2 Plugins

Overview

Plugins provide an option to extend the monitoring capabilities of Zabbix. Plugins are written in Go programming language and are supported by Zabbix agent 2 only. Plugins provide an alternative to loadable modules (written in C), and other methods for extending Zabbix functionality.

The following features are specific to agent 2 and its plugins:

• support of scheduled and flexible intervals for both passive and active checks;
• task queue management with respect to schedule and task concurrency;
• plugin-level timeouts;
• compatibility check of Zabbix agent 2 and its plugins on start up.

Since Zabbix 6.0.0, plugins don’t have to be integrated into the agent 2 directly and can be added as loadable plugins, thus making the creation process of additional plugins for gathering new monitoring metrics easier.

This page lists Zabbix native and loadable plugins, and describes plugin configuration principles from the user perspective.

For instructions and tutorials on writing your own plugins, see Developer center.

For more information on the communication process between Zabbix agent 2 and a loadable plugin, as well as the metrics collection process, see Connection diagram.

Configuring plugins

This section provides common plugin configuration principles and best practices.

All plugins are configured using Plugins.* parameter, which can either be part of the Zabbix agent 2 configuration file or a plugin’s own configuration file. If a plugin uses a separate configuration file, path to this file should be specified in the Include parameter of Zabbix agent 2 configuration file.

Each plugin parameter should have the following structure:

Plugins.<PluginName>.<Parameter>=<Value>

Parameter names should adhere to the following requirements:

• it is recommended to capitalize the names of your plugins;
• the parameter should be capitalized;
• special characters are not allowed;
• nesting isn’t limited by a maximum level;
• the number of parameters is not limited.

For example, if active checks that do not have Scheduling update interval need to be performed immediately after the agent restart, set Plugins.<Plugin name>.System.ForceActiveChecksOnStart in the configuration file. See Passive and active checks for more details. Whereas by using the Plugins.<PluginName>.System.Capacity=N setting in the Plugins configuration parameter it is possible to lower the plugin hardcoded capacity setting, which limits the number of concurrent checks within one plugin.

Named sessions

Named sessions represent an additional level of plugin parameters and can be used to define separate sets of authentication parameters for each of the instances being monitored. Each named session parameter should have the following structure:

Plugins.<PluginName>.Sessions.<SessionName>.<Parameter>=<Value>

A session name can be used as a connString item key parameter instead of specifying a URI, username, and/or password separately. In item keys, the first parameter can be either a connString or a URI. If the first key parameter doesn’t match any session name, it will be treated as a URI.

Note that passing embedded URI credentials is not supported, consider using named sessions instead.

In Zabbix versions 6.4.0-6.4.2, when providing a connString (session name) in key parameters, item key parameters for username and password must be empty. The values will be taken from the session parameters. If an authentication parameter is not specified for the named session, a hardcoded default value will be used.

Since Zabbix 6.4.2, you can override session parameters by specifying new values in the item key parameters. In this case:

1. The first item key parameters must be a session name and the parameter value (usually, a URI) must be defined in the session parameters.
2. Other parameters will be taken from the item key if defined.
3. If an item key parameter is empty, plugin will use a session parameter.
4. If the session parameter is also not specified, hardcoded default value will be used.

The list of available named session parameters depends on the plugin, see Zabbix agent 2 (UNIX) / Zabbix agent 2 (Windows) for details.

Example 1

Monitoring of two instances “MySQL1” and “MySQL2”.

Configuration parameters:

Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL1.Uri=tcp://127.0.0.1:3306
       Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL1.User=mysql1_user
       Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL1.Password=unique_password
       Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL2.Uri=tcp://192.0.2.0:3306
       Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL2.User=mysql2_user
       Plugins.Mysql.Sessions.MySQL2.Password=different_password

Item keys: mysql.ping[MySQL1], mysql.ping[MySQL2]

Example 2

Providing some of the parameters in the item key (supported since Zabbix 6.4.2).

Configuration parameters:

Plugins.Postgres.Sessions.Session1.Uri=tcp://192.0.2.234:5432
       Plugins.Postgres.Sessions.Session1.User=old_username
       Plugins.Postgres.Sessions.Session1.Password=session_password

Item key: pgsql.ping[session1,new_username,,postgres]

As a result of this configuration, the agent will connect to PostgreSQL using the following parameters:

• URI from session parameter: 192.0.2.234:5432
• Username from the item key: new_username
• Password from session parameter (since it is omitted in the item key): session_password
• Database name from the item key: postgres

Hardcoded defaults

If a parameter required for authentication is not provided in an item key or in the named session parameters, the plugin will use a hardcoded default value.

Connections

Some plugins support gathering metrics from multiple instances simultaneously. Both local and remote instances can be monitored. TCP and Unix-socket connections are supported.

It is recommended to configure plugins to keep connections to instances in an open state. The benefits are reduced network congestion, latency, and CPU and memory usage due to the lower number of connections. The client library takes care of this.

Time period for which unused connections should remain open can be determined by Plugins.<PluginName>.KeepAlive parameter. Example: Plugins.Memcached.KeepAlive

Plugins

All metrics supported by Zabbix agent 2 are collected by plugins.

Built-in

The following plugins for Zabbix agent 2 are available out-of-the-box. Click on the plugin name to go to the plugin repository with additional information.

Loadable

Loadable plugins, when launched with:
- -V —version - print plugin version and license information;
- -h —help - print help information.

Click on the plugin name to go to the plugin repository with additional information.

See also: Building loadable plugins.