After Zabbix is installed and configured, a moment comes when maintenance tasks become important. In this last chapter, we looked at three important tasks:
While talking about upgrades, we also figured out how the compatibility between different Zabbix components works. With minor-level upgrades, it was very easy—all components, including the server, proxy, and agent, are compatible with each other. Let's try to visualize the major upgrade level compatibility matrix:
As a reminder, from the support perspective, the server and proxy should be of the same major version, and they support all older agent versions. Regarding the Zabbix Java gateway, it should to be from the same major version as the server or proxy—although the protocol has not changed, there are no official tests done and no support provided for different major versions.
After dealing with these three major topics, we discussed general suggestions to keep Zabbix performance acceptable, paying extra attention to housekeeper configuration.
We also found out a way to see the changes made to the Zabbix configuration—the audit log. It allows us to see who made what changes to hosts, items, and other entities. We were a bit disappointed to find out this log does not actually record all operations, especially those performed through the API.
We concluded with quite a detailed look at the parameters in the server, proxy, and agent configuration files. Is it maybe worth reminding you to pay close attention to the comments in the configuration files themselves?
We will conclude the book with two appendices, where we'll discuss the steps and methods for Zabbix troubleshooting as well as ways to interact with and join the Zabbix community.