Handy Tips #19: Preventing alert storms with trigger dependencies

Anonymous Anonymous

Zabbix Certified Expert & Trainer

January 6, 2022

Prevent receiving a flood of unwanted alerts and receive only the most critical notifications by defining trigger dependencies. Every IT infrastructure has multiple elements, failure of which can cause a cascading set of problems across the particular infrastructure segment. It is important to prevent an unwanted alert storm and highlight only the root cause problem […]

Prevent receiving a flood of unwanted alerts and receive only the most critical notifications by defining trigger dependencies.

Every IT infrastructure has multiple elements, failure of which can cause a cascading set of problems across the particular infrastructure segment. It is important to prevent an unwanted alert storm and highlight only the root cause problem within the problem chain.

Define trigger dependencies to prevent alert storms:

Only the most critical problems will be displayed in Zabbix
Dependent triggers will not generate problems until the parent trigger is in an OK state

Each trigger can have multiple trigger dependencies
Trigger dependencies can be defined between triggers on different hosts

Check out the video to learn how to define trigger dependencies.

How to define a trigger dependency:

Navigate to Configuration → Hosts
Find the host for which you will define the trigger dependency
Click on the triggers button next to the host
Open the trigger for which you will define the dependency
Click on the Dependencies tab
Click add and select the host containing the parent trigger
Select the trigger on which the current trigger will depend on
If required, add more trigger dependencies
Click the Update button
Simulate a problem to test the dependency
Navigate to Monitoring → Problems and observe the trigger dependency behavior

Tips and best practices:

The dependent trigger will only be re-evaluated once the related item receives new metrics
Trigger dependency may be added between host triggers as long as it wouldn’t result in a circular dependency
A trigger dependency chain between multiple hosts can be created
Zabbix will not execute actions for the dependent trigger if the parent trigger is in a problem state