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

Zabbix appliance and installation CD versions are based upon the following OS:

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

Zabbix installation CD/DVD boot menu

Zabbix appliance contains a Zabbix server (configured and running on MySQL) and a frontend.

Zabbix virtual appliance is available in the following formats:

• VMX (VMware)
• OVF (Open Virtualisation Format)
• KVM
• HDD/flash image, USB stick
• Live CD/DVD
• Xen guest
• Microsoft VHD (Azure)
• Microsoft VHD (Hyper-V)

To get started, boot the appliance and point a browser at the IP the appliance has received over DHCP.

To get the IP address from inside the virtual machine run:

ip addr show

To access Zabbix frontend go to http://<host_ip> (for access from the host's browser bridged mode should be enabled in the VM network settings).

The appliance is based on CentOS 8. There are some changes applied to the base CentOS configuration.

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

[zabbix]
name=Zabbix Official Repository - $basearch
baseurl=http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.5/rhel/8/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-ZABBIX-A14FE591

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.

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.

Cosult official Red Hat documentation if needed.

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

Appliance Zabbix setup has the following passwords and other configuration changes:

System:

• root:zabbix

Database:

• root:<random>
• zabbix:<random>

Zabbix frontend:

• Admin:zabbix

To change the database user password it has to be changed in the following locations:

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

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

• Frontend timezone is set to Europe/Riga (this can be modified in /etc/php-fpm.d/zabbix.conf);

Access to frontend by default is allowed from everywhere.

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

This can be customised in /etc/nginx/conf.d/zabbix.conf. You have to restart nginx after modifying this file. To do so, log in using SSH as root user and execute:

systemctl restart nginx

By default, only the ports listed in changes are open. To open additional ports just modify “/etc/iptables/rules.v4” or “/etc/iptables/rules.v6” files and reload firewall rules:

service iptables-persistent reload

Zabbix installation is provided with the support for the following:

• SNMP
• IPMI
• Web monitoring
• VMware monitoring
• ODBC
• SSH2
• IPv6
• SNMP Traps
• Zabbix Java Gateway

Zabbix appliance uses snmptrapfmt to handle SNMP traps. It is configured to receive all traps from everywhere.

Authentication is not required. To enable authentication, open the /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf file and specify required auth settings.

All traps are stored in the /var/log/zabbix/snmptrapfmt.log file. It is rotated by logrotate before reaching 2GB file size.

The appliance Zabbix packages may be upgraded. To do so, run:

dnf update zabbix*

Appropriate init scripts are provided. To control Zabbix server, use any of these:

service zabbix-server status

Replace server with agent for Zabbix agent daemon or with proxy for Zabbix proxy daemon.

Available diskspace on the appliance might not be sufficient. In that case it is possible to expand the disk. To do so, first expand the block device in your virtualization environment, then follow these steps.

Start fdisk to change the partition size. As root, execute:

fdisk /dev/sda

This will start fdisk on disk sda. Next, switch to sectors by issuing:

u

Then delete the existing partition and create a new one with the desired size. In the majority of cases you will accept the available maximum, which will expand the filesystem to the size you made available for the virtual disk. To do so, enter the following sequence in fdisk prompt:

d
n
p
1
(accept default 63)
(accept default max)

If you wish to leave some space for additional partitions (swap etc), enter another value for last sector. When done, save the changes by issuing:

w

After partition creation (new disk or extended existing) create physical volume:

pvcreate /dev/sdb1

Check newly created physical volume:

pvdisplay /dev/sdb1

Check available physical volumes. There must be 2 volumes zabbix-vg and newly created:

pvs

Extend an existing volume group with the newly created physical volume:

vgextend zabbix-vg /dev/sdb1

Check “zabbix-vg” volume group:

vgdisplay

Now extend the logical volume with the free PE space:

lvextend -l +100%FREE /dev/mapper/zabbix--vg-root

Resize the root volume (can be done on a live sysyem):

resize2fs /dev/mapper/zabbix--vg-root

Reboot the virtual machine (as the modified partition is currently in use). The filesystem should be increased to the partition size. Check “/dev/mapper/zabbix–vg-root” volume:

df -h

Converting image for XenServer

To use Xen images with Citrix Xenserver, the disk image has to be converted first. To do so:

• Create a virtual disk, with at least the same size as the image
• Find out the UUID of this disk

xe vdi-list params=all

• If there are a lot of disks, they can be filtered by the name parameter name-label, assigned when creating the virtual disk
• Import the image

xe vdi-import filename="image.raw" uuid="<UUID>"

Instructions from Brian Radford blog.

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.

dd if=./zabbix_appliance_4.0.0_x86_64.raw of=/dev/sdc bs=4k conv=fdatasync

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