Zabbix

[Thor86]

Well, going to get a Zabbix monitoring server running. Anyone who uses it, what are the pros/cons between using MySQL or PostgresSQL for backend?

 

[Nothinman]

I don't have any experience with Zabbix directly, but I would say the main concern would be support. If you're familiar with either database already then you should probably go with that. PostgreSQL has the reputation for being the technically better, more complete, RDBMS but MySQL is simpler and better supported by 3rd party software.

If both are fully supported by Zabbix and you don't have any direct experience with either database I'd say go with MySQL.

 

[Nothinman]

I don't have any experience with Zabbix directly, but I would say the main concern would be support. If you're familiar with either database already then you should probably go with that. PostgreSQL has the reputation for being the technically better, more complete, RDBMS but MySQL is simpler and better supported by 3rd party software.

If both are fully supported by Zabbix and you don't have any direct experience with either database I'd say go with MySQL.

 

[Thor86]

Thanks for the information. Do you have any specifics/refs to PostgreSQL being technically better? What is RDBMS?

 

[xSauronx]

What is RDBMS?

:hmm:

 

[Nothinman]

Thanks for the information. Do you have any specifics/refs to PostgreSQL being technically better? What is RDBMS?

Not off the top of my head, just ACID compliance issues with MySQL in the past because speed was more important than data integrity. Using the InnoDB table format should cover a lot or most of them though.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=define:RDBMS

 

[kedlav]

We use it with an Oracle backend for our hosted customers. I've also used it with a MySQL backend. Given your previous comment asking what a RDBMS is (and my agreement that MySQL is more noob-friendly), I'd go with MySQL.

 

[nexus987]

I'm using zabbix with mysql, monitoring about 150 servers. I'm running on a 2 cpu VM with 4 gigs of ram and it performs pretty well...

zabbix documentation isn't great, but once you get the hang of it I think you'll like it. I'm monitoring a mix of linux (mainly RedHat), windows, NetApp, and some Cisco gear.

 

[Scarpozzi]

We ran zabbix briefly a while back at a former job. It wasn't too long before we dumped it for Nagios. I'm not sure exactly why....but I think it had to do with some of the configuration headaches. Since then I've implemented Nagios in a few different environments and like it. I plan on looking at Cacti this week after seeing some examples of what it has to offer.

What I like about Nagios the most is how customizable it is. I have 3 production tomcat servers that have to be up 24/7 and are in a cluster. I was able to use JMx4Perl to integrate JMX calls with Nagios monitoring. I'm able to check specific thread and memory values that you can't get with SNMP and don't have to enable Tomcat's management interface to get them. I just login to the Nagios web interface.

For most of what we do mainstream with standard WMI calls and SNMP, we use Intermapper.