How to Set Up Zabbix for Server Monitoring

What Is Zabbix?

Zabbix is an enterprise-grade open-source monitoring platform that tracks servers, networks, applications, and cloud resources. It provides real-time metrics collection, alerting, visualization, and auto-discovery of infrastructure.

Prerequisites

• A Breeze with at least 4 GB RAM running Ubuntu 22.04
• MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL installed
• Apache or Nginx web server with PHP 8.1+

Install Zabbix Server

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/7.0/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_latest_7.0+ubuntu22.04_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i zabbix-release_latest_7.0+ubuntu22.04_all.deb
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-frontend-php zabbix-apache-conf zabbix-sql-scripts zabbix-agent

Create the Database

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE zabbix CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_bin;
CREATE USER 'zabbix'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'ZabbixSecure2026';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON zabbix.* TO 'zabbix'@'localhost';
EXIT;

zcat /usr/share/zabbix-sql-scripts/mysql/server.sql.gz | mysql -u zabbix -p zabbix

Configure and Start

Edit /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf and set DBPassword=ZabbixSecure2026. Then start the services:

sudo systemctl enable --now zabbix-server zabbix-agent apache2

Access the Web Interface

Navigate to http://your-breeze-ip/zabbix. Complete the setup wizard, entering your database credentials. The default login is Admin / zabbix. Change the password immediately after first login.

Add Hosts to Monitor

Install the Zabbix agent on each target Breeze and configure it to report to your Zabbix server. Hosts appear automatically when auto-discovery is enabled.