Difference between network discovery and auto-registration in Zabbix?

Question

Zabbix

What is the difference between network discovery and auto-registration of new hosts? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the first and second methods? When is it better to use network discovery and when to use auto-registration?

Answer 1

Auto-registration only works if your zabbix-agent is running in active mode, that is, ServerActive=zabbix_server is specified in the agent config. In this case, agents will constantly send check requests to the server even if only passive checks are used on the server. This can be handy when, say, you have servers automatically deployed in a private cloud and you immediately need to monitor them. In other cases, configuration management systems are used that create a host in zabbix using api.
And network discovery is initiated by the server. Thus, it can detect not only agents, but also other equipment. Useful, again, when you have a need to find equipment you don't know about.
My organization used network discovery because the monitoring department worked in isolation from the network and system administration departments. In the process, we changed the org structure and approach to monitoring, and the need for network discovery disappeared.