Zabbix was this reliable friend, always sending you an email, SMS or both when something went down. It sometimes sent you a lot of emails, but you never got angry at Zabbix about that – it was just eager to help you, make sure you did not miss the weekly disaster. But then… last week… Zabbix did not send you an SMS. It did not send you an email. It did not telepathically inform you. But things were DOWN. Server was not RESPONDING.
Zabbix knew about this. As you review the data, sitting in a dark room, the graphs clearly show the downtime. But there was-no-alert. How is that possible? Wait, what, this is impossible. You can see on the glowing screen that the main action, a crucial piece in getting those alerts, is disabled. That just cannot be, as nobody, NOBODY would ever disable that. How, oh how. Why, oh why.