Now that we have a basic understanding of the frontend navigation, it's time to look at the basics of data gathering in Zabbix Items. In general, anything you want to gather data about will eventually go into an item.
An item in Zabbix is a configuration entity that holds information on gathered metrics. It is the very basis of information flowing into Zabbix, and without items, nothing can be retrieved. An item does not hold any information on thresholds—that functionality is covered by triggers.
If items are so important in Zabbix, we should create some. After all, if no data retrieval is possible without items, we can't monitor anything without them. To get started with item configuration, open Configuration | Hosts. If it's not selected by default, choose All in the Group drop-down menu (in the top-right corner). This is a location we will visit quite a lot, as it provides easy access to other entity configurations, including Items and Triggers. Let's figure out what's what in this area. The most interesting functionality is the host list:
Items next to the Zabbix server. You should see a list similar to the one in the following screenshot:
Configuration |
Hosts often.
Back to what we were after, we can see a fairly long list of pre-existing items. But wait, didn't the Zabbix status screen that we saw in the first screenshot claim there's a single host and no supported items? That's clearly wrong! Return to Reports | System Information?(or Monitoring | Dashboard, which shows the same data). It indeed shows zero supported items. Now, move the mouse cursor over the text that reads Number of items (enabled/disabled/not supported), and take a look at the tooltip: