Zabbix is a robust network, virtual machine, cloud service, and server monitoring software built on an open-source environment. The monitoring tool which already has numerous benefits has launched a number of new features and functionalities with its latest version Zabbix 6.0 LTS. The latest version of the network monitoring tool has been released packed with several extremely helpful and innovative enterprise-level features and enhancements.
With this version, the developers have aimed at enhancing performance for bigger Zabbix instances, providing added value to Zabbix users, and addressing enterprise-level redundancy issues.
If you want to know about the new features that have been released with Zabbix 6.0 LTS, keep reading!
1. More functionalities & integrations for monitoring
As expected with any major release, Zabbix 6.0 LTS is equipped with a suite of new integrations and functionalities. Following are the new functions added to the software tool:
- Monitor SSL certificate details: Now users can keep a check on SSL certificate details, like the expiry date, validity, version, subject, and issuer.
- New Zabbix Agent 2 metrics: The metrics will enable users to collect data and files, like file owner information, extended interface information, file properties, SHA2 hashes for files, and extended TCP information, easily.
- Freshly added templates: New templates were added in Zabbix 6.0 LTS for Cloudflare, NGINX+, CISCO ASAv, and HPE/Dell servers
2. Moved from screens to sophisticated dashboards
Up until now, users had to conduct operations through screens in all the earlier versions. When using the latest version of Zabbix 6.0 LTS, the user’s screens will automatically get migrated to dashboards during the upgrade process. The new dashboard is powered with various customizable widgets which can be added to the dashboard easily. A few of the useful widgets are mentioned below:
- Single item value widget: This widget gives users a better, more flexible view of all your metrics
- Geomap widget: It has been added so users can get a clearer overview of the state of their infrastructure
- Top N/Bottom N views: This widget provides you with a fresh perspective on your metrics and more.
3. Supports high server availability clusters
The most recent version of Zabbix now supports high server availability clusters for Zabbix. Earlier, users had to use dedicated clustering software pieces for making high availability possible. This setup safeguards your hardware and software against failure. It also diminishes downtime while accomplishing maintenance tasks. The Zabbix server high availability cluster is available as an opt-in solution designed to provide high availability for its server component.
4. Improved security measures and features
Security is a key factor in network monitoring tools. In order to upgrade its security, Zabbix added several new security features and made certain enhancements to existing security. Through user roles, you can now define roles with radical permissions interns of frontend access as well as the specific actions every user role is authorized to perform.
As in the previous versions, roles continue to be based on user types, including Zabbix User, Super admin, and Admin. Though the user type restrictions will continue to apply, they can be customized according to each role. Moreover, user groups will host group permissions, which are Read, Read/Write, Deny, and would have to be used with roles to make sure granular access is granted.
Additionally, Zabbix 6.0 LTS would make it possible for users to customize Zabbix frontend logins’s password complexity requirements. With the release of Zabbix 6.0 LTS, HashiCorp Vault is supported. As per the official website of Zabbix, CyberArk Vault support will only arrive with the arrival of Zabbix 6.2.
5. Added features for scalability improvements
Enhancing scalability has been one of the priorities in Zabbix 6.0 LTS release. The enhancements focus on lay the foundation for the upcoming features that are expected in the later releases. The scalability features and enhancements will enable more effective and faster parallel data processing on Zabbix servers. Zabbix Instances will process heavy loads easily and users will immensely benefit from this improved performance.
Zabbix 6.0 LTS supports the monitoring of more than 100,000 business services. The scalability enhancements have been analyzed and implemented keeping in mind both the UI/UX as well as the performance.
6. Advanced business service monitoring
Zabbix has also integrated new features for Business service monitoring. The new features enable Zabbix users to define complex service trees and receive notifications and alerts when the business service status has been played with. This feature can be extremely valuable for users who want to monitor their business services, irrespective of the level of complexity of the service.
Zabbix has also added features for root cause analysis which empowers users to find out the underlying issue causing a particular service to fluctuate.
7. Tag and template improvements
The previously known item applications are now replaced with tags in the latest version. This change has added a layer of consistency to filtering, grouping, mapping, and other tag-oriented functions. Users can also use tags to provide more information related to their entities in a more flexible as compared to how it was done with applications.
Universal template IDs are introduced in Zabbix 6.0 LTS for each and every template element. These enable users to define more robust template management workflows. It is more useful when it is powered with a CI/CD template management approach. Each Universal template ID is unique and can be utilized for matching a certain template entity, like a trigger and item graph.
8. Enhanced reporting and visualization features
Through Scheduled reports functionality, dashboards in Zabbix can be converted into scheduled reports. The feature was originally added in the Zabbix 5.4 version, Zabbix 6.0 LTS brings along many new widgets which add much more value to the reporting function. Users of the latest version of Zabbix can now create scheduled reports and also receive them at their email address at a time of their choice on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis.
Some additional features
Apart from the above-mentioned advancements, there are a few more miscellaneous features added by Zabbix to their latest version:
- Users can now save their favourite problem filters. Not just that, users can also access their filters in tabs. This allows simpler filtering of the commonly accessed problem views.
- Time zone configuration was also introduced in Zabbix 6.0 LTS. Time zone configuration can be used on a per-user basis through which they have their preferred time zone configured on their dashboard through the user settings in the front end of Zabbix.
- Just like time zone, users can also configure language for each user individually through Language settings.
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Conclusion
Zabbix is a software that allows its users to collect important metrics from any source. It also enables synthetic monitoring to create complex scenarios for dependable web application monitoring. The most recent version of Zabbix has brought several improvements and features that developers and IT teams across the world are happy to see.
Through the latest version of Zabbix, the open-source platform will continue extending its impactful monitoring and data collection capabilities. To make collaborating across systems easier, Zabbix 6.0 LTS also continues to enable continuous delivery of many official integrations through reliable third-party systems. With the next and upcoming versions of Zabbix, the tool is said to bring even more useful and featureful functionalities and improvements.
Zabbix is an intuitive and customizable Linux-based on-prem package that offers useful data visualization functionalities. If you wish to implement Zabbix IT infrastructure monitoring tool into your organization, feel free to reach out to us. You can know more about our services here.
