Zabbix Module Return - Catch vSphere outage

[rockaut]

I recently updated my vCenters and forgot to switch the zabbix items in maintenance without data collection. It resulted in an Problem-Storm as nearly all triggers for the hosts kicked in.

Problem is, that vPoller/vConnector cant get data from vCenter and returns some string for all requested data. For zabbix text items this string then triggers false-positives and for zabbix numeric items it states the wrong value type.

I think the correct way to handle that should be something like here:
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/3.2/manual/appendix/items/activepassive

Like so:
<HEADER><DATALEN>ZBX_NOTSUPPORTED\0Cannot obtain vSphere data

A great thing would be an "virtual" zabbix item where vPoller stores if data could get fetched - if something failes this item then reports an error. With such an item we can make all triggers of other items depending and no problem storms can happen. It's basically the same mechanism as the Zabbix Agent itself is using.

Any ideas?

[rockaut]

The resulting string currently is "Task host.get failed"