🧩 Problem

I wanted a centralized monitoring platform for my homelab that could monitor:

  • On-premises VMware ESXi hosts
  • Linux virtual machines
  • Windows systems
  • HPE iLO hardware management
  • Cloud-hosted workloads

The challenge was that most of my infrastructure lives behind NAT at home, and I did not want to expose services publicly or configure complex port forwarding.

🛠️ Solution Overview

I built a hybrid monitoring architecture using:

  • Zabbix 7.0 LTS hosted in Azure
  • ZeroTier for secure private connectivity
  • Zabbix Proxy running locally in my homelab
  • VMware API monitoring for ESXi
  • SNMP monitoring for HPE iLO

This design allows cloud-hosted monitoring while keeping home infrastructure private.