6 Zabbix appliance

Overview

As an alternative to setting up manually or reusing an existing server for Zabbix, users may download a Zabbix appliance or a Zabbix appliance installation CD image.

Zabbix appliance and installation CD versions are based on AlmaLinux 8 (x86_64).

Zabbix appliance installation CD can be used for instant deployment of Zabbix server (MySQL).

Quick start

Pre-requisites

1. Make sure the host machine has sufficient resources to meet the virtual machine's system requirements:

• RAM: 1.5 GB
• Disk space: at least 8 GB should be allocated for the virtual machine
• CPU: 2 cores minimum

2. If not yet installed, install the virtualization software for booting the appliance image (for example, VirtualBox).

3. Download the appliance in the format supported by your virtualization software.

4. Check network settings to ensure that DHCP is enabled on the host machine.

Installation

1. Boot the appliance virtual machine from the downloaded image.

2. Configure virtual machine network settings to allow access from a browser on the host machine. This can be achieved by enabling Bridged mode.

3. Log in to the virtual machine using default system credentials.

4. To retrieve the IP address, run the following command on the virtual machine:

ip addr show

5. Open a browser on the host machine and point it to the IP address the appliance has received over DHCP.

6. Log in to Zabbix using default credentials and start monitoring.

Сonfiguration

This section describes frequently required default configuration settings along with available customization options.

1 Credentials (login:password)

System:

• root:zabbix

Zabbix frontend:

• Admin:zabbix

Database:

• root:<random>
• zabbix:<random>

To change the database user password, changes have to be made in the following locations:

• MySQL;
• /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf;
• /etc/zabbix/web/zabbix.conf.php.

Frontend access

By default, access to the frontend is allowed from anywhere.

The frontend can be accessed at http://<host>.

This can be customized in /etc/nginx/conf.d/zabbix.conf. Nginx has to be restarted after modifying this file. To do so, log in using SSH as root user and execute:

systemctl restart nginx

1 Using a static IP address

By default the appliance uses DHCP to obtain the IP address. To specify a static IP address:

• Log in as root user;
• Open /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file;
• Replace BOOTPROTO=dhcp with BOOTPROTO=none
• Add the following lines:
  • IPADDR=<IP address of the appliance>
  • PREFIX=<CIDR prefix>
  • GATEWAY=<gateway IP address>
  • DNS1=<DNS server IP address>
• Run systemctl restart network command.

Consult the official Red Hat documentation if needed.

2 Firewall configuration

The appliance uses iptables firewall with predefined rules:

• Opened SSH port (22 TCP);
• Opened Zabbix agent (10050 TCP) and Zabbix trapper (10051 TCP) ports;
• Opened HTTP (80 TCP) and HTTPS (443 TCP) ports;
• Opened SNMP trap port (162 UDP);
• Opened outgoing connections to NTP port (53 UDP);
• ICMP packets limited to 5 packets per second;
• All other incoming connections are dropped.

3 Repositories

Official Zabbix repository has been added to /etc/yum.repos.d:

[zabbix]
       name=Zabbix Official Repository - $basearch
       baseurl=http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/7.0/rhel/8/$basearch/
       enabled=1
       gpgcheck=1
       gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-ZABBIX-A14FE591

4 Changing time zone

By default the appliance uses UTC for the system clock. To change the time zone, copy the appropriate file from /usr/share/zoneinfo to /etc/localtime, for example:

cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Riga /etc/localtime

5 File locations

• Configuration files are located in /etc/zabbix.
• Zabbix server, proxy and agent logfiles are located in /var/log/zabbix.
• Zabbix frontend is located in /usr/share/zabbix.
• Home directory for the user zabbix is /var/lib/zabbix.

System Services

Systemd services are available:

systemctl list-units zabbix*

Format-specific notes

1 VMware

The images in vmdk format are usable directly in VMware Player, Server and Workstation products. For use in ESX, ESXi and vSphere they must be converted using VMware converter. If you use VMWare Converter, you may encounter issues with the hybrid network adapter. In that case, you can try specifying the E1000 adapter during the conversion process. Alternatively, after the conversion is complete, you can delete the existing adapter and add an E1000 adapter.

2 HDD/flash image (raw)

dd if=./zabbix_appliance_7.0.0.raw of=/dev/sdc bs=4k conv=fdatasync

Replace /dev/sdc with your Flash/HDD disk device.

Hyper-V

If the appliance fails to start up in Hyper-V, try pressing Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch a TTY session.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter the error message Access denied for user 'replace_user'@'localhost' (using password: YES) while trying to log in to the frontend, it may indicate that the installation is still in progress.

If the error persists after waiting a few minutes, or if you observe any other unexpected behavior, it likely means that the installation process has not completed successfully. In this case, we recommend deleting the current appliance and redeploying it by following the same installation instructions. This step typically resolves the issue.

Note that attempting to manually fix a broken installation is not recommended, as it may lead to further complications.