Monitoring quickstart

Now that we have a basic understanding of the frontend navigation, it's time to look at the basis for data gathering in Zabbix—items. In general, anything you want to gather data about will eventually go into an item.

Note

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 Zabbix servers 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...