Monitoring Zabbix (private preview)

Zabbix is an open source software tool that monitors IT infrastructure, such as hosts and virtual machines. To display the Zabbix-monitored hosts and their associated metrics and problems in the Instana UI, you can use the Zabbix sensor for Instana. For more information about the Zabbix product, see the Zabbix documentation.

After you install the Instana host agent, the Zabbix sensor is automatically installed. You can view the metrics of the Zabbix-monitored hosts in the Instana UI after you configure the sensor. For more information about the configuration, see Configuring the Zabbix sensor.

Supported information

Supported operating systems

The supported operating systems of the Zabbix sensor are consistent with host agents requirements, which can be checked in the Supported operating systems section of each host agent, such as Supported operating systems for Unix.

Supported versions

Instana supports metrics and problems (imported to Instana as events) for Zabbix 6.4 and later.

Configuring the Zabbix sensor

To connect to the Zabbix instance, you must configure the Instana Zabbix sensor by using the endpoint and API key. You need to configure the following fields in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml:

com.instana.plugin.zabbix:
  enabled: true
  endpoint: 'http://zabbixhostname/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php'
  token: 'redacted'
  poll_rate: 30

The following table contains the supported configuration options:

Name Type Required Default Description
enabled boolean No False This parameter verifies whether the sensor is enabled.
endpoint string Yes NA The endpoint of your Zabbix server API.
token string Yes NA The API token that is used to access the endpoint.
poll_rate integer No 30 The number of seconds between metric queries. You might need to adjust the time to account for any poll rate limit imposed by your endpoint.
target_zone string No N/A The name of the generic zone where hosts that are monitored by Zabbix are displayed on the Instana Infrastructure map. If the zone is not specified, hosts are displayed in Undefined Zone.

Zabbix endpoint

The Instana Zabbix sensor uses the Zabbix API to collect information about the hosts that Zabbix monitors. The Zabbix API endpoint is required to communicate with Zabbix. The following example shows the format of the Zabbix API endpoint: https://<zabbix-hostname>/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php

You must include the entire endpoint with the api_jsonrpc.php suffix in the Instana configuration.yaml file.

For more information about the Zabbix API, see the Zabbix documentation.

Zabbix API token

A Zabbix API token is required to authenticate Zabbix API. For more information about how to create a Zabbix API token, see the Zabbix documentation.

Viewing metrics

To view the metrics, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
  2. Click a specific monitored host.

You can see a remote host dashboard with all the collected metrics.

Configuration data

  • OS (Name, version, and architecture)
  • CPU count
  • Total Memory
  • Hostname and FQDN
  • Disk Capacity

Performance metrics

  • CPU Used %
  • CPU Load
  • Memory Used
  • Swap Used (Linux only)
  • Disk Used
  • Network RX and TX Bytes

Viewing problems

Zabbix problems are imported to Instana as issues. To view the issues, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Events.
  2. To filter events that are not issues, click the Issues tab.
  3. To filter issues that are imported from Zabbix, enter the following query in the search box: entity.remote.host.source:Zabbix

You can see a list of the issues that are imported from Zabbix. An open Zabbix problem creates an Instana issue, which remains open until the Zabbix problem is closed. When the Zabbix problem closes, the Instana issue closes within a few minutes.

Troubleshooting

Agent monitoring issues

If the Zabbix sensor cannot communicate with the Zabbix server, an agent monitoring issue is created. The issue describes the incorrect configuration parameter. For example, the sensor receives an HTTP 401 or 403 error from the Zabbix server when the API token is incorrect or expired. The following configuration parameters lead to agent monitoring issues:

  • endpoint
  • token (HTTP 401 or 403)
  • poll_rate (HTTP 429)

Agent OutOfMemoryError

If you are connected to a Zabbix server that monitors many hosts, you might need to increase the JVM heap size of the Instana agent. If you find an OutOfMemoryError in the agent log, you must increase the maximum heap size of the Instana agent. For more information about the JAVA_OPTS environment variable, see Environment variable reference.