Monitor and react to unexpected or faulty outputs from your monitoring targets by using Zabbix validation preprocessing.
In case of a failure, some monitoring endpoints like sensors or specific application or OS level counters can start outputting faulty metrics. Such behavior needs to be detected and reacted to as soon as possible.
Use Zabbix preprocessing to validate the collected metrics:
- Select from and combine multiple preprocessing validation steps
- Display a custom error message in case of an unexpected metric
- Discard or change the value in case of an unexpected metric
- Create an internal action to react to items becoming not supported
Check out the video to learn how to use preprocessing to detect invalid metrics.
Define preprocessing steps and react on invalid metrics:
- Navigate to Configuration → Hosts and find your host
- Click on the Items button
- Find the item for which the preprocessing steps will be defined
- Open the item and click on the Preprocessing tab
- For our example, we will use the Temperature item
- Select the In range preprocessing step
- Define the min and max preprocessing parameters
- Mark the Custom on fail checkbox
- Press the Set error to button and enter your custom error message
- Press the Update button
- Simulate an invalid metric by sending an out-of-range value to this item
- Navigate to Configuration → Hosts → Your Host → Items
- Observe the custom error message being displayed next to your item
Tips and best practices
- Validation preprocessing can check for errors in JSON, XML, or unstructured text with JSONPath, XPath, or Regex
- User macros and low-level discovery macros can be used to define the In range validation values
- The Check for not supported value preprocessing step is always executed as the first preprocessing step
- Internal actions can be used to define action conditions and receive alerts about specific items receiving invalid metrics
The post Handy Tips #31: Detecting invalid metrics with Zabbix validation preprocessing appeared first on Zabbix Blog.
