How to Install Zabbix Server 4 on CentOS 7/ RHEL 7

written by Lotfi Waderni November 21, 2018

About Zabbix

Zabbix is a free and open source network monitoring Software tool which is used to monitor and track the availability and performance of your IT infrastracture: servers, network devices and other IT assets.

In this article we will install Zabbix 4.x on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7, in order to use Zabbix we required a Web Server (Apache), database server(Mysql, Mariadb, Postgresql …) and PHP to work.

If you want to upgrade your Zabbix Server 3.x to 4.x on CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 you can check this article: How to Upgrade Zabbix Server 3.x to 4.x on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

Environment:

Hostname = zabbix.yallalabs.com
IP Address = 192.168.1.200
OS = CentOS 7 / RHEL 7

Step 0 – Installing Prerequisites

– Before we begin, it is recommended to have SELinux in permissive mode, use the following command and reboot your server:

[root@zabbix ~]# sed -i 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=permissive/g' /etc/selinux/config
[root@zabbix ~]# reboot

– Note that we have to install Apache and MariaDB Server in our server:

[root@zabbix ~]# yum update
[root@zabbix ~]# yum install httpd -y
[root@zabbix ~]# yum install mariadb-server -y
[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl enable httpd && systemctl start httpd
[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl enable mariadb && systemctl start mariadb

– Don’t forget to set a password for the root using mysql_secure_installtion, take a look to this tutorial: Securing MySQL server / Mariadb with mysql_secure_installation

Step 1 – Install Zabbix Server with MySQL

– Before starting the installation we need to enable the zabbix repository using this commands:

[root@zabbix ~]# rpm --import http://repo.zabbix.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-ZABBIX
[root@zabbix ~]# rpm -ivh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/4.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-4.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

– Now use the below command to install Zabbix and necessary packages

[root@zabbix ~]# yum install zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-web-mysql zabbix-agent zabbix-get zabbix-sender zabbix-java-gateway -y

Step 2 – Edit PHP timezone

– Open the file /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf created by Zabbix with your favourite editer

[root@zabbix ~]# vi /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf

– It’s necessary to uncomment the “date.timezone” setting and replace it with your timezone:

php_value date.timezone Europe/Rome

– Save the file and don’t forget to restart httpd service using the below command:

[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl restart httpd

Step 3 – Edit create and import initial zabbix database and user

– First we need to create zabbix database (zabbixdb) and create a zabbix user (zabbixuser).

[root@zabbix ~]# mysql -u root -p
Enter password: 
Welcome to the MariaDB monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MariaDB connection id is 10
Server version: 5.5.47-MariaDB MariaDB Server
Copyright (c) 2000, 2015, Oracle, MariaDB Corporation Ab and others.
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE zabbixdb CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_bin;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec) 
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zabbixdb.* TO zabbixuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY "YOUR_PASSWORD";
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)
MariaDB [(none)]> exit
Bye
[root@zabbix ~]#

– After creating the zabbix database and user we need to import the zabbix initial database using the below commands:

[root@zabbix ~]# zcat /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql*/create.sql.gz | mysql -u zabbixuser -p zabbixdb

– Now we need to edit database configuration in the zabbix server configuration file zabbix_server.conf

[root@zabbix ~]# vi /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf

– Specify the database name for zabbix , database user name and the password

DBHost=localhost
DBName=zabbixdb
DBUser=zabbixuser
DBPassword=YOUR_PASSWORD

Step 4 – Adjusting Firewall

– Execute the following command to enable http service and connection between the Zabbix server and agents:

[root@zabbix ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service=http
success
[root@zabbix ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=10051/tcp
success
[root@zabbix ~]# firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=10050/tcp
success
[root@zabbix ~]# firewall-cmd --reload
success

– After adjusting the firewall we need to enable and start zabbix service on boot using the bellow commands:

[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl enable zabbix-server 
[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl start zabbix-server
[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl enable zabbix-agent 
[root@zabbix ~]# systemctl start zabbix-agent