Howto Configure Zabbix Proxy for External Monitoring on CentOS 7

Zabbix is one the best Open Source network monitoring tool for monitoring an infrastructure. It has many features to monitor services and hosts from low level to high level. So among its all features, we are going to discuss and setup its one the most important and useful feature to provision Zabbix Proxy. To implement Zabbix Proxy for centralized and distributed monitoring is good for your remote host monitoring. When all agents and proxies reports to one Zabbix server and all data is being collected at central location.

How it Works

Zabbix Proxies are useful when a server is is not able to communicate directly to the monitored machines. This is common when Organizations have to be monitored, or when there are some restrictions in a large corporate network. Once we had done with Zabbix Proxy setup then connections to the Zabbix Server come from the Proxy Server which will do all the monitoring on the behalf of Zabbix server.

          [root@centos-007 ~] yum update -y

Let’s import Zabbix GPG key and its latest available repository by using the below commands.

[root@centos-007 ~]# rpm --import http://repo.zabbix.com/RPM-GPG-KEY-ZABBIX
[root@centos-007 ~]# rpm -ivh http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/3.0/rhel/7/x86_64/zabbix-release-3.0-1.el7.noarch.rpm

Installing Zabbix Proxy


Now run the zabbix proxy installation command with yum installer.

[root@centos-007 ~]# yum install zabbix-proxy-mysql.x86_64 -y

After the installation process starts, press "Y" to confirm installation startup.

Install necessary packages
Now we install install the necessary server's packages that we wish to install on the proxy server including zabbix server package in case if you want to monitor this as well.
Now, execute the following yum command to start installing packages for zabbix.

[root@centos-007 ~]# yum install mysql-server zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-web-mysql zabbix-agent zabbix-java-gateway

           [root@centos-007 ~]#systemctl start mysqld
           [root@centos-007 ~]#systemctl enable mysqld

The executed command will ends up with installation of all the packages that we mentioned in the command as shown.

[root@centos-007 ~]# mysql_secure_installation

change password, then type yes for four times.

Database Setup for Zabbix Proxy

As we had done with installation of all prerequisite packages necessary for zabbix proxy, now we will setup its database using mysql. Proceeding to the database settings first check that your mysql server is up and you can login with your root password.

[root@centos-007 ~]# mysql -u root -p

Creating new database
Once your mysql server is up and you are loged into it, create a new database for zabbix proxy.

mysql> create database zabbix character set utf8;
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

Assigning Privileges
In order to grant user level privileges on databases to zabbix user run the following command.

mysql> grant all privileges on zabbix.* to 'zabbix'@'localhost' identified by 'zbx123';
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> flush privileges;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

Loading Zabbix Schema
Exit from the mysql database server and from the shell we nee to import zabbix schema into newly created database for zabbix proxy. Run the below commands to load zabbix schema from the zabbix database source for its latest version.

[root@centos-007 mysql]#
cd /usr/share/doc/zabbix-server-mysql-3.x.x/

gunzip create.sql.gz

mysql -u root -p zabbix_db < create.sql 

Zabbix Proxy Configuration

We are going to configure zabbix proxy configurations now, to do so let's open up the zabbix proxy conf file placed in "/etc/zabbix/" directory with your file editor.

[root@centos-007 ~]# vim /etc/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.conf

Now configure it with following options.
Put the IP of your Zabbix Server here, if its running on another machine.

#Server=127.0.0.1
Server=172.25.10.181

Mention the hostname here that you like to configure it here.

#Hostname=Zabbix proxy
Hostname=zbx_proxy

Give the database name, its user and password, that we had created above in zabbix database proxy settings.

#DBName=zabbix_proxy
DBName=zabbix

# DBUser=
DBUser=zabbix

# DBPassword=
DBPassword=zbx123

Now save the changes to the zabbix configurations file and close it with "wq!".
Start Zabbix Proxy Services
Run the "zabbix_proxy" command to start its service and then confirm its process with "ps" or "netstat " commands to confirm if its processes are running.

[root@centos-007 ~]# zabbix_proxy
[root@centos-007 ~]# netstat -anp | grep zabbix_proxy

Here is the snapshot of all the running processes under zabbix_proxy on port "10051".

You can also check the zabbix proxy logs by opening up its logs file zabbix_proxy.log created in "/var/log/zabbix/" directory.

[root@centos-007 ~]#cat /var/log/zabbix/zabbix_proxy.log

Here can see its logs about successfully services start up in below image.

Configure Zabbix Proxy on Master Server

Now we need to configure the zabbix proxy on the master server. Open its dashboard and expand the "Administration" options and click to "Proxies", then click on the top right corner to "Create Proxy".