More advanced triggers

Sometimes triggers in Zabbix are too sensitive and you get notifications all the time because of quick repeated status changes; this is what we call flapping. This could be for example a swap file that is growing and shrinking all the time, making Zabbix send notifications that there is not enough free space left and a few seconds later going back in an OK state because there is enough space again to come back in alarm once again, a few seconds later. Another example of flapping could be the CPU load going over and under the threshold every x number of seconds. Let's see how we can solve this.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we only need a Zabbix server with an agent installed on the Zabbix server or some host and of course access with a super administrator account, like the one that comes standard with the installation.

How to do it ...

1. Let's monitor the free space left for our our MySQL database. Create an item that checks the value of the free space of a MySQL volume...