Enterprise Zabbix Server Migration Query

[skippyzabbix]

I am planning to migrate to a new Zabbix server and seek advice on how to best approach this transition. Our current setup involves a Zabbix server version 5.4.7, running on Debian 10 and utilizing a PostgreSQL database. It monitors 4,221 hosts.

Our objective is to transition this existing setup to a new server, which will be operating on Debian 12 and the latest Zabbix 6.4. However, the team is set on building the new server using MySQL.

Given the (apparent) complexity of migrating from one database system to another, I am exploring possible strategies or solutions that could facilitate this transition. What's the best way we can do this, or are we bound to continue using PostgreSQL if we want to maintain our current server config.

I appreciate any insights, recommendations, or experiences you might share to guide us through this process.

[cyber]

There are loads of topics on this... migrating from older to newer version with side-by-side environments etc... DB switches not too much... Personally, I would not switch.

[Jason]

I'd stick with postgres as it will be a much simpler upgrade process. Postgres also supports timescale with compression to make partitioning trivial. I'd also suggest splitting out your database and zabbix server to 2 separate machines.

What are your reasons for changing database architecture? We personally found postgres better than mysql especially when the database size increased significantly.

Whatever you decide I'd suggest plenty of dry runs to test migrating your data to new database server and make sure that the data is valid and work out any kinks in the upgrade process. At the very least this will give you a rough timescale for the downtime needed at switchover day.

[tim.mooney]

My site uses MariaDB as our Zabbix backing DB. When we originally deployed 10 years ago, my group (and I) had far more experience with MySQL/MariaDB, so that was the obvious choice for us. These days, we're by necessity starting to get more experience with PostgreSQL, but I'm still better with MySQL/MariaDB. If I were going to install Zabbix from scratch today, I might pick PostgreSQL anyway. Even though I don't know it as well, as Cyber and Jason have said, it has some killer features for Zabbix. PostgreSQL also seems to really be seeing a renaissance in development. Until some future version of Zabbix supports using some timeseries DB for data storage, PostgreSQL + Timescale is going to be a good choice, especially the larger your site gets.

In your situation, I would only recommend switching to MySQL if all your organizational expertise is MySQL. If you have MySQL experts on staff, including people that can tune for high writes, etc., and you don't have any PostgreSQL experts, then by all means, switch. In that case, I would expect your MySQL DBA or DBAs to be familiar with ETL (Export, Transport/Transform, Load) tools and have an idea how to handle the different data types, etc. There are good paid and free tools for ETL out there, but you're going to have to put some time into any of them to understand what you need to do for the migration. The good news for you is that you're migrating to a completely new system, so you can do the migration multiple times "until you get it right".