I’ve been using zabbix to monitor my VMware infrastructure and it’s really nice. Doing it from the ground up also made it possible to prevent flapping by introducing averages for monitoring, as well as automatically adding any VM, host and cluster using the VMware API.

What you need:

Zabbix installed and running VMware, preferably with Vcenter

The vmware zabbix templates:

1. https://www.zabbix.org/mw/images/5/5d/Template_Virt_VMware_Guest-2.2.0.xml
2. https://www.zabbix.org/mw/images/7/7e/Template_Virt_VMware_Hypervisor-2.2.0.xml
3. https://www.zabbix.org/mw/images/5/50/Template_Virt_VMware-2.2.0.xml

Install the templates in the order 1 - 2 - 3 or it will fail.
Create two new value mappings in Zabbix (Administration -> General -> Value Mapping)

VMware status:

0 -> gray
1 -> green
2 -> yellow
3 -> red

VMware VirtualMachinePowerState:

0 -> poweredOff
1 -> poweredOn
2 -> suspended

Create a new Host (Configuration -> Hosts -> Create) which will become our Host prototype

Set the Host macros as specified:

{$PASSWORD} -> your vcenter password
{$URL} -> DNS or IP to vcenter
{$USERNAME} -> your vcenter username (same as the webinterface)

Link the host to the VMware service template (Template Virt VMWare)

Save and you’re done.

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