Handy Tips #17: Master and dependent items for bulk metric collection

Anonymous Anonymous

Zabbix Certified Expert & Trainer

December 20, 2021

Collect metrics in bulk and reduce monitoring performance overhead with master and dependent items. Data collection efficiency is an important aspect of monitoring. We need to ensure that our monitoring approach has a minimal impact both on the monitoring system and the system that is being monitored. Improve your metric collection efficiency and reduce the […]

Collect metrics in bulk and reduce monitoring performance overhead with master and dependent items.

Data collection efficiency is an important aspect of monitoring. We need to ensure that our monitoring approach has a minimal impact both on the monitoring system and the system that is being monitored.

Improve your metric collection efficiency and reduce the performance overhead with master and dependent items:

Dependent items can extract data from a master item by using preprocessing
Combine multiple preprocessing steps for best results

Up to 3 dependency levels are supported
Up to 29999 dependent items for a single master item

Check out the video to learn how to define master and dependent items

How to define master and dependent items:

Navigate to Configuration → Hosts and create a new host representing your API endpoint
Input the Host name, Host group, and add an arbitrary interface
Click the Add button
In Configuration → Hosts Click on the Items button next to the host
Click the Create item button
Select the Type – HTTP agent and populate the URL with your API endpoint address
Select the Type of information – Text
Click the Add button
Create another item of type Dependent item
Define item Key and item Name with arbitrary values
Open the Preprocessing tab
Use a preprocessing step (ex. JSONPath) to extract the required value from the master item
Click the Add button
Navigate to Monitoring → Latest data and filter by your host
Observe the collected metrics

Tips and best practices:

Dependent items don’t have their own update intervals
Dependent item values get updated as soon as the master item receives a new value
Deleting a master item will also delete the items that depend on it
Item of any type can be used as a master item