So it was quiet the last few months for posting stuff on the site, so I’ll try to do it now. I also moved the wordpress.com instead of hosting the site myself.

At the moment on writing this blog item, the wdijkerman-zabbix puppet module is at release 1.1.0. One of the biggest changes which came with release 1.0.0, is that you can choose whether your want everything one to run on a single host (Single Node, Like most of us) or running it on different servers (Multi node).

Up to release 1.0.0 you could only use the wdijkerman-zabbix puppet module if everything was running on the same host. Yes, from release > 0.5.0 you could even with some ‘hacking’ run the database on an other host, but that was not something I would document let alone it was a little bit confusing to do.

First, we start with the Single node setup. Apache, Zabbix-web, Zabbix-server and the database is installed on 1 system.

So, lets install the zabbix-server on one host:

node 'zabbix.example.com'
  class { 'apache':
    mpm_module => 'prefork',
  }
  include apache::mod::php
 
  class { 'postgresql::server': }
 
  class { 'zabbix':
    zabbix_url    => 'zabbix.example.com',
  }
}

With this manifest setup, you have configured an complete zabbix-server on one host.

It will install and configure Apache, postgresql (Default database for zabbix) and both zabbix components zabbix-web and zabbix-server. There is only one parameter needed for zabbix-server and it is the ‘zabbix_url’. This is the url on which the zabbix web interface is available, the rest of the parameters are optional.

Oh, you want to run it on MySQL? No problem, this would be an very basic setup to begin with:

node 'zabbix.example.com'
  class { 'apache':
    mpm_module => 'prefork',
  }
  include apache::mod::php

  class { 'mysql::server': }

  class { 'zabbix':
    zabbix_url    => 'zabbix.example.com',
    database_type => 'mysql',
  }
}

Now, the multi node setup. This example consists of 3 nodes:

The following example will be given with the usage of MySQL as database backend. You can also choose to use the PostgreSQL database, but  than you have to change the setup a little bit. This will be described after the example:

node 'server01.example.com' {
  # My ip: 192.168.20.11
  class { 'apache':
    mpm_module => 'prefork',
  }
  class { 'apache::mod::php': }
  class { 'zabbix::web':
    zabbix_url => 'zabbix.example.com',
    zabbix_server => 'server02.example.com',
    database_host => 'server03.example.com',
    database_type => 'mysql',
  }
}

node 'server02.example.com' {
  # My ip: 192.168.20.12
  class { 'mysql::client': }
  class { 'zabbix::server':
    database_host => 'server03.example.com',
    database_type => 'mysql',
  }
}

node 'server03.example.com' {
  # My ip: 192.168.20.13
  class { 'mysql::server':
    override_options => {
      'mysqld' => {
      'bind_address' => '192.168.20.13',
      },
    },
  }
  class { 'zabbix::database':
  database_type => 'mysql',
    zabbix_server => 'server02.example.com',
    zabbix_web => 'server01.example.com',
  }
}

We have to fill in some ip’s or hostnames for this setup. Both the zabbix-web and -server needs to know where the database is and the zabbix-web needs to know where to find the zabbix-server.

When you want to use the PostgreSQL as backend in an multinode setup, you can use something like this:

node 'server01.example.com' {
# My ip: 192.168.20.11
 class { 'apache':
   mpm_module => 'prefork',
 }
 class { 'apache::mod::php': }
 class { 'zabbix::web':
   zabbix_url => 'zabbix.example.com',
   zabbix_server => 'server02.example.com',
   database_host => 'server03.example.com',
   database_type => ‘postgresql',
 }
}

node 'server02.example.com' {
# My ip: 192.168.20.12
 class { 'postgresql::client': }
 class { 'zabbix::server':
   database_host => 'server03.example.com',
   database_type => ‘postgresql',
 }
}

node 'server03.example.com' {
# My ip: 192.168.20.13
 class { 'postgresql::server':
   listen_addresses => '192.168.20.13'
 }
 class { 'zabbix::database':
   database_type => ‘postgresql',
   zabbix_web_ip => '192.168.20.12',
   zabbix_server_ip => '192.168.20.13',
 }
}

The PostgreSQL class accepts different values than MySQL: PostgreSQL accepts ipaddresses and MySQL accepts fqdn.

On a next item, I’ll go into the zabbix-proxy component. Like the zabbix-server, this can also be installed on a single node or multi node.