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2 Active agent auto-registration

Overview

It is possible to allow active Zabbix agent auto-registration, after which the server can start monitoring them. This way new hosts can be added for monitoring without configuring them manually on the server.

Auto registration can happen when a previously unknown active agent asks for checks.

The feature might be very handy for automatic monitoring of new Cloud nodes. As soon as you have a new node in the Cloud Zabbix will automatically start the collection of performance and availability data of the host.

Active agent auto-registration also supports the monitoring of added hosts with passive checks. When the active agent asks for checks, providing it has the 'ListenIP' or 'ListenPort' configuration parameters defined in the configuration file, these are sent along to the server. (If multiple IP addresses are specified, the first one is sent to the server.)

Server, when adding the new auto-registered host, uses the received IP address and port to configure the agent. If no IP address value is received, the one used for the incoming connection is used. If no port value is received, 10050 is used.

Configuration

Configuring active agent auto-registration requires that you set up an action for agent auto-registration and have required parameters set in the agent configuration file.

Setting up network discovery is not required to have active agents auto-register.

Action for active agent auto-registration

Go to Configuration → Actions, select Auto registration as the event source and click on Create action:

  • In the Action tab, give your action a name
  • In the Conditions tab, no conditions are required
  • In the Operations tab, add relevant operations, such as - 'Add host', 'Add to host groups' (for example, Discovered hosts), 'Link to templates', etc.

If the hosts that will be auto-registering are likely to be supported for active monitoring only (such as hosts that are firewalled from your Zabbix server) then you might want to create a specific template like Template_Linux-active to link to.

Agent configuration file

Make sure that you have the Zabbix server identified in the agent configuration file - zabbix_agentd.conf

ServerActive=10.0.0.1

Unless you specifically define a Hostname in zabbix_agentd.conf, the system hostname of agent location will be used for naming the host. The system hostname in Linux can be obtained by running the 'hostname' command.

Restart the agent after making any changes to the configuration file.