Zabbix Reviews

I'm currently dealing with three implementations - two are on cloud and one is on-premise. Our clients use the solution to monitor IT infrastructures, IT networks, applications, and cloud as well as containers.

I have a very exciting additional use case as well that we're working on, using Zabbix 5.x for internet of things (IOT) monitoring. It supports MQTT and ModBus, which allows us to monitor IOT devices.

The flexibility of taking monitoring data from such a wide variety of platforms - beyond traditional IT - makes Zabbix a highly flexible solution.

I'm a consultant of this solution as well as a user. I'm a Zabbix certified professional and director of a Zabbix authorized reseller (Nobius) in the UK. 

As our business has grown, we use Zabbix to monitor our Zabbix implementations - a 'manager of managers' setup. This has given us better resource utilisation and improved our service delivery.

The ability to take data from multiple sources. The Zabbix agent is probably the most lightweight monitoring agent available. The agent itself is extensible providing simple expansion capabilities to support new use cases. Alongside the built-in agentless monitoring via SNMP, SSH, WMI and others, this means we have a solution that has  no limits as to the data that can be ingested and alerted on.

If anything could be improved, it would be some of the terminology that is used in the documentation. The documentation is good, but it's been translated into English and occasionally suffers from terminology issues. There are additional features that the commercial software has that Zabbix doesn't. Full AIOps isn't cheap, things like machine learning and artificial intelligence attract a massive price premium and are rarely implemented properly. But they are major, major features.

I've been working with Zabbix for over four years following 25yrs as an IT Monitoring specialist within user organisations, consultancies and major global software vendors.

The stability is unparalleled. Processes are all well-behaved and logging is clear and succinct. Support for separating the front end, server and database allow resources to be load-balanced and clustered.

Zabbix runs equally well in cloud- and on-premise configurations.

The solution can take hundreds and thousands of values per second, so scalability is excellent. The ability to add proxy servers to distribute the data handling load is impressive and they are very straightforward to set up. This also adds to reliability in distributed environments.

If you consider that Zabbix is open source, their technical support is fantastic because the people, the developers of the application, are the guys who do the technical support as well. You don't have to wait to get through different levels of technical support. You get a very, very knowledgeable person on the phone straight away which is a big plus.

Positive

Yes, previously used and consulted on HPE SiteScope, HPE Operations Manager, Micro Focus Operations Bridge and others.

Sitescope is useful, but doesn't have the muli-tenancy or proxy facilities and is agentless only making it unjustifiable in an MSP environment.

Operations Manager was too complex to maintain and became obsolete.

Operations Bridge is resource hungry, complex to install and configure and extremely expensive.

I've deployed so many times that the initial setup is straightforward, but I would say that for someone who is totally inexperienced in Linux, it can be a little time consuming. If you understand a little about Linux, then it's no problem. A full system can easily be configured in two hours but it took two days the first time I did it. If you're not a technical person you can still install it but it will likely take some time.

As an example, configuring SNMP trapping into Zabbix needs configuration outside of Zabbix itself. This is not complex, but can slow down the process for inexperienced installers.

The software itself is open source, it can be easily downloaded,  and use it with no limitations.

Be very careful about using the "appliance" configuration in a production environment. It is only suitable for evaluation or very small environments.

Invest in support, training and consultancy from Zabbix or from third parties. Architecting a robust, resilient and secure monitoring platform from day 1 will save time and money at a later stage.

Zabbix and 3rd parties offer far more than a traditional support contract. No other organisation in my experience includes pro-active and on-site support as a core part of their offerings. 

Nagios - too much development effort to maintain and configure.

I believe it's crucial to plan the implementation. Just because the software is free, you shouldn't just install it and let it run. Plan your implementation carefully and you'll get more out of it than you ever thought possible

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

The solution is a network monitoring tool. If you have any type of IT infrastructure, it can help you monitor that IT infrastructure and get the logs collected. You can control and manage your IT, et cetera.

The product is very stable.

It is a scalable tool. 

The solution is open source also. There's no cost for the license.

Technical support is very good.

They need to improve the APM solution, the Application Management solution. There's a small module of APM, however, it is not an enhanced version. People usually ask for a full-fledged APM solution. 

The initial setup could be a bit simpler. 

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The stability is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

If a company needs to expand the product, it can do so with Zabbix. It's scalable. 

We have 21 to 22 clients using this solution currently.

Technical support is very good. They are helpful and responsive and we are happy with their level of support. 

I'd rate the solution's initial setup as a seven out of ten. 

The installation will take time according to the IT infrastructure involved. It depends on if there are multi-locations versus one location and whether it is on the cloud or whether it is on-premises. Even so, deployment will take at least two to three weeks at a minimum.

We have eight to ten people on our team that can handle deployment and maintenance. They are admins and engineers. 

The solution is completely open-source and free to use. 

I'm a Zabbix partner.

The solution is excellent. I would rate it at a ten out of ten. 

I would recommend the solution to other users and other organizations. 

We use it to monitor Linux systems. It has performed well.

We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes. 

Graphing processes. It can send messages to our ticketing system. It has good graphs of what is going on within the operating system.

I would like to better be able to monitor Oracle processes.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

I have not used technical support.

We did not previously use a different solution, so I asked my manager to look into it.

I was involved in the initial setup. The initial setup was straightforward.

We evaluated SCOM.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. Features
2. Price.

We are using Zabbix in our project for demo purposes. One of our clients is also using Zabbix. They have a data center, and they use it for internal monitoring. They are on a cloud system.

It is a great product. The SNMP protocol tracking feature is good. I really like how it tracks SNMP. The alerts are also great. 

Its UI needs to be improved a little bit more so that an end-user is also able to handle it. I can handle it, but others should also be able to handle it in a better way.

It becomes complex when we are growing and need to add proxies. We need more scalability features and documentation for different use cases. A lot of articles are available, but they need to be in proper documentation. For example, when you have thousands of servers that have to be monitored in different regions of the world, there should be some kind of documentation to describe how you can create proxies and add them. Sometimes, when you are using the database, it can get overloaded. When the network is growing, the number of transactions becomes very high, and the database gets overloaded. There should be information about how to reduce the load on the MySQL database, which is what Zabbix is using. 

The market is growing a lot, and it should be enhanced for a lot more things. We are currently bringing enhancements at our end for different use cases. For example, when dockerization is going on, how can we check the logs inside the Dockers. We should also be able to monitor and check the number of logins and add features such as SSO login and two-factor authentication as a protocol. These are the security features and concerns that we have to deal with. Currently, we are developing modules to add features to Zabbix, but they should also work on these features.

I have been using this solution for three to four years.

It is stable up to a level. 

When you are growing and need to add proxies and other things, it becomes complex. To deal with this kind of complexity, more scalability features and documentation for different use cases are required.

I did not connect with Zabbix support, but the client's team connected with them. I worked with the client initially, and after that, I gave them access and everything else. They directly sync up with Zabbix's support team.

The initial setup is great. However, later on, when you are scaling it, it becomes complex.

Its licensing is fair. It seems to be much cheaper than others.

Zabbix is a good product. It just requires a better development model, better UI, and better scalability. It also needs more features.

I would rate Zabbix a seven out of ten.

In my company, I have a lot of web services on the internet and use it for monitoring. For example, for concurrent sessions, I can count the HTTP requests, or I can use it to monitor the CPU and RAM in my devices, web application devices. 

It works well for my business. It meets my organizational needs. It's pretty easy to use.

It's very stable. It's got good reliability.

The pricing is okay.

For us, the support has been fine.

We have found the initial installation not that difficult.

The product could be more secure and more stable.

I've been using the solution for about four years at this point. It's been a while. 

The solution is stable and reliable. The performance is good. That said, it could always be more stable. 

We have more than 200 people on the product and it seems to work well for us. We've never had an issue with scaling. It's good for u and fits our needs.

We haven't had an issue with technical support. We fill out a form when we run into issues. They are largely quite helpful. 

I also am familiar with Datadog.

I'm not sure if we used anything before Zabbix.

In terms of initial setup, it's petty straightforward. At the Linux stage, you can introduce the Linux commands. In the environment in Linux, you can install Zabbix pretty easily.

The deployment doesn't take too long. It might take only two weeks.

We do have a team that can manage the deployment and maintenance of Zabbix as needed. Usually, we have one or two managers that are able to handle anything that comes up. The rest of the team is a bit more technical. 

We have about 100 active licenses, however, I don't have many other details beyond that in terms of licensing and costs. My understanding is that the pricing is okay.

The product is a standalone in my data center, my local data center.

I would recommend the solution to others. It's been good to us so far and we do have experts in our country.

I'd rate the product at a nine out of ten. We've been pretty happy with it in general.

We primarily use Zabbix for monitoring our infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is monitoring.

Having a more customizable interface and dashboard would be an improvement.

The interface could be more user-friendly because it is can be really complicated if an end-user has to configure it. The administrator usually has to take care of that.

I would like to see more SNMP and storage support.

Application monitoring should be included in the future. I would like to see voice telephony monitoring and database monitoring.

The reporting functionality is limited.

I have been working with Zabbix for the past four years.

This is a stable product.

We have had no problem with scalability. The only people who use it are the IT staff, which is between 10 and 12 people.

As we are using the free version, we do not have a support contract.

We are using the free, open-source version.

This is not a product that I recommend. Instead, I recommend using SolarWindows or ManageEngine for monitoring because there are more features on Zabbix with limited usability. Reports are also limited. Basically, you get more features in SolarWinds or ManageEngine.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.