1 Zabbix server

Overview

This section lists parameters supported in a Zabbix server configuration file (zabbix_server.conf). Note that:

  • The default values reflect daemon defaults, not the values in the shipped configuration files;

  • Zabbix supports configuration files only in UTF-8 encoding without BOM;

  • Comments starting with “#” are only supported in the beginning of the line.

Parameters

ParameterMandatoryRangeDefaultDescription
AlertScriptsPathno/usr/local/share/zabbix/alertscriptsLocation of custom alert scripts (depends on compile-time installation variable datadir).
AllowRootno0Allow the server to run as ‘root’. If disabled and the server is started by ‘root’, the server will try to switch to the ‘zabbix’ user instead. Has no effect if started under a regular user.
0 - do not allow
1 - allow
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
CacheSizeno128K-64G8MSize of configuration cache, in bytes.
Shared memory size for storing host, item and trigger data.
CacheUpdateFrequencyno1-360060How often Zabbix will perform update of configuration cache, in seconds.
See also runtime control options.
DBHostnolocalhostDatabase host name.
In case of MySQL localhost or empty string results in using a socket. In case of PostgreSQL
only empty string results in attempt to use socket.
DBNameyesDatabase name.
DBPasswordnoDatabase password.
Comment this line if no password is used.
DBPortno1024-65535Database port when not using local socket.
DBSchemanoSchema name. Used for PostgreSQL.
DBSocketnoPath to MySQL socket file.
DBUsernoDatabase user.
DBTLSConnectnoSetting this option enforces to use TLS connection to database:
required - connect using TLS
verify_ca - connect using TLS and verify certificate
verify_full - connect using TLS, verify certificate and verify that database identity specified by DBHost matches its certificate

On MySQL starting from 5.7.11 and PostgreSQL the following values are supported: “required”, “verify_ca”, “verify_full”. On MariaDB starting from version 10.2.6 “required” and “verify_full” values are supported.
By default not set to any option and the behavior depends on database configuration.

This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DBTLSCAFileno
(yes, if DBTLSConnect set to one of: verify_ca, verify_full)
Full pathname of a file containing the top-level CA(s) certificates for database certificate verification.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DBTLSCertFilenoFull pathname of file containing Zabbix server certificate for authenticating to database.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DBTLSKeyFilenoFull pathname of file containing the private key for authenticating to database.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DBTLSCiphernoThe list of encryption ciphers that Zabbix server permits for TLS protocols up through TLSv1.2.
Supported only for MySQL.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DBTLSCipher13noThe list of encryption ciphersuites that Zabbix server permits for TLSv1.3 protocol.
Supported only for MySQL, starting from version 8.0.16.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.0.0.
DebugLevelno0-53Specifies debug level:
0 - basic information about starting and stopping of Zabbix processes
1 - critical information
2 - error information
3 - warnings
4 - for debugging (produces lots of information)
5 - extended debugging (produces even more information)
See also runtime control options.
ExportDirnoDirectory for real-time export of events, history and trends in newline-delimited JSON format. If set, enables real-time export.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.0.0.
ExportFileSizeno1M-1G1GMaximum size per export file in bytes. Only used for rotation if ExportDir is set.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.0.0.
ExportTypenoList of comma-delimited entity types (events, history, trends) for real-time export (all types by default). Valid only if ExportDir is set.
Note that if ExportType is specified, but ExportDir is not, then this is a configuration error and the server will not start.
e.g.:
ExportType=history,trends - export history and trends only
ExportType=events - export events only
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.2.6.
ExternalScriptsno/usr/local/share/zabbix/externalscriptsLocation of external scripts (depends on compile-time installation variable datadir).
Fping6Locationno/usr/sbin/fping6Location of fping6.
Make sure that fping6 binary has root ownership and SUID flag set.
Make empty (“Fping6Location=”) if your fping utility is capable to process IPv6 addresses.
FpingLocationno/usr/sbin/fpingLocation of fping.
Make sure that fping binary has root ownership and SUID flag set!
HistoryCacheSizeno128K-2G16MSize of history cache, in bytes.
Shared memory size for storing history data.
HistoryIndexCacheSizeno128K-2G4MSize of history index cache, in bytes.
Shared memory size for indexing history data stored in history cache.
The index cache size needs roughly 100 bytes to cache one item.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
HistoryStorageDateIndexno0Enable preprocessing of history values in history storage to store values in different indices based on date:
0 - disable
1 - enable
HistoryStorageURLnoHistory storage HTTP[S] URL.
This parameter is used for Elasticsearch setup.
HistoryStorageTypesnouint,dbl,str,log,textComma separated list of value types to be sent to the history storage.
This parameter is used for Elasticsearch setup.
HousekeepingFrequencyno0-241How often Zabbix will perform housekeeping procedure (in hours).
Housekeeping is removing outdated information from the database.
Note: To prevent housekeeper from being overloaded (for example, when history and trend periods are greatly reduced), no more than 4 times HousekeepingFrequency hours of outdated information are deleted in one housekeeping cycle, for each item. Thus, if HousekeepingFrequency is 1, no more than 4 hours of outdated information (starting from the oldest entry) will be deleted per cycle.
Note: To lower load on server startup housekeeping is postponed for 30 minutes after server start. Thus, if HousekeepingFrequency is 1, the very first housekeeping procedure after server start will run after 30 minutes, and will repeat with one hour delay thereafter. This postponing behavior is in place since Zabbix 2.4.0.
Since Zabbix 3.0.0 it is possible to disable automatic housekeeping by setting HousekeepingFrequency to 0. In this case the housekeeping procedure can only be started by housekeeper_execute runtime control option and the period of outdated information deleted in one housekeeping cycle is 4 times the period since the last housekeeping cycle, but not less than 4 hours and not greater than 4 days.
See also runtime control options.
IncludenoYou may include individual files or all files in a directory in the configuration file.
To only include relevant files in the specified directory, the asterisk wildcard character is supported for pattern matching. For example: /absolute/path/to/config/files/*.conf. Pattern matching is supported since Zabbix 2.4.0.
See special notes about limitations.
JavaGatewaynoIP address (or hostname) of Zabbix Java gateway.
Only required if Java pollers are started.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.0.0.
JavaGatewayPortno1024-3276710052Port that Zabbix Java gateway listens on.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.0.0.
ListenIPno0.0.0.0List of comma delimited IP addresses that the trapper should listen on.
Trapper will listen on all network interfaces if this parameter is missing.
Multiple IP addresses are supported since Zabbix 1.8.3.
ListenPortno1024-3276710051Listen port for trapper.
LoadModulenoModule to load at server startup. Modules are used to extend functionality of the server.
Formats:
LoadModule=<module.so>
LoadModule=<path/module.so>
LoadModule=</abs_path/module.so>
Either the module must be located in directory specified by LoadModulePath or the path must precede the module name. If the preceding path is absolute (starts with ‘/‘) then LoadModulePath is ignored.
It is allowed to include multiple LoadModule parameters.
LoadModulePathnoFull path to location of server modules.
Default depends on compilation options.
LogFileyes, if LogType is set to file, otherwise
no
Name of log file.
LogFileSizeno0-10241Maximum size of log file in MB.
0 - disable automatic log rotation.
Note: If the log file size limit is reached and file rotation fails, for whatever reason, the existing log file is truncated and started anew.
LogTypenofileLog output type:
file - write log to file specified by LogFile parameter,
system - write log to syslog,
console - write log to standard output.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
LogSlowQueriesno0-36000000How long a database query may take before being logged (in milliseconds).
0 - don’t log slow queries.
This option becomes enabled starting with DebugLevel=3.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.2.
MaxHousekeeperDeleteno0-10000005000No more than ‘MaxHousekeeperDelete’ rows (corresponding to [tablename], [field], [value]) will be deleted per one task in one housekeeping cycle.
If set to 0 then no limit is used at all. In this case you must know what you are doing, so as not to overload the database! 2
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.2 and applies only to deleting history and trends of already deleted items.
PidFileno/tmp/zabbix_server.pidName of PID file.
ProxyConfigFrequencyno1-6048003600How often Zabbix server sends configuration data to a Zabbix proxy in seconds. Used only for proxies in a passive mode.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.3.
ProxyDataFrequencyno1-36001How often Zabbix server requests history data from a Zabbix proxy in seconds. Used only for proxies in a passive mode.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.3.
SNMPTrapperFileno/tmp/zabbix_traps.tmpTemporary file used for passing data from SNMP trap daemon to the server.
Must be the same as in zabbix_trap_receiver.pl or SNMPTT configuration file.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.0.0.
SocketDirno/tmpDirectory to store IPC sockets used by internal Zabbix services.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.4.0.
SourceIPnoSource IP address for:
- outgoing connections to Zabbix proxy and Zabbix agent;
- agentless connections (VMware, SSH, JMX, SNMP, Telnet and simple checks);
- HTTP agent connections;
- script item JavaScript HTTP requests;
- preprocessing JavaScript HTTP requests;
- sending notification emails (connections to SMTP server);
- webhook notifications (JavaScript HTTP connections);
- connections to the Vault
SSHKeyLocationnoLocation of public and private keys for SSH checks and actions
SSLCertLocationnoLocation of SSL client certificate files for client authentication.
This parameter is used in web monitoring only and is supported since Zabbix 2.4.
SSLKeyLocationnoLocation of SSL private key files for client authentication.
This parameter is used in web monitoring only and is supported since Zabbix 2.4.
SSLCALocationnoOverride the location of certificate authority (CA) files for SSL server certificate verification. If not set, system-wide directory will be used.
Note that the value of this parameter will be set as libcurl option CURLOPT_CAPATH. For libcurl versions before 7.42.0, this only has effect if libcurl was compiled to use OpenSSL. For more information see cURL web page.
This parameter is used in web monitoring since Zabbix 2.4.0 and in SMTP authentication since Zabbix 3.0.0.
StartDBSyncersno1-1004Number of pre-forked instances of DB Syncers.
Note: Be careful when changing this value, increasing it may do more harm than good. Roughly, the default value should be enough to handle up to 4000 NVPS.
The upper limit used to be 64 before version 1.8.5.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.3.
StartAlertersno1-1003Number of pre-forked instances of alerters.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.4.0.
StartDiscoverersno0-2501Number of pre-forked instances of discoverers.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
StartEscalatorsno1-1001Number of pre-forked instances of escalators.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
StartHTTPPollersno0-10001Number of pre-forked instances of HTTP pollers1.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
StartIPMIPollersno0-10000Number of pre-forked instances of IPMI pollers.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
StartJavaPollersno0-10000Number of pre-forked instances of Java pollers1.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.0.0.
StartLLDProcessorsno1-1002Number of pre-forked instances of low-level discovery (LLD) workers1.
The LLD manager process is automatically started when an LLD worker is started.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.2.0.
StartPingersno0-10001Number of pre-forked instances of ICMP pingers1.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
StartPollersUnreachableno0-10001Number of pre-forked instances of pollers for unreachable hosts (including IPMI and Java)1.
Since Zabbix 2.4.0, at least one poller for unreachable hosts must be running if regular, IPMI or Java pollers are started.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
This option is missing in version 1.8.3.
StartPollersno0-10005Number of pre-forked instances of pollers1.
Note that a non-zero value is required for internal, aggregated and calculated items to work.
StartPreprocessorsno1-10003Number of pre-forked instances of preprocessing workers1.
The preprocessing manager process is automatically started when a preprocessor worker is started.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.4.0.
StartProxyPollersno0-2501Number of pre-forked instances of pollers for passive proxies1.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 1.8.3.
StartSNMPTrapperno0-10If set to 1, SNMP trapper process will be started.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.0.0.
StartTimersno1-10001Number of pre-forked instances of timers.
Timers process maintenance periods.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
StartTrappersno0-10005Number of pre-forked instances of trappers1.
Trappers accept incoming connections from Zabbix sender, active agents and active proxies.
At least one trapper process must be running to display server availability and view queue in the frontend.
The upper limit used to be 255 before version 1.8.5.
StartVMwareCollectorsno0-2500Number of pre-forked vmware collector instances.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
StatsAllowedIPnoList of comma delimited IP addresses, optionally in CIDR notation, or DNS names of external Zabbix instances. Stats request will be accepted only from the addresses listed here. If this parameter is not set no stats requests will be accepted.
If IPv6 support is enabled then ‘127.0.0.1’, ‘::127.0.0.1’, ‘::ffff:127.0.0.1’ are treated equally and ‘::/0’ will allow any IPv4 or IPv6 address. ‘0.0.0.0/0’ can be used to allow any IPv4 address.
Example: StatsAllowedIP=127.0.0.1,192.168.1.0/24,::1,2001:db8::/32,zabbix.example.com
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.2.0.
Timeoutno1-303Specifies how long we wait for agent, SNMP device or external check (in seconds).
TLSCAFilenoFull pathname of a file containing the top-level CA(s) certificates for peer certificate verification, used for encrypted communications between Zabbix components.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
TLSCertFilenoFull pathname of a file containing the server certificate or certificate chain, used for encrypted communications between Zabbix components.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
TLSCipherAllnoGnuTLS priority string or OpenSSL (TLS 1.2) cipher string. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for certificate- and PSK-based encryption.
Example: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256:TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCipherAll13noCipher string for OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer in TLS 1.3. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for certificate- and PSK-based encryption.
Example for GnuTLS: NONE:+VERS-TLS1.2:+ECDHE-RSA:+RSA:+ECDHE-PSK:+PSK:+AES-128-GCM:+AES-128-CBC:+AEAD:+SHA256:+SHA1:+CURVE-ALL:+COMP-NULL::+SIGN-ALL:+CTYPE-X.509
Example for OpenSSL: EECDH+aRSA+AES128:RSA+aRSA+AES128:kECDHEPSK+AES128:kPSK+AES128
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCipherCertnoGnuTLS priority string or OpenSSL (TLS 1.2) cipher string. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for certificate-based encryption.
Example for GnuTLS: NONE:+VERS-TLS1.2:+ECDHE-RSA:+RSA:+AES-128-GCM:+AES-128-CBC:+AEAD:+SHA256:+SHA1:+CURVE-ALL:+COMP-NULL:+SIGN-ALL:+CTYPE-X.509
Example for OpenSSL: EECDH+aRSA+AES128:RSA+aRSA+AES128
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCipherCert13noCipher string for OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer in TLS 1.3. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for certificate-based encryption.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCipherPSKnoGnuTLS priority string or OpenSSL (TLS 1.2) cipher string. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for PSK-based encryption.
Example for GnuTLS: NONE:+VERS-TLS1.2:+ECDHE-PSK:+PSK:+AES-128-GCM:+AES-128-CBC:+AEAD:+SHA256:+SHA1:+CURVE-ALL:+COMP-NULL:+SIGN-ALL
Example for OpenSSL: kECDHEPSK+AES128:kPSK+AES128
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCipherPSK13noCipher string for OpenSSL 1.1.1 or newer in TLS 1.3. Override the default ciphersuite selection criteria for PSK-based encryption.
Example: TLS_CHACHA20_POLY1305_SHA256:TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 4.4.7.
TLSCRLFilenoFull pathname of a file containing revoked certificates. This parameter is used for encrypted communications between Zabbix components.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
TLSKeyFilenoFull pathname of a file containing the server private key, used for encrypted communications between Zabbix components.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 3.0.0.
TmpDirno/tmpTemporary directory.
TrapperTimeoutno1-300300Specifies how many seconds trapper may spend processing new data.
TrendCacheSizeno128K-2G4MSize of trend cache, in bytes.
Shared memory size for storing trends data.
UnavailableDelayno1-360060How often host is checked for availability during the unavailability period, in seconds.
UnreachableDelayno1-360015How often host is checked for availability during the unreachability period, in seconds.
UnreachablePeriodno1-360045After how many seconds of unreachability treat a host as unavailable.
UsernozabbixDrop privileges to a specific, existing user on the system.
Only has effect if run as ‘root’ and AllowRoot is disabled.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.4.0.
ValueCacheSizeno0,128K-64G8MSize of history value cache, in bytes.
Shared memory size for caching item history data requests.
Setting to 0 disables value cache (not recommended).
When value cache runs out of the shared memory a warning message is written to the server log every 5 minutes.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
VaultDBPathnoVault path from where credentials for database will be retrieved by keys ‘password’ and ‘username’.
Example: secret/zabbix/database
This option can only be used if DBUser and DBPassword are not specified.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.2.0.
VaultTokennoVault authentication token that should have been generated exclusively for Zabbix server with read-only permission to the paths specified in Vault macros and read-only permission to the path specified in the optional VaultDBPath configuration parameter.
It is an error if VaultToken and VAULT_TOKEN environment variable are defined at the same time.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.2.0.
VaultURLnohttps://127.0.0.1:8200Vault server HTTP[S] URL. System-wide CA certificates directory will be used if SSLCALocation is not specified.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 5.2.0.
VMwareCacheSizeno256K-2G8MShared memory size for storing VMware data.
A VMware internal check zabbix[vmware,buffer,…] can be used to monitor the VMware cache usage (see Internal checks).
Note that shared memory is not allocated if there are no vmware collector instances configured to start.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
VMwareFrequencyno10-8640060Delay in seconds between data gathering from a single VMware service.
This delay should be set to the least update interval of any VMware monitoring item.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.0.
VMwarePerfFrequencyno10-8640060Delay in seconds between performance counter statistics retrieval from a single VMware service.
This delay should be set to the least update interval of any VMware monitoring item that uses VMware performance counters.
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.9, 2.4.4
VMwareTimeoutno1-30010The maximum number of seconds vmware collector will wait for a response from VMware service (vCenter or ESX hypervisor).
This parameter is supported since Zabbix 2.2.9, 2.4.4
Footnotes

1 Note that too many data gathering processes (pollers, unreachable pollers, HTTP pollers, Java pollers, pingers, trappers, proxypollers) together with IPMI manager, SNMP trapper and preprocessing workers can exhaust the per-process file descriptor limit for the preprocessing manager.

This will cause Zabbix server to stop (usually shortly after the start, but sometimes it can take more time). The configuration file should be revised or the limit should be raised to avoid this situation.

2 When a lot of items are deleted it increases the load to the database, because the housekeeper will need to remove all the history data that these items had. For example, if we only have to remove 1 item prototype, but this prototype is linked to 50 hosts and for every host the prototype is expanded to 100 real items, 5000 items in total have to be removed (1*50*100). If 500 is set for MaxHousekeeperDelete (MaxHousekeeperDelete=500), the housekeeper process will have to remove up to 2500000 values (5000*500) for the deleted items from history and trends tables in one cycle.