Not only I have an puppet module for installing Zabbix, I also have some Ansible roles for this. At the moment there are 4 roles:

• zabbix-server (https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/2070)
• zabbix-agent (https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/2079)
• zabbix-proxy (https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/2073)
• zabbix-javagateway (https://galaxy.ansible.com/list#/roles/2076)

In this blog item, we talk about the “zabbix-agent” role. The latest version is 0.2.0.

Defaults

Installing this role is very easy:

ansible-galaxy install dj-wasabi.zabbix-agent

It will be installed in your roles directory. Default is “/etc/ansible/roles” or whatever you have configured in the ansible.cfg file. After installation there is only 1 (or 2 when you make use of active items) parameters needed for making this role work:

agent_server: <IP_-_FQDN_OF_ZABBIX_SERVER>
agent_serveractive: <IP_-_FQDN_OF_ZABBIX_SERVER>

This will need the ip address or the FQDN of the “zabbix-server”.

OS?

This role works on several operating systems/families:

• RedHat
• Debian
• Ubuntu
• OpenSuse

If you have an operating system/family which isn’t in the list above, you can create an issue at the Github page and please fill in the request. I can’t make any guarantee that it will come, but I can try it. Or if you do have some Ansible skills, please create an Pull request and I would be happy to accept it. 🙂

Playbook

So, how does the playbook looks like? Like this:

- hosts: all
  sudo: yes
  roles:
   - role: dj-wasabi.zabbix-agent
     agent_server: <IP_-_FQDN_OF_ZABBIX_SERVER>
     agent_serveractive: <IP_-_FQDN_OF_ZABBIX_SERVER>

As you see it is very basic and does the job very good. This only installs the agent on the specific server and configures the configuration file. But we really want to automate everything right?

Cove

Few weeks ago I found this pull requests for the “ansible-modules-extra” repository. This pull requests had an few ansible modules which made sure that you can use the Zabbix API to create or update hosts configuration. In the pull requests there were something like 5 modules, but this Ansible role only use 3 of them. With this role, you can create the following:

• host groups
• Host itself.
• Macros for the host

For now, when the host is created, it will only create the “zabbix interface”. Maybe with the next release I’ll make sure you can also create SNMP, JMX and IPMI interfaces.

How do we have to configure it? Something like this. You will have to change it to your environment.

- hosts: wdserver00
  roles:
     - role: zabbix-agent
       agent_server: 192.168.1.1
       agent_serveractive: 192.168.1.1
       zabbix_url: http://zabbix.example.com
       zabbix_api_use: true
       zabbix_api_user: Admin
       zabbix_api_pass: Zabbix
       zabbix_create_host: present
       zabbix_host_groups:
         - Linux servers
       zabbix_link_templates:
         - Template OS Linux
       zabbix_macros:
         - macro_key: apache_type
           macro_value: reverse_proxy

I’ll skip the first 2 parameters, as these are described earlier on this page.

zabbix_url: The url on which the Zabbix web interface is available.
zabbix_api_user: The username which will connect to the API.
zabbix_api_pass: The password for the “zabbix_api_user” user.
zabbix_create_host: present if we want to create the host, absent if we want to delete it.
zabbix_host_groups: List of hostgroup where this host belongs to.
zabbix_link_templates: List of templates which will be linked to the host.
zabbix_macros: key, value pair of macros that will be used by the host. 

When we run Ansible, we will see at the end of the run:

.. <skip> ..
TASK: [zabbix-agent | Create hostgroups] **************************************
ok: [wdserver00 -> 127.0.0.1]

TASK: [zabbix-agent | Create a new host or update an existing host's info] ****
changed: [wdserver00 -> 127.0.0.1]

TASK: [zabbix-agent | Updating host configuration with macros] ****************
changed: [wdserver00 -> 127.0.0.1] => (item={'macro_key': 'apache_type', 'macro_value': 'reverse_proxy'})

Nice! If you check the Web interface, you’ll see that the host is created with the correct host groups and templates. If not, you’ll see some error messages in the Ansible output which will say what went wrong.

This role isn’t perfect, so if you encounter an bug or found/have and enhancement, please create an Pull request at Github and I’ll accept it. We can all make this role beter. 🙂

Side note:

There are more parameters which can be overridden, please check the “defaults/main.yml” file or the README.