# 1 Zabbix definitions

#### Overview

In this section you can learn the meaning of some terms commonly used in
Zabbix.

#### Definitions

***[host](/manual/config/hosts)***

\- *a networked device that you want to monitor, with IP/DNS.*

***[host group](/manual/config/hosts)***

\- *a logical grouping of hosts; it may contain hosts and templates.
Hosts and templates within a host group are not in any way linked to
each other. Host groups are used when assigning access rights to hosts
for different user groups.*

***[item](/manual/config/items)***

\- *a particular piece of data that you want to receive off of a host, a
metric of data.*

***[trigger](/manual/config/triggers)***

\- *a logical expression that defines a problem threshold and is used to
"evaluate" data received in items*

When received data are above the threshold, triggers go from 'Ok' into a
'Problem' state. When received data are below the threshold, triggers
stay in/return to an 'Ok' state.

***[event](/manual/config/events)***

\- *a single occurrence of something that deserves attention such as a
trigger changing state or a discovery/agent auto-registration taking
place*

***[action](/manual/config/notifications/action)***

\- *a predefined means of reacting to an event.*

An action consists of operations (e.g. sending a notification) and
conditions (*when* the operation is carried out)

***[escalation](/manual/config/notifications/action/escalations)***

\- *a custom scenario for executing operations within an action; a
sequence of sending notifications/executing remote commands*

***[media](/manual/config/notifications/media)***

\- *a means of delivering notifications; delivery channel*

***[notification](/manual/config/notifications/action/operation/message)***

\- *a message about some event sent to a user via the chosen media
channel*

***[remote
command](/manual/config/notifications/action/operation/remote_command)***

\- *a pre-defined command that is automatically executed on a monitored
host upon some condition*

***[template](/manual/config/templates)***

\- *a set of entities (items, triggers, graphs, screens, applications,
low-level discovery rules, web scenarios) ready to be applied to one or
several hosts*

The job of templates is to speed up the deployment of monitoring tasks
on a host; also to make it easier to apply mass changes to monitoring
tasks. Templates are linked directly to individual hosts.

***[application](/manual/config/items/applications)***

\- *a grouping of items in a logical group*

***[web scenario](/manual/web_monitoring)***

\- *one or several HTTP requests to check the availability of a web
site*

***[frontend](/manual/introduction/overview#architecture)***

\- *the web interface provided with Zabbix*

***[Zabbix API](/manual/api)***

\- *Zabbix API allows you to use the JSON RPC protocol to create, update
and fetch Zabbix objects (like hosts, items, graphs and others) or
perform any other custom tasks*

***[Zabbix server](server)***

\- *a central process of Zabbix software that performs monitoring,
interacts with Zabbix proxies and agents, calculates triggers, sends
notifications; a central repository of data*

***[Zabbix agent](agent)***

\- *a process deployed on monitoring targets to actively monitor local
resources and applications*

***[Zabbix proxy](proxy)***

\- *a process that may collect data on behalf of Zabbix server, taking
some processing load off of the server*