items into a single view

·         Network maps

·         Slideshows in a dashboard-style overview

·         Reports

·         High-level (business) view of monitored resources

Historical data storage

·         Data stored in a database

·         Configurable history

·         Built-in housekeeping procedure

Easy configuration

·         Add monitored devices as hosts

·         Hosts are picked up for monitoring, once in the database

·         Apply templates to monitored devices

Use of templates

·         Grouping checks in templates

·         Templates can inherit other templates

Network discovery

·         Automatic discovery of network devices

·         Agent autoregistration

·         Discovery of file systems, network interfaces and SNMP OIDs

Fast web interface

·         A web-based frontend in PHP

·         Accessible from anywhere

·         You can click your way through

·         Audit log

Zabbix API

·         Zabbix API provides programmable interface to Zabbix for mass manipulations, third-party software integration and other purposes.

Permissions system

·         Secure user authentication

·         Certain users can be limited to certain views

Full featured and easily extensible agent

·         Deployed on monitoring targets

·         Can be deployed on both Linux and Windows

Binary daemons

·         Written in C, for performance and small memory footprint

·         Easily portable

Ready for complex environments

·         Remote monitoring made easy by using a Zabbix proxy