Security is a trick world and unless you want your hosts log files scrolling your SMS buffer on your phone, you have to enable something that allows some degree of automated response. Zabbix is certainly one of the more free and better tools in that element. Here I will log my progress with setting up Zabbix and getting multiple hosts attached to the main server.

I followed these directions:
http://www.sysadminworld.com/2013/install-zabbix-2-on-ubuntu-12-04-precise

So far, it monitors itself quite well. My Linode host seems to power it quite well, yet, it constantly says that the Zabbix Server isn’t running so the information might not be current. I haven’t figured out what causes this. I do have graphs of eth0 usage, memory usage, and CPU usage as well. You might say that Linode already gives you graphs of that type, but, they don’t have anything it can do other than send you a text message. I’d prefer to have the ability to restart the process that is pegging the host or otherwise.