Zabbix and Prometheus are both more than capable monitoring tools.
That said, in Kubernetes / microservices environments many teams lean toward Prometheus for the reasons below.
Quick Comparison
| Area | Prometheus | Zabbix |
|---|---|---|
| Collection model | HTTP pull (Pushgateway as helper), service discovery | Agent/Agent2, SNMP/Trap, IPMI, JMX, HTTP, VMware, etc. |
| Data / query | Time-series with PromQL for aggregation and trend analysis | Item/trigger model with thresholds; well-suited to non-periodic data too |
| Alerting | Alertmanager (grouping, inhibition, routing) | Built-in alerts, escalation, and remote commands |
| Visualization | Typically Grafana and other external tools | Built-in dashboards/graphs/maps/reports/grafana |
| Scale / retention | Long-term storage & HA via Thanos/Cortex/Mimir (add-on stack) | Single server + DB; Proxy for distributed collection/segmentation; 7.0 adds Proxy HA |
| Kubernetes fit | De-facto standard (node/pod/app metrics + rich exporter ecosystem) | 7.0+ offers Helm/Proxy/Agent guides & templates for infra-centric monitoring |
My Monitoring Philosophy
At the end of the day, what you collect and how you analyze it is what safeguards uptime and reliability.
Tools matter, but the crucial part is how well the engineers wield metrics—their judgment, craft, and operating philosophy.
- Anything Prometheus can do, Zabbix can usually do (sometimes with a different path).
- Anything Zabbix can do, Prometheus can usually do (sometimes with a different path).
- The difference is often how directly each tool reaches the goal in its “home turf.”
Conclusion: it’s about people.
Choose the tool your engineers can operate expertly. Then reduce key-person risk with solid documentation and training so operations don’t hinge on a single individual.
Where I Stand
I’ve been using Zabbix since before Prometheus existed. I’m confident I’ve built and run structured, end-to-end monitoring with Zabbix:
- K8s / Applications / OS / Network / Hardware / Power usage—I’ve covered all of these with Zabbix in production.
Going forward, I plan to share hands-on, real-world Zabbix practices based on that experience.
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🛠 마지막 수정일: 2025.09.18
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