How To Install And Configure Zabbix On Centos 7

This comprehensive Linux guide expects that you run the following commands as root user but if you decide to run the commands as a different user then ensure that the user has sudo access and that you precede each of the privileged commands with sudo

Zabbix is open-source software monitoring tool. It collects data from different devices over the network and ensures that they are up and working. It can also be configured to send alerts if it detects an anomaly

It can run on many platforms. Here we would discuss the installation and configuration of Zabbix on Centos 7 System

Table of Contents

Installing Dependencies

Zabbix can be configured on MySQL as well as MariaDB as the database backend. In this tutorial we would be installing and configuring MariaDB as a database back-end. If it is not installed already follow to next steps to install MariaDB on your CentOS System

Installing MariaDB

Install MariaDB on the server using the following commands

yum -y install mariadb-server

After installation is complete run the following commands to start the MariaDB service and add it to startup

systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb

To verify that MariaDB is installed and running use:

systemctl status mariadb

Creating MySQL Database

To start installation you need a MySQL database. Login to MySQL to create a new databse using

mysql

Within the MySQL shell, run the following command to create a new database named zabbix

CREATE DATABASE zabbix CHARACTER SET utf8 collate utf8_bin;

Next, create a MySQL database and grant access to the database

GRANT ALL ON zabbix.* TO 'zabbix'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'any_password';

Make sure that you change the ‘any_password’ to any password of your choice which must have a capital letter, small letter, a number and a special character.

When you are done setting up, type EXIT to close the MySQL console

Installing Zabbix

To download Zabbix from official repository, use

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-4.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

After the completion of download, install the downloaded package using:

yum localinstall zabbix-release-4.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

Install the remaining dependencies such as Zabbix server, the web frontend with MySQL database support and the Zabbix agent packages using

sudo yum install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-web-mysql zabbix-agent

Installing Apache2/httpd

You can install Apache by using yum command as below

sudo yum -y install httpd

Run the service and add it to system boot using:

systemctl start httpd
systemctl enable httpd

To check if it is installed or not using the following netstat command

netstat -plntu

Installing And Configuring PHP

Before installing run the following commands

yum -y install epel-release
sudo rpm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Now install packages using yum command

yum -y install mod_php72w php72w-cli php72w-common php72w-devel php72w-pear php72w-gd php72w-mbstring php72w-mysql php72w-xml php72w-bcmath

After installing you will need to configure the following file and make changes to timezone according to your location.

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf

Change the second last line which shows the timezone according to your location, i.e Asia/Karachi in my case.

/etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf

...
    
        php_value max_execution_time 300
        php_value memory_limit 128M
        php_value post_max_size 16M
        php_value upload_max_filesize 2M
        php_value max_input_time 300
        php_value max_input_vars 10000
        php_value always_populate_raw_post_data -1
        php_value date.timezone Asia/Karachi
    
...

When you are done editing, use the following commands to restart the service and make the changes take effect.

systemctl restart httpd

Configuration Of MySQL Database

The Zabbix server creates a file which contains all the initial parameters and data for the MySQL server. Use the following command to get that file:

zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql*/create.sql.gz | mysql -uzabbix -p zabbix

Enter the username and password if prompted.

Open up the Zabbix configuration file on the editor using nano or vim and uncomment the DBPassword Line. Save it with your password that you have already configured.

nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

/etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

...
### Option: DBPassword
#       Database password.
#       Comment this line if no password is used.
#
# Mandatory: no
# Default:
DBPassword=change-with-your-password
...

Save the file and restart the Zabbix server and also add it to the system startup using

systemctl restart zabbix-server zabbix-agent
systemctl enable zabbix-server zabbix-agent

To check the server status use:

systemctl status zabbix-server
zabbix-server.service - Zabbix Server
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/zabbix-server.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sun 2020-04-10 21:18:01 UTC; 51s ago
 Main PID: 5558 (zabbix_server)
   CGroup: /system.slice/zabbix-server.service
   ...

Zabbix Frontend

Zabbix frontend is PHP based dashboard that allows us to configure host monitoring, change server configuration, and view gathered data.

To install and configure it, open up a web browser and and type your server’s domain name or public IP address followed by /zabbix:

http(s)://your_ip_address/zabbix

A GUI will guide you though the process of setting up. When the setup wizard will ask you to enter your database connection details, enter the database name and password that you have used earlier to configure MySQL database. Entering a name for the server is optional. The default user is “Admin” and the password is “zabbix”. Enter the username and password and click on the Log in button.

Once Logged in you can the see the Zabbix Admin panel. Here you can start customizing your Zabbix installation and adding new hosts

Adding A New Host

Install Zabix Agent On Remote Host

Similarly as we have done with the server, use the following commands to install Zabbix on remote host

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-4.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall zabbix-release-4.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

Install the Zabbix agent package using

yum install zabbix-agent

Zabbix supports two methods for server-client communication encryption, Preshared Key (PSK) and certificate-based encryption. In this tutorial, we will use the pre-shared keys (PSK) method to secure the connection between the server and agent.

Use to following command to generate a pre-shared key and save it to a file:

openssl rand -hex 32 | sudo tee /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.psk

The Key would look like something shown below:

/etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.psk

87lcv41vbgq5s3dc17j8k74564nb1ad35sv4c86df74bg68ry74jhn65f

Open the Zabbix agent configuration file and search for the Server IP address and change it from the default value to your Zabbix server IP:

nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf