🔧 Zabbix as Universal Monitoring System for IT Company: Tips for Effective DevOps Monitoring

Today, I want to share my experience working with Zabbix, its architecture, its pros, and its cons.

Zabbix is a universal monitoring tool that combines data collection, data visualization, and problem notification. It also allows for some advanced features, such as problem prediction.
My first encounter with this monitoring system was in 2014 when I joined a project where Zabbix was already in use for monitoring network devices (routers, switches). Back then, it was version 2.2, and it had a somewhat challenging web interface, even for that time. Over the course of five years, while working on the project, we went through several system upgrades until we finally transitioned to Zabbix 4.0 LTS. The number of monitored network devices grew to several hundred, and we added monitoring for VPN tunnels, physical servers, VMware vCenter, virtual machines, and some services like DNS and NTP. All of this required creating numerous XML templates, but it was worth it as Zabbix, together with the SIEM system, became the main tools for the OPS team.