Introduction
“Zabbix is the ultimate enterprise-level software designed for real-time monitoring of millions of metrics collected from tens of thousands of servers, virtual machines, and network devices.” New Zabbix 6.0 LTS is out with plenty of new features and beautiful improvements. If you are interested in knowing what the new LTS release has for you, kindly visit the official release page to check out the exquisite buffet therein. In this guide we will install and configure Zabbix 6.0 LTS on Debian 11/10 Linux machine.
For Ubuntu: How To Install Zabbix Server on Ubuntu
New features in Zabbix 6.0 LTS
Listed below represents just the first layer of the Onion.
- High availability, performance and scalability – Zabbix 6.0 LTS has proxies to provide automatic load balancing and HA, native HA setup for Zabbix Server, a scalable history storage and API performance improvements.
- Machine learning for baseline monitoring with advanced anomaly detection.
- Security improvements with password complexity policy for Zabbix UI and audit log for all user and API operations being added.
- Event correlation and enterprise alarm console – It has the ability to perform event filtering, de-duplication and aggregation using event preprocessing rules, the ability to manually hide and suspend problems for a period of time as well as a problem view that is optimised for faster problem resolution and collaborative work.
- Advanced visualization and reporting – this comprises of stacked graphs, graph annotations, advanced host status widgets, events over time widget, geographical maps e.t.c
- Business service monitoring (BSM) with support for alerting on service status changes, multi-tenancy for Services, impact analysis, import/export for service tree, ability to scale to 100K of business services e.t.c
The better part is that we are going to install release 6.0 of Zabbix Server in Debian 11 / Debian 10 Linux. Kindly follow through as we get it done together.
Step 1: Add Zabbix repository
Add MariaDB repository:
curl -LsS -O https://downloads.mariadb.com/MariaDB/mariadb_repo_setup
sudo bash mariadb_repo_setup --mariadb-server-version=10.8Run the commands below to Install Zabbix repository
Debian 11:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wget
wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/6.0/debian/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_6.0-4%2Bdebian11_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_*debian11_all.debDebian 10:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install wget
wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/6.0/debian/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_6.0-4%2Bdebian10_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_*debian10_all.deb
Step 2: Install Zabbix 6.0 LTS on Debian 11 / Debian 10
Zabbix comes with three components, the Server, Proxy and Frontend. The proxy is optional.
Install Zabbix Server
This will install MariaDB database server on Debian Linux system.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install vim zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-apache-conf zabbix-sql-scripts zabbix-agentStep 3: Install and Configure Database Server
Install MariaDB database server
sudo apt install mariadb-server mariadb-clientCheck installed version by running the command below
$ mariadb --version
mariadb Ver 15.1 Distrib 10.8.5-MariaDB, for debian-linux-gnu (x86_64) using readline 5.2Start and enable database service:
sudo systemctl enable --now mariadbRun the command below and say “Yes(Y)” to remove anonymous users, remove test databases and to disable remote root login.
$ sudo mariadb-secure-installation
Enter current password for root (enter for none): <ENTER>
Switch to unix_socket authentication [Y/n] n
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] yLogin to MariaDB
sudo mysql -u root -pCreate Zabbix Database and Zabbix User:
CREATE DATABASE zabbix character set utf8mb4 collate utf8mb4_bin;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zabbix.* TO zabbix@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'SafePassWord';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUITImport database data for Zabbix
Now import initial schema and data for the server with MySQL. Once you issue this command, give it some time for it to complete.
$ sudo zcat /usr/share/zabbix-sql-scripts/mysql/server.sql.gz | mysql -uzabbix -p zabbix
Enter password: SafePassWord (The password you set above for zabbix database user)Step 4: Configure database for Zabbix server
Open Zabbix server configuration file and make changes as shown below. If you had used different Database and User names, kindly update them accordingly.
sudo vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.confSett your configurations for database connection like below.
DBName=zabbix
DBUser=zabbix
DBPassword=SafePassWordStep 5: Install Zabbix frontend on Debian
This will install Apache and PHP on Debian Linux.
sudo apt install zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-apache-conf Check installed versions of Apache and PHP
$ apache2 -v
Server version: Apache/2.4.54 (Debian)
Server built: 2022-06-09T04:26:43
$ php -v
PHP 7.4.30 (cli) (built: Jul 7 2022 15:51:43) ( NTS )
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v3.4.0, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.4.30, Copyright (c), by Zend TechnologiesConfigure PHP’s date.timezone parameter that Zabbix uses in its setup
$ sudo vim /etc/php/*/apache2/php.ini
;line 963
date.timezone = Africa/Nairobi Restart apache2
sudo systemctl restart apache2Start other Zabbix services
sudo systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2
sudo systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2Configure Zabbix frontend
With a successful installation, connect to Zabbix Frontend on http://server_ip_or_name/zabbix
You should see a following page similar to the one illustrated below. Make sure all pre-requisites record a green “OK” then click “Next step“
You should see a following page similar to the one shown below asking for Database Details.
Enter the Database details we set up earlier. You can notice that TLS can be configured in this step if you would wish to have encryption in your database connection. Click “Next step” once done
Input your Zabbix Server details including a name of your server if you would wish then hit “Next step” once done. You should see a summary of the installation. Simply click “Next Step“
Next, just Finish up the settings by clicking on “Finish“
Step 6: Log in to Zabbix Frontend Portal
After you finish Step 5, you will be redirected to the Login Page as shown below
The default login credentials for Zabbix are:
Username: Admin
Password: zabbixOn successful authentication, you will be granted the Zabbix dashboard.
Remember that the credential can be changed under the Administration tab once you log in.
Navigate to Administration > Users > Admin > Password > Change Password
Conclusion
The new Zabbix Server 6.0 LTS is now running on Apache web server and we hope everything went well on your side. Take a look at the new features implemented and try all the configurations you need for your environment. Otherwise, we would wish to thank you for taking the time on the blog and for your continued support.
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