Zabbix upgrade procedure for appliance from 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 - to-> 5.0

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Zabbix upgrade procedure for appliance ( one server and one proxy ) from 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 - to-> 5.0 on newer Ubuntu that supports Zabbix 5.0

Hello - I have a couple of Zabbix systems I maintain , and I want to upgrade the first Zabbix system:
Zabbix server - built using Zabbix appliance ( server) . It is currently 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04
Zabbix proxy - built using Zabbix appliance ( proxy ). It is currently 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04

Is there a complete documented procedure for how to upgrade a Zabbix appliance ( 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 - to-> 5.0 ) and Zabbix proxy appliance ( 4.4 on Ubuntu 16.04 - to-> 5.0 ) ,
so to Zabbix versioni 5.0 ? From what I read , I have to also upgrade the Ubuntu and the Zabbix because newer versions of Zabbix also need a newer PHP version.

If this can't be done ( no upgrade procedure for an older Zabbix Ubuntu 16.04 appliance running Zabbix 4.4 ) , then is there a procedure to backup everything Zabbix related on the server & proxy-server and then import the data into a new Zabbix appliance ? ( server, proxy, hosts, templates, triggers , alerts , maps , configurations, everything-inside-zabbix, ... ). I really do not want to have to re-enter everything from scratch.

I assume Ubuntu 20 something is the latest support version for Zabbix proxy & server ...

I tried following upgrade instructions from several locations on the Internet a couple of times and ended with complete failure. Good thing is I have VmWare ESXi clone backups of my Zabbix server and Zabbix Proxy , so nothing lost but time so far.

FYI - I am also very confused about what to answer when doing the Ubuntu release-upgrade , what answers are correct to keep Zabbix running after Ubuntu release upgrade ???

North Idaho Tom Jones

[ThePixel]

I also would like to know if this is possible as I'm in the same boat. But i only had my Zabbix Server running the appliance. All my proxies are proper linux.

So I assume build a duplicate VM from scratch, Install Zabbix 4.4 Stop services on old zabbix, backup SQL, copy data to new server, import SQL, run server confirm it works.
Then do upgrade to 5?

[itsnota2ma]

I was following the instructions as well. I ran into a DNS issue where it cannot resolve the zabbix repository. I figured out the IP address, but then it failed on the update for the same reason. I cannot edit the resolve.conf because nano nor vedit are not installed. And I cannot install them because it cannot resolve the repositories... grrrr. tjones, what issue did you run into??

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Almost all flavors of Unix and Linux and BSD have "vi". I've been using vi for 35+ years and I actually prefer vi over other editors.

[itsnota2ma]

Okay, so I figured out the DNS issue. I know the resolv.conf get overwritten, but to get the process going, I added external nameservers.

sudo vi /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head

add the lines

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

I then stopped and restarted the resolvconf.service

sudo systemctl stop resolvconf.service

sudo systemctl start resolvconf.service

I was then able to follow the upgrade instructions. However.............more to come.

[itsnota2ma]

So I upgraded Ubuntu from 16.04 to 18.04, which I think would have worked fine, but I had already upgraded Zabbix to xenial, and now it needs to be bionic. I need to figure out how to force the bionic upgrade.