zabbix-docker/agent/alpine

What is Zabbix?

Zabbix is an enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution.

Zabbix is software that monitors numerous parameters of a network and the health and integrity of servers. Zabbix uses a flexible notification mechanism that allows users to configure e-mail based alerts for virtually any event. This allows a fast reaction to server problems. Zabbix offers excellent reporting and data visualisation features based on the stored data. This makes Zabbix ideal for capacity planning.

For more information and related downloads for Zabbix components, please visit https://hub.docker.com/u/zabbix/ and https://zabbix.com

What is Zabbix agent?

Zabbix agent is deployed on a monitoring target to actively monitor local resources and applications (hard drives, memory, processor statistics etc).

Zabbix agent images

These are the only official Zabbix agent Docker images. They are based on latest Alpine and trusty Ubuntu images. The available versions of Zabbix agent are:

Zabbix agent 3.0 (tags: alpine-3.0-latest, ubuntu-3.0-latest)
Zabbix agent 3.0.* (tags: alpine-3.0.*, ubuntu-3.0.*)
Zabbix agent 3.2 (tags: alpine-3.2-latest, ubuntu-3.2-latest, alpine-latest, ubuntu-latest, latest)
Zabbix agent 3.2.* (tags: alpine-3.2.*, ubuntu-3.2.*)
Zabbix agent 3.4 (tags: alpine-trunk, ubuntu-trunk)

Images are updated when new releases are published. The image with latest tag is based on Alpine Linux.

How to use this image

Start zabbix-agent

Start a Zabbix agent container as follows:

docker run --name some-zabbix-agent -e ZBX_HOSTNAME="some-hostname" -e ZBX_SERVER_HOST="some-zabbix-server" -d zabbix/zabbix-agent:tag

Where some-zabbix-agent is the name you want to assign to your container, some-hostname is the hostname, it is Hostname parameter in Zabbix agent configuration file, some-zabbix-server is IP or DNS name of Zabbix server or proxy and tag is the tag specifying the version you want. See the list above for relevant tags, or look at the full list of tags.

Connects from Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy in other containers (Passive checks)

This image exposes the standard Zabbix agent port (10050) to perform passive checks, so container linking makes Zabbix agent instance available to Zabbix server and Zabbix proxy containers. Start your application container like this in order to link it to the Zabbix agent container:

$ docker run --name some-zabbix-server --link some-zabbix-agent:zabbix-agent -d zabbix/zabbix-server:latest

Connect to Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy containers (Active checks)

This image supports perform active checks, so container linking makes Zabbix server and Zabbix proxy containers available to Zabbix agent instance. Start your application container like this in order to link Zabbix agent to Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy containterns:

$ docker run --name some-zabbix-agent --link some-zabbix-server:zabbix-server -d zabbix/zabbix-agent:latest

Container shell access and viewing Zabbix agent logs

The docker exec command allows you to run commands inside a Docker container. The following command line will give you a bash shell inside your zabbix-agent container:

$ docker exec -ti some-zabbix-agent /bin/bash/

The Zabbix agent log is available through Docker's container log:

$ docker logs some-zabbix-agent

Privileged mode

By default, Docker containers are "unprivileged" and do not have access to the most of host resources. Zabbix agent is designed to monitor system resources, to do that Zabbix agent container must be privileged or you may mount some system-wide volumes. For example:

$ docker run --name some-zabbix-agent --link some-zabbix-server:zabbix-server --privileged -d zabbix/zabbix-agent:latest

$ docker run --name some-zabbix-agent --link some-zabbix-server:zabbix-server -v /dev/sdc:/dev/sdc -d zabbix/zabbix-agent:latest

Environment Variables

When you start the zabbix-agent image, you can adjust the configuration of the Zabbix agent by passing one or more environment variables on the docker run command line.

ZBX_HOSTNAME

This variable is unique, case sensitive hostname. By default, value is hostname of the container. It is Hostname parameter in zabbix_agentd.conf.

ZBX_SERVER_HOST

This variable is IP or DNS name of Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy. By default, value is zabbix-server. It is Server parameter in zabbix_agentd.conf. It is allowed to specify Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy port number using ZBX_SERVER_PORT variable. It make sense in case of non-default port for active checks.

ZBX_PASSIVE_ALLOW

This variable is boolean (true or false) and enables or disables feature of passive checks. By default, value is true.

ZBX_PASSIVESERVERS

The variable is comma separated list of allowed Zabbix server or proxy hosts for connections to Zabbix agent container.

ZBX_ACTIVE_ALLOW

This variable is boolean (true or false) and enables or disables feature of active checks. By default, value is true.

ZBX_ACTIVESERVERS

The variable is comma separated list of allowed Zabbix server or proxy hosts for connections to Zabbix agent container. You may specify port of Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy in such syntax: zabbix-server:10061,zabbix-proxy:10072.

ZBX_LOADMODULE

The variable is list of comma separated loadable Zabbix modules. It works with volume /var/lib/zabbix/modules. The syntax of the variable is dummy1.so,dummy2.so.

ZBX_DEBUGLEVEL

The variable is used to specify debug level. By default, value is 3. It is DebugLevel parameter in zabbix_agentd.conf. Allowed values are listed below:

• 0 - basic information about starting and stopping of Zabbix processes;
• 1 - critical information
• 2 - error information
• 3 - warnings
• 4 - for debugging (produces lots of information)
• 5 - extended debugging (produces even more information)

ZBX_TIMEOUT

The variable is used to specify timeout for processing checks. By default, value is 3.

Other variables

Additionally the image allows to specify many other environment variables listed below:

ZBX_ENABLEREMOTECOMMANDS=0
ZBX_LOGREMOTECOMMANDS=0
ZBX_STARTAGENTS=3
ZBX_HOSTNAMEITEM=system.hostname
ZBX_METADATA=
ZBX_METADATAITEM=
ZBX_REFRESHACTIVECHECKS=120
ZBX_BUFFERSEND=5
ZBX_BUFFERSIZE=100
ZBX_MAXLINESPERSECOND=20
ZBX_UNSAFEUSERPARAMETERS=0
ZBX_TLSCONNECT=unencrypted
ZBX_TLSACCEPT=unencrypted
ZBX_TLSCAFILE=
ZBX_TLSCRLFILE=
ZBX_TLSSERVERCERTISSUER=
ZBX_TLSSERVERCERTSUBJECT=
ZBX_TLSCERTFILE=
ZBX_TLSKEYFILE=
ZBX_TLSPSKIDENTITY=
ZBX_TLSPSKFILE=

Default values of these variables are specified after equal sign.

The allowed variables are identical of parameters in official zabbix_agentd.conf configuration file. For example, ZBX_REFRESHACTIVECHECKS = RefreshActiveChecks.

Please use official documentation for zabbix_agentd.conf to get more information about the variables.

Allowed volumes for the Zabbix agent container

/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.d

The volume allows include *.conf files and extend Zabbix agent using UserParameter feature.

/var/lib/zabbix/modules

The volume allows load additional modules and extend Zabbix agent using LoadModule feature.

/var/lib/zabbix/enc

The volume is used to store TLS related files. These file names are specified using ZBX_TLSCAFILE, ZBX_TLSCRLFILE, ZBX_TLSKEY_FILE and ZBX_TLSPSKFILE variables.

The image variants

The zabbix-agent images come in many flavors, each designed for a specific use case.

zabbix-agent:ubuntu-<version>

This is the defacto image. If you are unsure about what your needs are, you probably want to use this one. It is designed to be used both as a throw away container (mount your source code and start the container to start your app), as well as the base to build other images off of.

zabbix-agent:alpine-<version>

This image is based on the popular Alpine Linux project, available in the alpine official image. Alpine Linux is much smaller than most distribution base images (~5MB), and thus leads to much slimmer images in general.

This variant is highly recommended when final image size being as small as possible is desired. The main caveat to note is that it does use musl libc instead of glibc and friends, so certain software might run into issues depending on the depth of their libc requirements. However, most software doesn't have an issue with this, so this variant is usually a very safe choice. See this Hacker News comment thread for more discussion of the issues that might arise and some pro/con comparisons of using Alpine-based images.

To minimize image size, it's uncommon for additional related tools (such as git or bash) to be included in Alpine-based images. Using this image as a base, add the things you need in your own Dockerfile (see the alpine image description for examples of how to install packages if you are unfamiliar).

Supported Docker versions

This image is officially supported on Docker version 1.12.0.

Support for older versions (down to 1.6) is provided on a best-effort basis.

Please see the Docker installation documentation for details on how to upgrade your Docker daemon.

User Feedback

Documentation

Documentation for this image is stored in the agent/ directory of the zabbix/zabbix-docker GitHub repo. Be sure to familiarize yourself with the repository's README.md file before attempting a pull request.

Issues

If you have any problems with or questions about this image, please contact us through a GitHub issue.

Known issues

Currently it is not allowed to specify ZBX_ALIAS environment variable. Please use /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent.d volume with additional configuration files with Alias options.

Contributing

You are invited to contribute new features, fixes, or updates, large or small; we are always thrilled to receive pull requests, and do our best to process them as fast as we can.

Before you start to code, we recommend discussing your plans through a GitHub issue, especially for more ambitious contributions. This gives other contributors a chance to point you in the right direction, give you feedback on your design, and help you find out if someone else is working on the same thing.