We’ve already looked at Munin for basic insights and Prometheus + Grafana for cloud environments. Now let’s turn to Zabbix — a powerful, versatile, and scalable monitoring system that offers a comprehensive out-of-the-box solution for medium and large infrastructures. Zabbix is often chosen by organizations needing centralized monitoring, flexible alerting, and a wide range of data collection methods.

What Is Zabbix and How Does It Work?

Zabbix is a mature open-source monitoring system designed to track the state and performance of various IT components: servers, virtual machines, network devices, databases, web services, and applications.

Core Zabbix Components:

• Zabbix Server — the central daemon that collects data from agents and proxies, processes metrics, triggers alerts, and sends notifications.
• Zabbix Agent — installed on monitored hosts (servers, VMs), collects system metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network) and works in passive or active mode.
• Zabbix Proxy — used in distributed environments to buffer and forward data to the Zabbix Server on a schedule.
• Zabbix Web Interface — a PHP-based UI for configuration, visualization, and monitoring control.
• Database — stores configuration and historical metrics. Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite, IBM DB2.

Advantages of Zabbix: Why It’s Popular

• All-in-one solution — doesn’t require external components (unlike the Prometheus + Grafana stack).
• Flexible templates and host groups — simplify management of dozens or hundreds of hosts.
• Variety of data collection methods:
  • Zabbix Agent, SNMP, IPMI, HTTP, SSH, ODBC, JMX, and more.
• Advanced alerting and triggers:
  • multiple conditions, escalations, event dependencies.
• Visualization:
  • graphs, maps, dashboards, monitoring screens.
• Granular access control — with roles and user groups.

Disadvantages of Zabbix: Things to Consider

• Complex initial setup — requires time and understanding of the architecture.
• Resource usage — high CPU, RAM, and DB load with large metric volumes.
• Database dependency — performance bottlenecks in large-scale deployments.
• Limited data processing language — compared to Prometheus’s PromQL.
• Interface — functional but may feel outdated next to Grafana.

Usability and Unique Features

Zabbix is especially useful for:

• Medium to large organizations needing centralized monitoring.
• Out-of-the-box scenarios — no need to assemble components manually.
• IT departments — where access control, reporting, and asset inventory are essential.

Unique Features of Zabbix:

• Network Discovery — automatic detection of new devices.
• Agent Autoregistration — automatic host registration with templates.
• Web Scenarios — HTTP request sequence checks.
• ITSM Integration — automated incident management (ServiceNow, Jira, etc.).

Conclusion

Zabbix is a mature, powerful, and comprehensive monitoring system ideal for organizations looking for centralized, unified control over their infrastructure. Despite its learning curve and resource demands, its functionality, automation, and scalability make it one of the best solutions in its class.

In the next article, we’ll explore VictoriaMetrics + Grafana — a stack focused on efficient and scalable time-series storage, especially when paired with Prometheus.