11 Upgrade notes for 7.0.0

These notes are for upgrading from Zabbix 6.4.x to Zabbix 7.0.0.

All notes are grouped into:

• Breaking changes - changes that may break existing installations and other critical information related to the upgrade process
• Other - all remaining information describing the changes in Zabbix functionality

See also:

• Upgrade procedure for all relevant information about upgrading from versions before Zabbix 6.4.0;
• Upgrading HA cluster for instructions on upgrading servers in a high-availability (HA) cluster.

Upgrade process

To complete successful Zabbix server upgrade on MySQL/MariaDB, you may require to set GLOBAL log_bin_trust_function_creators = 1 in MySQL if binary logging is enabled, there are no superuser privileges and log_bin_trust_function_creators = 1 is not set in MySQL configuration file.

To set the variable using the MySQL console, run:

mysql> SET GLOBAL log_bin_trust_function_creators = 1;

Once the upgrade has been successfully completed, this option can be disabled:

mysql> SET GLOBAL log_bin_trust_function_creators = 0;

Breaking changes

Default location for Windows agent configuration file

The default location where Zabbix agent on Windows looks for the configuration file has been changed. Now the agent searches for it in the directory where the agent binary zabbix_agentd.exe is located (instead of C:\zabbix_agentd.conf, as previously).

Zabbix agent 2 on Windows already searched for the default configuration file in the directory where the binary zabbix_agent2.exe is located. However, in the new version the agent 2 expects the configuration file to be named zabbix_agent2.conf (instead of zabbix_agent2.win.conf)

See also: Installing Zabbix agent on Windows.

Empty values allowed in agent 2 plugin configuration

Empty values are now allowed in plugin-related configuration parameters on Zabbix agent 2.

Double precision data types on TimescaleDB

Prior to upgrading to Zabbix 7.0.0, it is necessary to manually upgrade TimescaleDB to use double precision data types if TimescaleDB is used with compression. You can tell if TimescaleDB is not using double precision data types by the warning in the System information frontend section or Zabbix server log: "Database is not upgraded to use double precision values. Support for the old numeric type will be removed in future versions."

For more information, see Old numeric (float) value type dropped.

Auditlog converted to hypertable on TimescaleDB

The auditlog table has been converted to hypertable on TimescaleDB in new installations.

To successfully upgrade existing installations, you must rerun the timescaledb.sql script, located in database/postgresql, before starting Zabbix server. Zabbix server will log a warning, if started without running this script first.

See also:

• TimescaleDB setup;
• Supported TimescaleDB versions.

Separate database table for proxies

Proxy records have been moved out of the hosts table and are now stored in the new proxy table.

Also, operational data of proxies (such as last access, version, compatibility) have been moved out of the host_rtdata table and is now stored in the new proxy_rtdata table.

There is also a new proxy object in API. All operations with proxies should be updated to be done via this new proxy object.

Query execution timeout for database monitor items

Based on the changes to item timeout configuration, both ODBC login timeout and query execution timeout for database monitor items are now limited to the Timeout parameter value set in the item configuration form.

Updated agent/agent2 items

• wmi.get and wmi.getall, when used with Zabbix agent 2, now return a JSON with boolean values represented as strings (for example, "RealTimeProtectionEnabled": "True" instead of "RealTimeProtectionEnabled": true returned previously) to match the output format of these items on Zabbix agent;
• oracle.ts.stats has a new conname parameter to specify the target container name. The JSON format of the returned data has been updated. When no tablespace, type, or conname is specified in the key parameters, the returned data will include an additional JSON level with the container name, allowing differentiation between containers.
• net.dns.* items can no longer be configured without the name parameter. Although always listed as mandatory, the name parameter, if omitted, would previously resolve to a default value (zabbix.com), which is no longer the case.

For the list of item changes that do no break compatibility, see What's new in Zabbix 7.0.0.

SNMP traps with Zabbix high availability

Zabbix now can read SNMP trap files from the correct place in case the active node is switched in a high-availability setup.

However, for this functionality to work it is required to update the time format in any bash, perl and SNMPTT scripts to "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z" (i.e. 2024-01-10T11:56:14+0300).

API changes

See the list of API changes in Zabbix 7.0.0.

Minimum required PHP version

The minimum required PHP version has been raised from 7.4.0 to 8.0.0.

Other

Oracle DB deprecated

The support for Oracle as a backend database has been deprecated in Zabbix 7.0 and is expected to be completely removed in future versions.

Floating point values trimmed for integer items

Now, if a floating point value is received for an unsigned integer item, the value will be trimmed from the decimal part and saved as an integer. Previously a floating point value would make an integer item unsupported.

US time format

Time and date displays in the frontend now conform to the US standard time/date display when the default (en_US) frontend language is used.

Before	Now

Asynchronous pollers

After the upgrade all agent, HTTP agent and walk[OID] SNMP checks will be moved to asynchronous pollers.

Detecting cURL library features at runtime

Previously cURL library features were detected at build time of Zabbix server, proxy or agent. If cURL features were upgraded, to make use of them the respective Zabbix component had to be recompiled.

Now only a restart is required for upgraded cURL library features to become available in Zabbix. Recompilation is no longer required. This is true for Zabbix server, proxy or agent.

In addition:

• Minimum required build-time cURL version was raised to 7.19.1;
• When being built Zabbix just checks if the cURL library is available (if requested) and satisfies the version requirement;
• When issuing a runtime cURL library error the version being in use will be added (e.g. "cURL library does not support SSL/TLS (using version 7.88.1)");
• When Zabbix server is started and SMTP authentication is logged it will write the availability of SMTP authentication of cURL library being used.

Item timeout configuration changes

Upon upgrade, global timeouts for all supported item types will be set based on the Timeout parameter value from the server configuration file. If a proxy is configured, then, by default, it will use the server's global timeout settings.

When using an upgraded server (version 7.0.0 or newer) with an older proxy or agent, the proxy or agent will work as before:

• the proxy will use the Timeout parameter from the proxy configuration file;
• the agent will use the Timeout parameter from the agent configuration file.

The timeout parameters have been removed from the configuration files of Modbus and MQTT plugins. The request execution timeouts can now be set using the item configuration form.

Concurrency in network discovery

In the new version the network discovery process has been reworked to allow concurrency between service checks. A new discovery manager process has been added along with a configurable number of discovery workers (or threads). The discovery manager processes discovery rules and creates a discovery job per each rule with tasks (service checks). The service checks are picked up and performed by the discovery workers.

The StartDiscoverers parameter now determines the total number of available discovery workers for discovery. The default number of StartDiscoverers has been upped from 1 to 5, and the range from 0-250 to 0-1000. The discoverer processes from previous Zabbix versions have been dropped.

Additionally, the number of available workers per each rule is now configurable in the frontend. This parameter is optional. During the upgrade it will be set to "One" as in previous Zabbix versions.

Icons replaced by fonts

All icons in the frontend have been switched from icon image sheets to fonts.

Configuration parameters

The default value for several configuration parameters has been changed:

• BufferSize configuration parameter for Zabbix agent 2 has been increased from 100 to 1000;
• Plugins.<PluginName>.System.Capacity configuration parameter for Zabbix agent 2 has been increased from 100 to 1000 (maximum);
• StartAgents configuration parameter for Zabbix agent has been increased from 3 to 10. Note in packaging that for smaller systems (i.e. Raspberry Pi) the default value may remain 3.

These changes do not affect existing installations where these parameters are explicitly set.

Aggregate calculations

Several aggregate functions have been updated. Now:

• Aggregate functions now also support non-numeric types for calculation. This may be useful, for example, with the count and count_foreach functions.
• The count and count_foreach aggregate functions support optional parameters operator and pattern, which can be used to fine-tune item filtering and only count values that match given criteria.
• All foreach functions no longer include unsupported items in the count.
• The function last_foreach, previously configured to ignore the time period argument, accepts it as an optional parameter.

Old numeric (float) value type dropped

Since Zabbix 5.0.0, numeric (float) data type supports precision of approximately 15 digits and range from approximately -1.79E+308 to 1.79E+308. This is implemented by default in new installations. When upgrading existing installations that had been created before Zabbix 5.0, a database upgrade patch is applied automatically, except for TimescaleDB with compression.

For Oracle databases, older versions of MySQL databases, and large installations, the patch execution can take a lot of time. For this reason it is recommended to update the data type manually before starting the upgrade.

Please execute the patch (SQL files) for your database, as described on the Database upgrade to primary keys and double precision data types page.

Note that with TimescaleDB, compression support must only be turned on after applying this patch.

To apply a patch:

• Stop Zabbix server.
• Run the scripts for your database.
• Start Zabbix server again.