4 Proxy

Overview

Zabbix proxy is a process that may collect monitoring data from one or more monitored devices and send the information to the Zabbix server, essentially working on behalf of the server. All collected data is buffered locally and then transferred to the Zabbix server the proxy belongs to.

Deploying a proxy is optional, but may be very beneficial to distribute the load of a single Zabbix server. If only proxies collect data, processing on the server becomes less CPU and disk I/O hungry.

A Zabbix proxy is the ideal solution for centralized monitoring of remote locations, branches and networks with no local administrators.

Zabbix proxy requires a separate database.

See also: Using proxies in a distributed environment

Proxy process

If installed as package

Zabbix proxy runs as a daemon process. The proxy can be started by executing:

shell> service zabbix-proxy start

This will work on most of GNU/Linux systems. On other systems you may need to run:

shell> /etc/init.d/zabbix-proxy start

Similarly, for stopping/restarting/viewing status of Zabbix proxy, use the following commands:

shell> service zabbix-proxy stop
       shell> service zabbix-proxy restart
       shell> service zabbix-proxy status

Start up manually

If the above does not work you have to start it manually. Find the path to the zabbix_proxy binary and execute:

shell> zabbix_proxy

You can use the following command line parameters with Zabbix proxy:

-c --config <file>              absolute path to the configuration file
       -R --runtime-control <option>   perform administrative functions
       -h --help                       give this help
       -V --version                    display version number

Examples of running Zabbix proxy with command line parameters:

shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf
       shell> zabbix_proxy --help
       shell> zabbix_proxy -V

Runtime control

Runtime control options:

Allowed range of PIDs for changing the log level of a single Zabbx process is from 1 to 65535. On systems with large PIDs <process type,N> target option can be used for changing the log level of a single process.

Example of using runtime control to reload the proxy configuration cache:

shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R config_cache_reload

Example of using runtime control to trigger execution of housekeeper

shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R housekeeper_execute

Examples of using runtime control to change log level:

Increase log level of all processes:
       shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R log_level_increase
       
       Increase log level of second poller process:
       shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R log_level_increase=poller,2
       
       Increase log level of process with PID 1234:
       shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R log_level_increase=1234
       
       Decrease log level of all http poller processes:
       shell> zabbix_proxy -c /usr/local/etc/zabbix_proxy.conf -R log_level_decrease="http poller"

Process user

Zabbix proxy is designed to run as a non-root user. It will run as whatever non-root user it is started as. So you can run proxy as any non-root user without any issues.

If you will try to run it as 'root', it will switch to a hardcoded 'zabbix' user, which must be present on your system. You can only run proxy as 'root' if you modify the 'AllowRoot' parameter in the proxy configuration file accordingly.

Configuration file

See the configuration file options for details on configuring zabbix_proxy.

Supported platforms

Zabbix proxy runs on the same list of server#supported platforms as Zabbix server.

Locale

Note that the proxy requires a UTF-8 locale so that some textual items can be interpreted correctly. Most modern Unix-like systems have a UTF-8 locale as default, however, there are some systems where that may need to be set specifically.