Zabbix Reviews

As a network services provider we use Zabbix to monitor network infrastructure and customer services. I have also set instances for a number of government institutions to monitor their entire ICT Infrastructure. I will focus on the largest instances, the service provider use cases.

I used Zabbix to monitor network devices, servers, databases, virtual machines, services and applications. For the network services provider, I run an instance for our internal infrastructure and another instance for monitoring our customer services so they can have access to monitor the state and status of their services, SLA, view utilization graphs on demand or in real time and produce needed reports and also receive alerts when problems happen

We could easily monitor anything on our infrastructure and customer services using Zabbix as a consolidated solution for all the network infrastructure and customer services monitoring needs , as Zabbix is highly flexible and customizable to fit the specific needs of organizations.

Zabbix has greatly improved  operations and maintenance by helping management and technical teams be more proactive. They can easily spot problems or undesired states on the infrastructure or customer services

With the Zabbix out-of-box multitenancy support,  customers can have restricted access to their service utilizations and other operational data in real time or on demand. The feedback from customers shows they are very happy and they appreciate how easy it is to learn using it.

Time to work on issues is greatly reduced, as Zabbix provides powerful alerts and details into what is happening in our network. Issues that could take weeks to resolve can now easily be spotted in a few minutes as all essential metrics for all devices are monitored in real time.

Zabbix fits well with the multi-vendor environment and it has a lot of out-of-box templates that can be customized to fit our needs.

We can easily provide infrastructure status reports with Zabbix. We can produce reports even for old devices that were not properly and consistently monitored since they were installed.

Zabbix is highly customizable and flexible, which makes it easy to have all our monitoring needs accommodated. Many elements like auto-discovery, dashboards, templates, graphs, maps, metrics, SLA's can easily be customized to fit specific needs

Zabbix has a powerful API that support integration with third party software, automation and creating new applications. It can be easily integrated with other  tools as a data ingest, processing or visualization platform. The API allows for utilizing better software in specific areas that Zabbix may be lacking like Grafana which allows for more customizable dashboards.

Auto Discovery and Custom Actions are greatly helpful in doing mass discovery, the grouping of hosts, and templates association. The flexibility in setting discovery rules and actions is really helpful for complicated use cases.

Multi-tenancy support which a result of granular use roles, automatic actions, tags, and host grouping. User permissions can be limited to specific sections, services, applications, device groups, access level etc. This has proven to be very helpful for our customer's services monitoring instance.

Out-of-box templates that are customizable, can be changed or modified to suit specific use cases. Additional items can be added to these templates and more filtering or pre-processing rules can be specified in these templates

It has an intuitive UI with beautiful graphs and customizable maps. Although more powerful solutions can be used, Zabbix caters for all our needs in that area as it provides the flexibility we need.

Zabbix provides regular updates and a clear and timed roadmap. Very helpful as our c company can see whether  expectations will be taken care in coming releases of the software.

Although Zabbix is great, the documentation is a bit lacking. The documentation gets a bit messy between versions and is not too detailed, the learning curve is steep and can be difficult for first-timers, especially when they run into issues.

Zabbix depends on other open-source projects, so it would be a good idea to add more information on fine-tuning a Zabbix instance especially the essential details when working with specific choices of OS, database, webserver etc. I had to do most of the things with limited resources in the fine-tuning of the database, OS, and other packages. Although not entirely a Zabbix issue it is a good idea to provide guidance on the basics.

Automatic maps. It would be great if Zabbix could create automatic topology maps using discovery protocols like LLDP or CDP.

Automatic Updates of host templates. It would save a lot of time if that could be done with new releases while keeping personal configurations intact.

Out of box high availability setting for all sections of Zabbix

I have been using Zabbix for four years

This is a very stable solution. It is a low maintenance solution and if finetuned and optimized properly can handle a heavy workload with minimum resources.

This product is highly scalable.  HA and redundancy can be set for database, proxy and front-end.

Zabbix experts provide great ideas on the open-source forums for the products. The Zabbix community, including the CEO and the technical experts, are friendly. Since they are doing great with the community, I am confident they are doing great with their optional Technical Support which we have not subscribed to.

Positive

I had used other solutions before but the licensing was too expensive for our company and still, other solutions were limited because we have a multi-vendor environment.

The setup is a bit complex but can be done with the right  skills. More important than the initial setup is optimization and finetuning which requires multiple skills.

We implemented it in-house. I primarily worked on the database, Zabbix server, Zabbix proxy, frontend and other server side stuff. I also prepared agent and SNMP configuration scripts for other Engineers to implement on network devices and servers.

I can confidently say that our ROI is 100%.

Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed.

Zabbix provides support although we have not subscribed to the support. We implemented the instances on our own and we also operate and maintain them on our own.

We had to evaluate several options including SolarWinds NPM, PRTG, OpenNMS, Cacti, Nagios, and Zenoss Core. We used Huawei U2000, Cisco Prime and PRTG for some devices before we switched to Zabbix.

Overall, Zabbix is a great product. I have been using it for almost two years, and I am very happy with it.

Monitoring systems and services that don't have their own solution in our environment. Single place to monitor multiple systems and processes. We monitor servers, websites, key card devices, etc..

Before we didn't really have a centrally managed monitoring solution, so adding this product has been a blessing as we are able to actively monitor and react accordingly. Being able to monitor almost any device in one location is extremely convenient.

The feature which I like the most would have to be the GUI. At first, I was put off, as I felt it was too complex or busy. Upon using it to setup devices, I found it was well laid out and has come a long way.

The agents are also very easy to install and manage, making this more of a turnkey solution for most.

I wish it had more options for personalizing the product, such as being able to include your company's logo without editing text files. More templates for specific devices.

More than three years.

None yet. Runs solid on very light resources.

Not yet, but as of now, it's a single server - might have to dive in at some point with the proxy configuration.

I have used publicly available resources. I can't comment on their customer service.

We used Cacti, which worked well for our uses. We moved because we needed a more updated solution that had support for a myriad of devices. The community is also active in development of plugins.

It's a decently complex system to get setup, it's not a simple package based system (well technically it is, but not as easy as others). It's also not as extreme as Nagios or Prometheus. We added Grafana, which made it a little more complex.

In-house team.

Time and knowledge. Without it, we wouldn't have known of current issues in our environments. It allows us to deep dive and get to the core issues quicker.

It's open source, so no cost/licensing needed.

Nagios, Prometheus, Check_MK, Adagios, Icinga 2, Zenoss, PRTG, and Cacti.

Zabbix coupled with Grafana (there's a plugin for Zabbix, very easy to setup), is a great monitoring stack. Leveraging "Let's Encrypt for SSL" is also a must!

We are currently doing a POC. For now, it is our testing tool.

We use it mostly as a monitoring infrastructure for services and applications, and it also monitors the capacity.

As we are still in the test phase, we have not yet explored all of the features offered in this product.

It's a flexible solution.

My main intention is to support or use Zabbix to report patching for servers, or to somehow maintain the patching from Zabbix.

Outside of the normal standard monitoring, I would like to extend patching, importing patching, and supporting patching for Windows Servers.

I have been using Zabbix for one year.

We are using the newest version.

Zabbix is a stable solution.

We have not yet tested the scalability of this solution. We tested it on a small group of devices, so it is difficult to say at this time.

We intentions to install more features on the device. During the testing, we don't have all of the resources to manage all installations.

We have approximately 40 users in our organization who are using Zabbix.

We have contacted technical support from Zabbix, and have spoken with partners from Poland. 

I have more experience with the WhatsUp Gold Monitoring tool. I still have WhatsUp Gold but we are going to replace it.

We are testing other tools that are free.

The initial setup was straightforward. It was easy.

With the help of suppliers, it did not take much time to deploy. It was not complex.

As we were using it for testing, we were using suppliers.

We will need a team of experts for this solution as well as some external support.

There is no license but we need to pay for support.

Zabbix is an open-source solution.

I would recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it.

With my current experience, I would rate Zabbix an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is server and network monitoring.

The features I found most valuable are the user interface and a wide range of network devices that are easy to configure.

I would like for this solution to be more cloud-friendly.

I have been using this solution for about one year.

I would rate the stability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Previously, we used Splunk and we switched because the solution's pricing was too high.

I would rate the initial setup process a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Our model of deployment is on-premises.

This solution was used by 200 people in our company.

I would rate this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

We use Zabbix to monitor the configuration and usage of devices on the network, including switches and printers. 

Zabbix alerts us about problems on the system, including damage to the hardware or network connectivity issues.

I'm supervising all the IT departments, and Zabbix seems quite good for them. It provides graphics and information in real time. We get alerts about crashes on the system, enabling us to quickly repair issues. We can easily find devices with problems.

Zabbix is powerful, but it is difficult to understand initially. There are many things that can be improved, but we might not be using Zabbix to its fullest extent. The software has more features than we need.

For example, Zabbix can be used for a company monitoring solutions by many vendors. We have only one site and one company, so we can't improve all the possibilities of the software.

Zabbix could add some more cybersecurity features. It isn't the same thing because network monitoring isn't the same as security. Still, it could include something like a VPN or firewall with the solution. It's a free software tool traditionally used for monitoring. 

I have been using Zabbix for around one year.

Zabbix is highly stable.

I rate six out of 10 for scalability.

We don't use technical support. We rely on the documentation. 

We previously used Centreon, another open-source solution, about four years ago. I wasn't used to this kind of software, but now I can understand them a little bit better.

I rate Zabbix five out of 10 for ease of setup. It takes about two weeks to deploy. We have many people working from home, which creates some difficulties. Sometimes, people left materials at home when they work at the office, and we didn't have the time to install all the components. That's why it took time.

We saved time one equipment intervention, preventing service outages. We had the information about network blackouts before they happened, so we could save our company by changing equipment before we experienced downtime. 

Zabbix is an open-source solution, and there aren't any additional costs.

I rate Zabbix eight out of 10. It's a good solution for everyone's needs. Maybe same users that we have, few users for the moment because we don't have a very big important network. I think that Centreon is better, but maybe easier than the subjects to use. This is maybe the best solution for small entities.

We develop applications in Python and we use Zabbix for the monitoring of the network for people connecting to the bank.

We have many proxy servers using this solution.

The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good. The monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great. The information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed.

The customization of Zabbix is easier than with other solutions, such as DX Spectrum. We need to send requirements to the vendor for DX Spectrum to do the customization for us. In Zabbix, we can create a template by ourselves, and we do not need to send any information to the vendor This is a large advantage of using this solution.

There are some features of Zabbix that are not good for reporting. The DX Spectrum solution has better reporting.

In a future release, they should add a NetFlow feature, and improve the dashboard templates.

I have used Zabbix for approximately one year.

We use a SQL database on the server and sometimes the performance of Zabbix is not the best. We have upgraded our servers to Oracle and the performance is okay. When we were using DX Spectrum we did not have any stability issues.

We have an application for mobile banking and we have ten million accounts running, we are large in Thailand.

We have approximately 75 people using the solution at one time.

My team has contacted support from Zabbix but they have very expensive. However, our management is still considering using the support.

The support from DX Spectrum we have not been happy with here in Thailand. They only have sales teams and not someone who can provide useful technical support.

We have used DX Spectrum previously and it was stable in operation in WAN and LAN networks.

The initial setup of Zabbix was complex and took us approximately one year to fully complete.

We did the implementation ourselves for the production and distribution.

We have five people who do the maintenance and support of Zabbix.

Zabbix is a free solution but the support contact costs money.

The license for DX Spectrum is expensive.

I rate Zabbix 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.

• Monitor network assets
• Data links
• Disk space
• Physical servers
• More than 1k virtual machines
• Websites
• Logins into automated systems

• Assertive monitoring
• Customized messages
• Configurable screens
• Division by teams
• Customizable alerts
• Automated call opening
• Mobile connections
• Iintegrations

The discovery functionality is most valuable. Every new asset placed in the environment can be automatically detected, predicting human failures.

The product is already great. Wanting something more could take the focus off the product. However, the correlation of events would be a wonderful addition.

I have been using this solution for more than eight years.

We had no issues.

There are no scalability issues. The components scale.

We have not had any events that the team has not resolved.

The system has good documentation and a community full of talent. 

Positive

I have already used Nagios and PRTG. After using Zabbix, I did not try new tools. I adapted and believe it would be difficult to convert all the rules to another system.

It is easy to deploy. The installation process is well-documented.

The implementation was carried out by an internal team. We acquired knowledge by reading manuals.

It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation.

I had very good references for Zabbix, but I did have a look at Pandora FMS and Nagios.

I believe in the system's potential.