Software Update: Zabbix 4.0.0 LTS

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With the Zabbix program you can keep an eye on different parts of a network and the services offered on them. The program supports two different options to retrieve the relevant information. For example, it can send requests from its own host to the various services and network components, which then respond to them. There is also a so-called agent, which can be installed on the host to be monitored and with which detailed information can be retrieved. More information about Zabbix can be found on this page be found and here are some screenshots. The developers have released version 4.0 LTS with the list of changes below:

What’s New in Zabbix 4.0 LTS

Zabbix Team is proud to announce the release of the new major version – Zabbix 4.0 LTS. With significant improvements to performance and usability, the tool continues to bring flexibility in monitoring to a whole new level. Here is just a short list of the most important functionality included into Zabbix 4.0.

Zabbix 4.0 is a Long Term Support release, meaning it will be supported for five (5) years.

Enhanced Visualization
The new completely redesigned graph widget provides an exceptional way to get insights from the collected data. The widget allows to create a variety of graphs, work with multiple data sets, select sets of metrics or individual metrics for graphing, configure graph line-style configuration, legend layout as well as supporting displaying of information about discovered problems straight on the graphs. Additional information is displayed by placing your cursor over the graph.

Time range selection with ease
Redesigned time range selector allows to use words syntax, eg “now” or “now-1d/d”” to get fast access to data. Selected period can now be zoomed in, moved back and forth, providing one click way to select the most frequently used time periods.

Stay focused, avoid distraction
Kiosk mode is optimized for video walls and is now supported in all pages where full screen mode is available. Dashboard, Problems, Latest data and all other Monitoring menu sections can now be used in this mode. In addition to that, dashboard widgets got a much cleaner look with no footer information.

Same screen size, more details
The new compact view mode is a must-have for NOC engineers. It is designed to increase operational efficiency and get a clear understanding of problem tackling priorities. Use compact view mode to maximize the amount of problems visible at the same time. Problem search has been significantly enhanced and now supports various filtering and displaying options.

Faster and more secure distributed monitoring
Zabbix 4.0 introduces compression for communication with Proxies, which is enabled by default. This solution provides a compression layer that massively reduces the size of transferred data. As a result, amount of network traffic is significantly reduced thus leading to noticeable performance improvements.

Passive proxies are now being rejected without a listed IP address/DNS name and require the Server parameter. All Zabbix proxy supported parameters are listed in our documentation. More details can be obtained from Proxy configuration section.

Better workflow for faster problem resolution
Much more advanced workflows can be applied to deal with problems in a more flexible and efficient way. An individual problem can now be manually closed and/or problem severity changed with or without acknowledging, commenting, or sending a message! These operations are controlled by user permissions and can be changed anytime. A comprehensive list of all the operations and manual actions connected with the problem is at your disposal.

Tag based permissions
The new tag based permissions give an extremely flexible ability to allow certain user group access information about problems only if they match a combination of pre-defined tags and tag values. Therefore access to problems can be limited by any information stored in tags: environment, datacenter, location, country, service name, department, etc etc.

Tag based maintenance
In addition to already supported host and host group level maintenance periods Zabbix now has an ability to limit it by a combination of tags and tag values.

Collect data over HTTP/HTTPS
The new HTTP agent item type opens broad possibilities of collecting performance and availability data from various sources using HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Use it along with data preprocessing and dependent items to get a super powerful combination for efficient data collection from Rest API, XML, SOAP, JSON RPC, Prometheus and even plain text data sources.

Single sign on
New HTTP authentication options to setup single sign-on on your web server.

We care about accessibility
Accessibility is important and Zabbix frontend now supports assistive technologies making it more user-friendly for the visually-impaired people. In order to address that, two custom designed high-contrast themes have been added to the Zabbix UI.

Some of the features include readable user-level content and top-level navigation, as well as graph values ​​as text in a table, so that it can be used by screen readers.

With the exception of maps, Zabbix gives access to all interactive elements by keyboard. Furthermore, all popups can be opened, worked with and closed using only keyboard.

And many other improvements for you to enjoy!

More flexible active agent auto-registration allows to rerun the whole auto-registration process if host metadata is changed. This allows to adapt monitoring based on the nature of changes on the host and gives the ability to change the role of a host itself.

Historical data storage support in Elasticsearch is now available! Compatible database or Elasticsearch? Integrate with 3rd party solutions, choose the storage place yourself. Check out the Elasticsearch and database setup process in our documentation.

Integration with other systems via real-time plain text history data export can be done.

More newly developed and improved features of Zabbix 4.0

  • Check Now button for instant execution or check or LLD rule
  • Simpler UI: no trigger view under monitoring anymore
  • Faster problem processing (no need to evaluate problem names in real-time)
  • Inventory macros support in problem tags
  • Controlled unit conversion
  • Multiple emails in one user media
  • New high contrast themes
  • Marked mandatory fields
  • Filtering by tags for problems
  • Ability to filter discovered items
  • Ability to filter hosts monitored by proxy
  • Auto-select instead of twin-boxes
  • Database down message gives more details
  • Support of new items: vfs.dir.count, other improvements
  • Support of {ITEM.VALUE} and {ITEM.LASTVALUE} in trigger URL
  • Support of MySQL 8.0
  • Support for “NOT” keyword in custom expressions
  • and much more!

Version number 4.0.0 LTS
Release status Final
Operating systems Linux
Website Zabbix
Download
License type GPL
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