Complex migration from 4.4.10 to 7.2.x

[omar.cacciotti]

Hello mates,
My customer asked me two main things:
Zabbix upgrade from 4.4.10 to 7.2.x
OS upgrade from OL7 to OL9

The dual upgrade challenge put me at the corner.
The Zabbix 4.4.10 got a lots of Templates, over 65k devices (1169997 items), custom scripts and over 12 proxy.

GOAL: The best way would be to keep all things in the newer version (it would happen in case of upgrade), but I suppose I have to get a fresh install due to Operating System upgrade.
Which is the best way to achieve that?

Thank you in advance
Best regards
OC

[Jason]

I would look at moving to the long term version 7.0.X rather than 7.2.X or 7.4.X both of which have short lifetimes. It will give you far longer in a supported state which makes planning and future upgrades much easier unless you really really need the new features in a point release.

For upgradability you have 2 options. One is looking to containerise things such as docker or split the roles up giving you flexibility to upgrade the various servers.

When I moved up major versions and newer OS I copied all the data over to a new database server (this allowed me to test and re-test the upgrade path with no downtime) and then I only have downtime for SQL data to move to new host which isn't long and then can build new zabbix-server side easily offline and then just bring that in and switch over.

[omar.cacciotti]

I would look at moving to the long term version 7.0.X rather than 7.2.X or 7.4.X both of which have short lifetimes. It will give you far longer in a supported state which makes planning and future upgrades much easier unless you really really need the new features in a point release.

For upgradability you have 2 options. One is looking to containerise things such as docker or split the roles up giving you flexibility to upgrade the various servers.

When I moved up major versions and newer OS I copied all the data over to a new database server (this allowed me to test and re-test the upgrade path with no downtime) and then I only have downtime for SQL data to move to new host which isn't long and then can build new zabbix-server side easily offline and then just bring that in and switch over.

Are the Templates present after copying the DB or do I have to rebuild them from scratch?

[Jason]

Are the Templates present after copying the DB or do I have to rebuild them from scratch?

As long as you do a full dump of the database over then everything should be there.

For example we use postgres and I use pgdump to pipe everything from old database into the new one. If you use timescale then have some more work to do to tidy up, but in effect that is it.

[cyber]

Install parallel setup with new versions. Do not create new DB schema, create the old one, transfer data from old version. During the first startup of the server, it should do all necessary upgrade tasks. There are still things you may need to do additionally (read all upgrade notes from version between 4.4.10 and whatever you want to install, indexes, primary keys, some field hanges etc).
DB is the heart of Zabbix, everything is there, so all you had before, you should have in new version later also. There are things to consider, dropping of applications and replacing them with tags, syntax change for expressions etc... so do you homework.. But if you have side-by-side setups then you can test all required steps and keep running the old one.

Biggest part of your DB is history and trends, you can transfer bigger part later from one DB to another. Like... for starters just export latest days or a week... when you have managed to get things running, copy over all the rest, as DB structure is same , itemid, value, clock,ns. Export from old, import to new... Shortens downtime...

[omar.cacciotti]

Thanks mates, you're the best.
I can detach 1 of 3 nodes of Galera Cluster and then execute my dump fast (I have to upgrade DB OS too :/ )