Likelihood to Recommend We used a product before that was designed to prevent users making changes and saving files to the desktop computer. This required a renewal of the license. By using SCCM in our environment we were able to discontinue using that product because SCCM allows us to completely restore a machine back to the original configuration. We have taught our users to save their individual work on either a network drive or a cloud drive. By doing this, if we do a re-image of their machine they have lost no data, and it makes for a faster resolution. In some instances having a computer in our SCCM environment it can become cumbersome when creating new users for very specific purposes. It can be done by creating new organizational units and applying new policies but when in a pinch it can be frustrating. For the most part we have tried to make "new" purpose images and groups to at least accommodate a quick install.
Read full review Zabbix is very well suited for infrastructure monitoring i.e. the underlying host servers, basically, compute nodes. However, it has limited FM & PM capabilities for the workloads, i.e., the virtual machines (VMs). Zabbix has an easy-to-use GUI which can be explored easily & provides good filtering of the data.
Read full review Pros Provides our users the ability to deploy and manage our own datacenter based on defined software with understandable solutions for storage, compute, networking and security. We are able to update at once all the computers from all departments without having to install the OS on every computer. It allows us to have everything in one place for database management and datacenter inspection as well. Read full review Collecting hardware data - CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Metrics are collected and reported on. Flexible design - It is very easy to build out even very large environments via the templating system. You can also start where you are - network monitoring, server monitoring, etc. and then build it out from there as time and resources permit. Provides a "plugin architecture" (via XML templates) to allow end users to extend it to monitor all kinds of equipment, software, or other metrics that are not already added into the software already. Very complete documentation. Almost every aspect of Zabbix has been documented and reported on. Cost - Zabbix is FOSS software and always free. Support is reasonably priced and readily available. Read full review Cons Needs web based storefront for requesting new software Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list. Read full review In a busy Zabbix environment, it can easily overwhelm the underlying database. Plan on having SSDs and a significant server infrastructure to keep up with more than a hundred hosts. Building out Zabbix metrics that suit your environment can be very time consuming. When choosing a monitoring platform like Zabbix, expect a steep learning curve and to invest significant resources to make the tool valuable. This is less important than it has been in the past, but current versions of Zabbix still do not handle IPMI checks of hardware very well. We needed to write our own wrapper for IPMI checks rather than using the built in IPMI poller. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is free. It didn't cost anything to implement (other than my time and the cost incurred for it) and it is filling a badly needed gap in our IT infrastructure. Support is available if we have issues and can be done annually or paid for on a per incident basis as needed. Expansion, updates, and all other future lifecycle activities are likewise free of cost, so as long as someone is able to implement/maintain the software (and the OSS project is maintained) then I imagine the company will never leave it.
Read full review Usability It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
Read full review If you go deeper than the dashboards, the user friendliness goes away quickly
Read full review Support Rating If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.
Read full review The setup is the most time-consuming portion of using zabbix. It takes a lot of effort to shape it into a usable format and even then it can get very messy. It's not exactly intuitive and as mentioned the UI seems a bit antiquated. If I was to roll out a monitoring solution from scratch, I'd probably look for alternatives which are easier to use and maintain.
Read full review Implementation Rating We are a mainly Windows environment, so it would be useful if we could have used Active Directory to deploy agents. As of version 4.2, Zabbix has announced a new agent MSI file to allow exactly that. Unfortunately, we didn't have that option. Also, for Linux and MAC deployments, there is no simple way to deploy that. Using remote scripts you may be able to create something, but most places will opt for either SNMP (agentless) or manual installation of agents to add to Zabbix. A way of deploying agents via discovery would go a long way to helping in the adoption of the tool.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
Read full review We're using the Solarwinds suite as our global monitoring standard, but it is very complex and its licensing model makes it difficult to monitor a wide range of technologies. So, we're using Zabbix as a complement on our monitoring process. Zabbix is a way more flexible and has free integrations to a wide range of technologies. It is also more 'user friendly' and easy to manage.
Read full review Return on Investment We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns. We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops. Read full review Zabbix simply makes it easier to identify, and subsequently resolve problems quickly Zabbix gives one web page to look at to see a list of all on-going issue in a single place Zabbix can automate response to alerts. For example, Zabbix allows you the customization to take a monitored server out of production rotation if it is identified as unhealthy Read full review ScreenShots