As part of my series of setting up monitors on zabbix, I will share some of the counters I have configured on my zabbix server to monitor the SMTP servers. As I had earlier shown in previous post the importance of creating Templates to group items per servers or functions, I will only show screenshots of some SMTP counters.
1. First create a template for SMTP Servers
2. Create Application to capture the KPI’s to monitor
3. Items: There are loads of counters you can gather information on based your your needs and desire
- SMTP Port 25 Check: Checks if server is still listening on port 25
- SMTP Port 25 Trigger: This will send an alert to screen or sms or email when the server isn’t listerning on Port25 meaning the SMTP server isn’t able to process email messages
- SMTP Remote Queue Length: The number of messages in the remote queue which indicates the number of messages in the SMTP Queue folder for remote delivery
Key: perf_counter[\SMTP Server(SMTP 1)\Remote Queue Length]
- SMTP Remote Queue Length Trigger: This sends an alert to screen indicating number of mails in Queue folder has exceeded the set value. I set the trigger to greater-than 5 (> 5)
- Below is the trigger received when I drop a sample BAD email into the pickup folder more than 5 times
- SMTP Directory Drops Total: The total number of messages placed in the drop directory
Key: perf_counter[\SMTP Server(SMTP 1)\Directory Drops Total]
- After adding all the required counters and triggers → click on Monitoring Tab/Latest data → select server from drop-down at top right corner → expand the Application name (SMTP) → you should see all the newly created SMTP counters (items)
- Click on each graph and review the reports
