Zabbix is a network management system

Network management system

A network management system is a combination of hardware and software used to monitor and administer a computer network.Individual network elements in a network are managed by an element management system.-Tasks and operational details:...

 created by Alexei Vladishev. It is designed to monitor and track the status of various network service

Network service

Network services are the foundation of a networked computing environment. Generally network services are installed on one or more servers to provide shared resources to client computers.- Network services in LAN :...

s, server

Server (computing)

In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...

s, and other network hardware.

It uses MySQL

MySQL

MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...

, PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...

, SQLite

SQLite

SQLite is an ACID-compliant embedded relational database management system contained in a relatively small C programming library. The source code for SQLite is in the public domain and implements most of the SQL standard...

, Oracle

Oracle database

The Oracle Database is an object-relational database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation....

 or IBM DB2

IBM DB2

The IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition is a relational model database server developed by IBM. It primarily runs on Unix , Linux, IBM i , z/OS and Windows servers. DB2 also powers the different IBM InfoSphere Warehouse editions...

 to store data. Its backend is written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

 and the web frontend is written in PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

. Zabbix offers several monitoring options. Simple checks can verify the availability and responsiveness of standard services such as SMTP or HTTP without installing any software on the monitored host. A Zabbix agent

Software agent

In computer science, a software agent is a piece of software that acts for a user or other program in a relationship of agency, which derives from the Latin agere : an agreement to act on one's behalf...

 can also be installed on UNIX and Windows hosts to monitor statistics such as CPU load, network utilization, disk space, etc. As an alternative to installing an agent on hosts, Zabbix includes support for monitoring via SNMP

Simple Network Management Protocol

Simple Network Management Protocol is an "Internet-standard protocol for managing devices on IP networks. Devices that typically support SNMP include routers, switches, servers, workstations, printers, modem racks, and more." It is used mostly in network management systems to monitor...

, TCP

Transmission Control Protocol

The Transmission Control Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. TCP is one of the two original components of the suite, complementing the Internet Protocol , and therefore the entire suite is commonly referred to as TCP/IP...

 and ICMP

Internet Control Message Protocol

The Internet Control Message Protocol is one of the core protocols of the Internet Protocol Suite. It is chiefly used by the operating systems of networked computers to send error messages indicating, for example, that a requested service is not available or that a host or router could not be...

 checks, as well as over IPMI

Intelligent Platform Management Interface

The Intelligent Platform Management Interface is a standardizedcomputer system interface used by system administrators to manage a computer system and monitor its operation....

, SSH

Secure Shell

Secure Shell is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network: a server and a client...

, telnet

TELNET

Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communications facility using a virtual terminal connection...

 and using custom parameters. Zabbix supports a variety of real-time notification mechanisms, including XMPP

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...

.

Released under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License

GNU General Public License

The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....

, Zabbix is free software

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

.

History

Zabbix started as an internal software project in 1998. After 3 years, in 2001, it was released to the public under GPL. It took three more years until first stable version, 1.0, was released in 2004.

Timeline of releases
Date	Release
Zabbix 1.0
1998	Zabbix started as an internal project in a bank by Alexei Vladishev
7 April 2001	Zabbix 1.0alpha1 is released as GPL
23 March 2004	Zabbix 1.0 released
Zabbix 1.1
6 February 2006	Zabbix 1.1 released
Zabbix 1.4
29 May 2007	Zabbix 1.4 released
Zabbix 1.6
11 September 2008	Zabbix 1.6 released
Zabbix 1.8
7 December 2009	Zabbix 1.8 released

Source code

Zabbix consists of several separate modules:

• Server
• Agents
• Frontend

While server and agents are written in C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

, frontend is implemented in PHP

PHP

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...

 and Javascript

JavaScript

JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

.

Releases

Since the first stable version was released as 1.0, Zabbix versioning has only increased minor version numbers.Each minor release actually implements many new features, while change level releases mostly introduce bugfixes.

Zabbix version numbering scheme has changed. While first two stable branches were 1.0 and 1.1, after 1.1 it was decided to use odd numbers for development versions and even numbers for stable versions. As a result, 1.3 followed 1.1 as a development release to be released as 1.4.

Support sites

• Zabbix Home Page
• Zabbix forums provide user support in English, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
• Zabbix wiki has user contributed content and community resources.
• Commercial services, including support, custom development and deployment services are provided by Zabbix company.
• ZabbixZone, Blog dedicated to Zabbix for advanced users

Books

English:

• (2010) Zabbix 1.8 Network Monitoring - Packt Publishing ISBN 978-1-847197-68-9

Japanese:

• (2010) Zabbix System Monitoring -Notification, Trend analysis, Visualization to reduce your management work- - ISBN 978-4774142135

See also

• Comparison of network monitoring systems
  Comparison of network monitoring systems
  This is a comparison of some notable network monitoring systems.- Legend :Product Name : The name of the software, linked to its Wikipedia article...
  
  
• Map of Zabbix Installations

Third-party libraries and tools

• Ruby library for Zabbix API, also available as the Ruby Gem zbxapi
• Zabcon - commandline tool, using the zbxapi library. Also available as a Ruby Gem, zabcon.
• PHP library for Zabbix API.
• Python library for Zabbix API.
• Orabbix the easy way to monitor Oracle with Zabbix.
• Postbix the easy way to monitor PostgreSQL with Zabbix.
• MySQLBix the easy way to monitor MySQL with Zabbix.
• MySQL-Performance-Monitor the easy way to monitor MySQL with Zabbix.
• Zapcat is a Zabbix to JMX bridge for monitoring JAVA services.
• Mobbix is a Zabbix Android mobile client.
• Mozaby is a Zabbix client for iPhone.
• zabbix mysql Monitor all zabbix mysql Monitor all.