Áú»¢¶Ä²©

Table of Contents

2 Definitions

Overview

In this section you can learn the meaning of some terms commonly used in Áú»¢¶Ä²©.

Definitions

host

- any physical or virtual device, application, service, or any other logically-related collection of monitored parameters.

host group

- a logical grouping of hosts; it may contain hosts and templates. Hosts and templates within a host group are not in any way linked to each other. Host groups are used when assigning access rights to hosts for different user groups.

item

- a particular piece of data that you want to receive from a host, a metric of data.

value preprocessing

- a transformation of received metric value before saving it to the database.

trigger

- a logical expression that defines a problem threshold and is used to "evaluate" data received in items.

When received data are above the threshold, triggers go from 'Ok' into a 'Problem' state. When received data are below the threshold, triggers stay in/return to an 'Ok' state.

event

- a single occurrence of something that deserves attention such as a trigger changing state or a discovery/agent autoregistration taking place.

event tag

- a pre-defined marker for the event. It may be used in event correlation, permission granulation, etc.

event correlation

- a method of correlating problems to their resolution flexibly and precisely.

For example, you may define that a problem reported by one trigger may be resolved by another trigger, which may even use a different data collection method.

problem

- a trigger that is in "Problem" state.

problem update

- problem management options provided by Áú»¢¶Ä²©, such as adding comment, acknowledging, changing severity or closing manually.

action

- a predefined means of reacting to an event.

An action consists of operations (e.g. sending a notification) and conditions (when the operation is carried out)

escalation

- a custom scenario for executing operations within an action; a sequence of sending notifications/executing remote commands.

media

- a means of delivering notifications; delivery channel.

notification

- a message about some event sent to a user via the chosen media channel.

remote command

- a pre-defined command that is automatically executed on a monitored host upon some condition.

template

- a set of entities (items, triggers, graphs, low-level discovery rules, web scenarios) ready to be applied to one or several hosts.

The job of templates is to speed up the deployment of monitoring tasks on a host; also to make it easier to apply mass changes to monitoring tasks. Templates are linked directly to individual hosts.

web scenario

- one or several HTTP requests to check the availability of a web site.

frontend

- the web interface provided with Áú»¢¶Ä²©.

dashboard

- customizable section of the web interface displaying summaries and visualizations of important information in visual units called widgets.

widget

- visual unit displaying information of a certain kind and source (a summary, a map, a graph, the clock, etc.), used in the dashboard.

Áú»¢¶Ä²© API

- Áú»¢¶Ä²© API allows you to use the JSON RPC protocol to create, update and fetch Áú»¢¶Ä²© objects (like hosts, items, graphs and others) or perform any other custom tasks.

Áú»¢¶Ä²© server

- a central process of Áú»¢¶Ä²© software that performs monitoring, interacts with Áú»¢¶Ä²© proxies and agents, calculates triggers, sends notifications; a central repository of data.

Áú»¢¶Ä²© proxy

- a process that may collect data on behalf of Áú»¢¶Ä²© server, taking some processing load from the server.

Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent

- a process deployed on monitoring targets to actively monitor local resources and applications.

Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent 2

- a new generation of Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent to actively monitor local resources and applications, allowing to use custom plugins for monitoring.

Because Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent 2 shares much functionality with Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent, the term "Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent" in documentation stands for both - Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent and Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent 2, if the functional behavior is the same. Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent 2 is only specifically named where its functionality differs.

encryption

- support of encrypted communications between Áú»¢¶Ä²© components (server, proxy, agent, zabbix_sender and zabbix_get utilities) using Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol.

network discovery

- automated discovery of network devices.

low-level discovery

- automated discovery of low-level entities on a particular device (e.g. file systems, network interfaces, etc).

low-level discovery rule

- set of definitions for automated discovery of low-level entities on a device.

item prototype

- a metric with certain parameters as variables, ready for low-level discovery. After low-level discovery the variables are automatically substituted with the real discovered parameters and the metric automatically starts gathering data.

trigger prototype

- a trigger with certain parameters as variables, ready for low-level discovery. After low-level discovery the variables are automatically substituted with the real discovered parameters and the trigger automatically starts evaluating data.

Prototypes of some other Áú»¢¶Ä²© entities are also in use in low-level discovery - graph prototypes, host prototypes, host group prototypes.

agent autoregistration

- automated process whereby a Áú»¢¶Ä²© agent itself is registered as a host and started to monitor.