In this tutorial we will show you how to install and configuration of Zabbix on your CentOS 7 server. For those of you who didn’t know, Zabbix is an open source monitoring tool that is ideal for monitoring your cloud servers. Zabbix is very flexible, information can be retrieved using HTTP/SNMP or by installing a Zabbix agent on the machines to monitor, and allows a lot of customization.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo’ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you through the step by step installation Zabbix on a CentOS 7 server.

Install Zabbix on CentOS 7

Step 1. First of all make sure that all packages are up to date.

Step 2. Install LAMP server.

A CentOS 7 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. Also install required PHP modules:

Step 3. Installing Zabbix.

Besides the Zabbix-repository, you will also need the EPEL repository for some dependencies. If you haven’t done so, add that repo too:

After adding zabbix apt repository in your system, Now update package lists and install Zabbix using commands:

Step 4. Configure MariaDB Database for Zabbix.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each steps carefully which will set root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB.

Next we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for Zabbix. Run the following command:

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for the Zabbix software:

Now that the database and user are ready, it’s time to create the database schema for Zabbix in the DB which we just added:

Next, edit zabbix server configuration file:

Step 5. Configure Apache web server.

Created a file for Apache in /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf:

Edit this file to look similar to this:

Edit timezone in /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix to read this, or your own time zone:

We should adjust php.ini file as per zabbix recommended settings:

Save and close the file. Start/Restart zabbix and httpd services and make them to start automatically on every reboot:

Finally, adjust Firewall and SELinux settings:

Step 6. Accessing Zabbix.

Zabbix will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://yourdomain.com/zabbix or http://server-ip/zabbix and complete the required the steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.