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
• 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/sysconfig/iptables” file and reload firewall rules:

systemctl reload iptables

Zabbix installation is provided with the support for the following:

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

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

dnf update zabbix*

Systemd services are available:

systemctl list-units zabbix*

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.