The focus of infrastructure monitoring software company Zabbix has always been on innovation, and Zabbix 6.2 is more powerful than before. Over the past 6 versions, the software company has made some necessary big and minor changes in its front end and back end to enhance usability and overall user experience.
As with the previous versions, Zabbix 6.0 LTS brought many modifications and additions. It enhanced security by letting you define user roles with granular permissions and set custom password requirements for front-end logins. It also added several scalability options and advanced problem-detection functionalities. The developers modified the Zabbix interface as well. Additionally, they enhanced the available tags and templates and added a few advanced business service monitoring features.
As expected, the release of Zabbix 6.2 brings several modifications and many new beneficial functionalities to the monitoring tool. In this blog, we cover what makes Zabbix 6.2 more powerful. When we published this blog, Zabbix had released 4 patch versions of 6.2. We cover those patch versions here as well.
Let us start with the new Zabbix 6.2 features before getting into the patch releases.
What Makes Zabbix 6.2 More Powerful: New Features
1. Single-problem suppression
With Zabbix 6.2, you can reorder the priority list according to priority and hide issues that can be dealt with later. You do this by suppressing single issues for a specific time period. You can suppress a problem in the problem update window, which opens when you acknowledge it.
2. Storage of sensitive information
If you want to store some sensitive information, now you may do so in CyberArk Vault CV2. The vault gives only read-only access to the sensitive information in this vault. The vault, akin to Hashi Corp Vault, can store secrets like database access credentials and user macros.
3. Multiple LDAP sources
When it comes to LDAP authentication, you can now define multiple LDAP servers. This functionality comes in handy when you use several LDAP servers to authenticate different user groups. After you configure the servers on Zabbix, you can choose the LDAP server each user group needs.
4. Dedicated template groups
Until now, you had to use host groups for organizing both hosts and templates. Version 6.2 brings with it separate “Template groups” as a new sub-section in the Configuration menu. From now on, host groups contain only hosts, and template groups contain only templates. This means you have to define permissions for user roles and user groups separately for template groups and host groups.
5. Reload proxy configuration
The latest version of Zabbix enables forceful configuration reload for proxies directly from the server. There are 2 ways to do so:
- from the frontend (you will find it in the proxy editing form or the list of proxies)
- by running Zabbix command for server runtime control
6. Secure password hashing
In Zabbix 5.0, the developers stopped using the MD5 hashing algorithm and adopted a more secure algorithm, bcrypt. However, to keep upgrades from past versions seamless, Zabbix still used MD5 cryptography for a small number of users at their first login after an upgrade. In Zabbix 6.2, the developers dropped MD5 cryptography support entirely.
Now passive proxies can request configuration using the “config_cache_reload” proxy runtime control command from the server.
7. Configuration cache
To decrease database load and time for synchronization and at the time of configuration upgrade on a running Zabbix proxy/server, Zabbix now adds incremental configuration cache sync for items, item tags, hosts, host tags, item preprocessing, functions, triggers, and trigger tags.
8. AWS EC2 monitoring
To allow quick deployment of Zabbix monitoring of AWS EC2, Zabbix has added a brand-new template by HTTP. You can find this template in Configurations. At the time of upgrading from the previous version, you can download the freshly added templates from the Zabbix Git repository. Then, you would have to import the templates manually in the “Templates” section in Configurations.
9. Instant checks for newly added items
In the earlier versions, Zabbix checked new items at a random time. With version 6.2, Zabbix checks new items and discovery rules within 1 minute of their creation. However, the case is different if new item updates are scheduled or flexible.
10. Active checks & host availability
Active agent items in Zabbix now affect host availability as well. You can see it in Configurations > Hosts or Monitoring > Hosts. To determine active check availability, Zabbix will send heartbeat messages in the active check thread from now on.
When an active check heartbeat is older than 2x HeartbeatFrequency seconds, Zabbix treats active checks as unavailable. This functionality by Zabbix works only if you are using the latest version of Zabbix agent or Zabbix agent 2. Older Agent versions do not send any heartbeats, hence the availability of their hosts continues to remain unknown.
11. Graph widget
Zabbix has now enhanced the existing Graph widget. With the improved widget, you can now:
- add an item list
- clone data sets
- stacked graphs
- percentile lines
- show working time
- lines for average, minimum, and maximum values
- show trigger lines for triggers
- have columns in the legend
- show average, minimum, and maximum item values in the legend
12. HMAC function for JavaScript
In another improvement, Zabbix adds a new function to the JavaScript engine that lets you revert an HMAC hash: hmac(‘<hash type>’,key,string)
This function is useful when hash-based message authentication codes (HMAC) are needed for signing requests. It supports SHA256 and MD5 hash types.
13. Changes in the frontend
The frontend changes include the following:
- Previously, the minimum required PHP version was 7.2.5. Now, it is 7.4
- The default dashboard ”Global view” for new installations will now include the latest dashboard widgets
- The dashboard widget ‘Clock’ also has an update. You now get an option to display a digital clock
- From now on, frontend forms will have direct links to the respective parts of the documentation
- Zabbix will allow you to ”Execute now” dependent items and the option to do so would be dependent on user role and host permissions settings
- In Monitoring pages, including Problems, Hosts, and Latest data, the current filter settings will now be remembered in the user profile. When you open the page again, you will find the filter settings to be as you had left it
Apart from these changes and additions, Zabbix also released some patches and bug fixes. If you want to learn more about the same, keep on reading.
Patches & Bug Fixes Released in Zabbix 6.2
Changes in 6.2.1
- MariaDB’s maximum supported version is now 10.8.X
- Timescale DB’s maximum supported version is now increased to 2.6
- HPE Synergy, a new template by HTTP is now available for use. You can set it up from Configurations > Templates in new installations
- Extended VMware monitoring now includes new items for monitoring VMware alarms, returning property values, and collecting tag data from various VMware components
What Is New in 6.2.2
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- Previously, “month” in the frontend was abbreviated with the small ”m” which overlapped with the abbreviation of a minute. Now, “month” is abbreviated as ‘M’
- The following new templates are now ready to use:
- AWS RDS instance by HTTP
- Azure by HTTP
- OPNsense by SNMP
- AWS S3 bucket by HTTP
- Timescale DB’S maximum supported version is now 2.7
- Zabbix has renamed RHEL packages by adding the word ”release” to the name
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Updates in 6.2.3
- {ITEM.KEY<1-9>} macros will now be supported in “expression macros” SQL scripts are removed from the /usr/share/doc directory
- They’ve now been moved to /usr/share in Zabbix packages
Notes for 6.2.4
- TimescaleDB’s maximum supported version was again updated to 2.8
- Zabbix 6.2.4 adds PostgreSQL 15 support. However, as of this version, TimescaleDB doesn’t support PostgreSQL 15
- This version makes it possible to build Zabbix agent 2 offline. Moreover, users can still manually update to the latest modules by using “go mod tidy” or “go get commands”
- New items, vmware.datastore.perfcounter[ ] and vmware.hv.diskinfo.get[ ] are now available for VMware monitoring
- The updated Azure by HTTP template now includes metrics for monitoring Microsoft Azure MySQL servers out-of-the-box
- In the front end, “incorrect housekeeping configuration” warnings for TimescaleDB will now be displayed in case history or trend tables has compressed chunks
Conclusion
Through Zabbix 6.2, many new functionalities, related to proxy configuration, secure password hashing, storage of sensitive information, and AWS EC2 monitoring were released. The patch version releases comprise a few minor but important tweaks in Zabbix. Currently, the infrastructure monitoring tool Zabbix is working on its Zabbix 6.2.5 version.
Some useful and important changes can be expected from the next patch version, too. Keep reading the Zehntech blog to catch up on coming updates.
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