Another latest release of Zabbix Monitoring Solution is out! Zabbix 3.2 is launched and the product continues to surprise with its new and most expected functionality, yet taking into consideration the simplicity and flexibility of its usage. Here is just a short list of the most desired features included in Zabbix 3.2.
There are huge improvements in how Zabbix processes, analyzes and displays incoming information thanks to introduction of a new concept - event tags. They are meant to help you organize your monitoring. You will meet them for the first time when you are configuring a trigger and then you will see them all across Zabbix.
Then you can see them in a new Monitoring-Problems view. It makes browsing problems more efficient. Don’t forget that you can sort problems by their tags! You can also use tags in action conditions. And it’s just a start. The juicy part comes when you use tags for event correlation.
There is now a possibility to use one source of information to monitor different things and Zabbix will distinguish them by event tags. With tagging and trigger level correlation it is possible to correlate a specific problem to its resolution. If several applications log errors into a common log file their messages will not interfere with each other any more.
Global correlation constitutes a new layer covering all monitored metrics and its purpose is to analyze and aggregate information coming from different sources. With correlation rules you are able to save yourself from thousands of notifications and focus on root causes in case of a major failure. Hide warnings when there are critical errors to fix and to close symptomatic problems obscuring root causes automatically!
Nested host groups allow to build a logical hierarchy of host groups in the frontend. This way it is much easier to have an overview of all host groups in your system.
The aim of this new feature is to simplify user navigation across vast amounts of monitored devices and services Zabbix can handle.
All Zabbix user wants is to see the list of current problems (desirably empty) and browse it efficiently and with ease to solve them as quickly as possible. This option is now developed and provided in Zabbix 3.2.
This is the most requested feature of Zabbix 3.2 that brings the ability to manually close problems. With this feature you will be able to silence triggers in problem state by clicking in web interface, which is very useful for log monitoring triggers and trapper items. No more workarounds needed!
Trigger hysteresis is a useful option both to avoid trigger “flapping” (switching between problem and OK too often) and in situations where you need an interval between the problem value and the OK value. While it was possible in previous Zabbix versions to define trigger hysteresis using the {TRIGGER.VALUE} macro, the resulting expression was not exactly the easiest way of doing things:
({TRIGGER.VALUE}=0 and {server:temp.last()}>20) or
({TRIGGER.VALUE}=1 and {server:temp.last()}>15)
The new version proposes a much easier way of defining trigger hysteresis by introducing an optional second trigger expression called 'recovery expression' where you can separately define the conditions that have to be met for the trigger to return back to the OK state.
Additionally, PROBLEM event generation mode for single/multiple problem events has been changed from a silent default/optional checkbox into an obvious two-way choice.
One of those features that many users look forward to, due to its ability to enable/disable/delete or view details of discovered items, triggers and graphs. With this feature you will greatly reduce the number of clicks needed to see configuration of automatically created entities. Previously you had to go to discovery rule, then to item/trigger/graph prototypes, and now it’s only one click away from Configuration tab. Ability to select and delete discovered entities manually will save you from Configuration pollution with undesired items/triggers/graphs if discovery rule wasn’t configured properly.
The logic of delaying problem notifications during host maintenance has been changed.
In previous Zabbix versions, it was possible to "suppress" problem notifications during a host maintenance period (using the Maintenance status = not in "maintenance" action condition). Then, if the problem persisted, problem events were generated immediately after the maintenance. However, it was not always easy for users to understand what generated those events and why. Acknowledgment information of the original event was also lost.
In the new version, the old mechanism is dropped. Instead there is an new option in action configuration, which allows to pause notifications in the host maintenance phase if you wish so.
Being notified on problem recovery has become easier in Zabbix. If previously there was the slightly confusing concept of a special “Recovery message” or the possibility to create a full escalation when problem triggers go OK, now that has been united into one “Recovery operation” concept.
In a recovery operation you can both receive a notification and execute a remote command. Even though recovery messages cannot be escalated (assigned to several steps), it is possible to assign several operations to a single step. Moreover, all users that were notified on the problem previously, can be notified on the recovery with just one selection made in action configuration.
Recovery operations also get a dedicated tab in the action configuration form, while the condition tab has been dropped and conditions now can be set in the general action property tab.
Note that some action conditions have been dropped completely with this development:
When exporting hosts or templates into XML, web scenarios are now exported as well. When importing hosts/templates, there are options for creating new, updating existing and deleting missing web scenarios.
Now on you may easily share web scenarios on share.zabbix.com. For example, export a template with the web scenarios into XML and upload to share.zabbix.com. Then others can download the template and import the XML into Zabbix.
With this new functionality – behavior of trigger function nodata() was changed to make triggering and alerting easier for cases when items become not supported.
Also, such trigger functions as date(), dayofmonth(), dayofweek(), now(), time(), which do not really depend on the item itself, are now evaluated no matter what is the state of the item (supported or not supported).
And finally, expression evaluation logic is being reworked to enable logical operator "short-circuiting", which can be used to work around potentially unknown values in trigger expressions.
More advanced options are available for dealing with fast-growing log files. The key issue with such files is the enormous number of messages, which are written to the log files in certain situations. As all new lines must be analyzed by Zabbix and the matching lines sent to Zabbix server, it may result both in serious delays and a large number of identical messages sent and stored in the database.
To deal with these issues there are two major improvements:
A tiny but nice improvement. The count() function now supports regexp and iregexp operators for all item types. It is now possible to count values matching a regular expression (ordinary or global) collected over a specified period of time.
Sometimes a macro may resolve to a value that is not necessarily easy to work with. It may be long or contain a specific substring of interest that you would like to extract. For these purposes, the new version comes with a new concept of macro functions. Currently, two macro functions are supported:
These macro functions are supported for the {ITEM.VALUE} and {ITEM.LASTVALUE} macro values in trigger names, trigger descriptions, event tags, notifications subjects and notification messages.
Expanded information and the complete list of Zabbix 3.2 developments, improvements and new functionality is available in Zabbix Mannual.
Want to upgrade from older Zabbix versions to Zabbix 3.2? Folow our detailed step-by-step Upgrade procedure or contact us for further professional Upgrade Service by Zabbix experts.
If you have any other questions on Zabbix 3.2, please feel free to join our free live Webinars. During the session you will be provided with all the important information on Zabbix latest release and have a chance to ask your questions directly to Zabbix specialists.
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