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Set up Zabbix alerts for your ops team

How-toFor adminsReviewed Guides: Zabbix, Workspace settings

Connecting Zabbix takes about ten minutes, half in Freesbe and half in Zabbix. You need a Freesbe admin and a Zabbix administrator (or one person who’s both).

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”
  • Make the channel first, such as #ops-alerts, and add the people on call. Make it private if host names or problems shouldn’t be seen by everyone.
  • Decide what’s worth a card. A channel that gets every Information event is soon muted. Start with Warning and up, or High and up for a channel the whole company is in.
  • For the buttons, check your Zabbix frontend is reachable over HTTPS from the internet. If it isn’t, everything else still works.

In Freesbe

Section titled “In Freesbe”
  1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → Monitoring and click Connect under Zabbix.
  2. Name it (Production Zabbix), pick the channel and the severity.
  3. Optional: fill in Zabbix address and API token for the Acknowledge and Close problem buttons. The token comes from Users → API tokens in Zabbix, for a user with read-write access to the hosts.
  4. Click Connect Zabbix and copy the Freesbe URL. It’s shown once.

In Zabbix

Section titled “In Zabbix”
  1. Import Freesbe’s media type: Download media type in Freesbe, then Alerts → Media types → Import in Zabbix.
  2. Make a user for it in Users → Users, such as Freesbe, in a group that can read the hosts you want alerts about. On its Media tab, add Freesbe and paste the URL in Send to.
  3. In Alerts → Actions → Trigger actions, add an action that sends to that user. Fill in all three tabs: Operations (the problem), Recovery operations (so the card turns green) and Update operations (so acknowledgements and comments show on the card).
  4. Optional: set the global macro {$ZABBIX.URL} to your frontend’s address, so cards link to each problem even without the address in Freesbe.

Check it works

Section titled “Check it works”

In Freesbe, open the connection’s ⋯ menu and click Send a test alert. A sample card shows up in the channel. To test the whole path, trigger a real problem on a test host, or press Test on the Freesbe media type in Zabbix with real values.

Split problems across channels

Section titled “Split problems across channels”

Connect Zabbix once per channel. Give each URL to its own media in Zabbix, with the action’s conditions deciding what goes where, for example the Databases host group to #dba and everything tagged env: production to #ops-alerts.

See Zabbix for everything the cards show, and Zabbix problems aren’t posting if nothing arrives.