Special Issue - Zabbix 4.2

Setting the Bar for IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Today we are pleased to announce the release of Zabbix 4.2.

The latest version prioritizes high-frequency distributed monitoring and caters to containers, applications and cloud resources!

I am excited to witness the success of Zabbix in supporting thousands of companies on their journey of digital transformation by providing a highly reliable and flexible monitoring solution. This release sets the bar for IT infrastructure monitoring and makes Zabbix one of the most important component of modern AIOps platforms.

Alexei Vladishev, Founder & CEO

What’s New in Zabbix 4.2?

Here is a list of the most important functionality included into the new release:

Official support of new platforms

In addition to existing official packages and appliances, Zabbix 4.2 now also caters to the following platforms: RaspberryPi, SUSE Enterprise Linux Server, Mac OS/X, MSI for Windows, Docker.

Built-in support of Prometheus data collection

Now we offer an integration with the exporters using native support of PromQL language. Moreover, the use of dependent metrics gives us the ability to collect massive amounts of Prometheus metrics in a highly efficient way: we get all the data using a single HTTP call and then just reuse it for corresponding dependent metrics. Zabbix can also transform Prometheus data into JSON format, which can be used directly for low-level discovery.

Efficient high-frequency monitoring

Quite often, high-frequency monitoring is overloading the monitoring system. We can avoid that with throttling for preprocessing, as it allows us to skip recurrent values. Now we can collect data with high frequency, instantly discover problems without keeping excessive amount of history data in the Zabbix database. Thanks to throttling with heartbeat we can have nice graphs as well.

Validation of collected data and error handling

No one wants to collect incorrect data. With Zabbix 4.2 we can address that via built-in preprocessing rules that validate data by matching or not matching regular expression, using JSONPath or XMLPath. Now it is also possible to extract error messages from collected data. This can be especially handy if we get an error from external APIs.

Preprocessing data with JavaScript

In Zabbix 4.2 you can fully harness the power of user-defined scripts written in JavaScript. Support of JavaScript gives absolute freedom of data preprocessing! In fact, you can now replace all external scripts with JavaScript. This enables all sorts of data transformation, aggregation, filtering, arithmetical and logical operations and much more.

Processing millions of metrics per second

Prior to 4.2, all preprocessing was handled solely by the Zabbix server. Now we are ready to deliver greater scalability, since all preprocessing functions can also be performed by proxies. A combination of proxy-based preprocessing with throttling gives us the ability to perform high-frequency monitoring collecting millions of values per second without overloading the Zabbix Server.

Easy low level discovery

Zabbix 4.2 supports processing based on arbitrary JSON input, which in turn allows us to communicate directly with external APIs, for example, and use received data for automatic creation of hosts, metrics and triggers. Combined with JavaScript preprocessing it opens up fantastic opportunities for templates, that may work with various external data sources such as cloud APIs, application APIs, data in XML, JSON or any other format.

Visit our What’s New page to read more about the new functionality of 4.2.

Read our Release notes to learn about Zabbix 4.2 installation and upgrade.

Upgrade with Ease

There are 3 ways to level up your Zabbix:

1. Use our Zabbix User Manual to upgrade to Zabbix 4.2 effortlessly.

2. Use Zabbix professional upgrade to ensure your migration is smooth and safe. Require either a remote or on-site upgrade procedure by submitting this Form or by contacting us.

3. Check what else is needed for your Zabbix - integration with other IT systems, 24/7 technical support or development of a new feature?

Explore Zabbix professional services and find a solution in the shortest time!