How to Monitor Ceph Clusters with Zabbix: 3 Practical Methods

Ceph is an open‑source distributed storage platform; this article introduces three methods to monitor a Ceph cluster with Zabbix, focusing on concepts and commands without detailed configuration.

1. Monitor Ceph with Agent2

Since Zabbix 5.0, Agent2 supports Ceph monitoring via Ceph's RESTful module (listening on port 8003). Enable the module, generate a self‑signed SSL certificate, create an API user, list keys, and test the API with curl. Then configure the Zabbix agent to collect data.

Enable RESTful module

ceph mgr module enable restful

Generate SSL certificate

ceph restful create-self-signed-cert

Create API user

ceph restful create-key zabbix

List all API keys: ceph restful list-keys Verify the API user (replace and with actual values):

curl -k https://api:YOUR_TOKEN@<ceph-mgr>:<port>/server

Modify the Zabbix Agent2 configuration to skip TLS verification and restart the service:

vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agent2.conf
Plugins.Ceph.InsecureSkipVerify=true
systemctl restart zabbix-agent2

Data collection works, but the ceph pg dump command is denied, a known issue discussed in Ceph forums.

2. Monitor Ceph with Zabbix Sender

From Ceph Luminous onward, the ceph‑mgr provides a Zabbix module.

Install zabbix‑sender

rpm -Uvh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-5.2-1.el7.noarch.rpm
yum install zabbix-sender -y

Enable Zabbix module

ceph mgr module enable zabbix

Configure Zabbix server and host

ceph zabbix config-set zabbix_host 192.168.2.24
ceph zabbix config-set identifier node1
ceph zabbix config-show

Import template and link to host

The template is located at /usr/share/ceph/mgr/zabbix/zabbix_template.xml; import it in Zabbix and attach it to the host.

Test data sending

ceph zabbix send

Data appears in Zabbix every 60 seconds.

3. Custom scripts

Shell or Python scripts can invoke Ceph commands or the RESTful API for monitoring; many open‑source examples are available online.