1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Overview

This section provides the steps required for a successful upgrade from Zabbix 6.2.x to Zabbix 6.4.x using official Zabbix packages for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Before the upgrade make sure to read the relevant upgrade notes!

You may also want to check the requirements for 6.4.

It may be handy to run two parallel SSH sessions during the upgrade, executing the upgrade steps in one and monitoring the server/proxy logs in another. For example, run tail -f zabbix_server.log or tail -f zabbix_proxy.log in the second SSH session showing you the latest log file entries and possible errors in real time. This can be critical for production instances.

Upgrade procedure

1 Stop Zabbix processes

Stop Zabbix server to make sure that no new data is inserted into database.

  1. # systemctl stop zabbix-server

If upgrading the proxy, stop proxy too.

  1. # systemctl stop zabbix-proxy
2 Back up the existing Zabbix database

This is a very important step. Make sure that you have a backup of your database. It will help if the upgrade procedure fails (lack of disk space, power off, any unexpected problem).

3 Back up configuration files, PHP files and Zabbix binaries

Make a backup copy of Zabbix binaries, configuration files and the PHP file directory.

Configuration files:

  1. # mkdir /opt/zabbix-backup/
  2.        # cp /etc/zabbix/zabbix_server.conf /opt/zabbix-backup/
  3.        # cp /etc/httpd/conf.d/zabbix.conf  /opt/zabbix-backup/

PHP files and Zabbix binaries:

  1. # cp -R /usr/share/zabbix/ /opt/zabbix-backup/
  2.        # cp -R /usr/share/zabbix-* /opt/zabbix-backup/
4 Update repository configuration package

To proceed with the upgrade your current repository package has to be updated.

  1. # rpm -Uvh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/6.4/rhel/8/x86_64/zabbix-release-6.4-1.el8.noarch.rpm
5 Upgrade Zabbix components

To upgrade Zabbix components you may run something like:

  1. # dnf upgrade zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-web-mysql zabbix-agent

If using PostgreSQL, substitute mysql with pgsql in the command. If upgrading the proxy, substitute server with proxy in the command. If upgrading the agent 2, substitute zabbix-agent with zabbix-agent2 in the command.

To upgrade the web frontend with Apache on RHEL 8 correctly, also run:

  1. # dnf install zabbix-apache-conf
6 Review component configuration parameters

Make sure to review Upgrade notes to check if any changes in the configuration parameters are required.

For new optional parameters, see the What’s new page.

7 Start Zabbix processes

Start the updated Zabbix components.

  1. # systemctl start zabbix-server
  2.        # systemctl start zabbix-proxy
  3.        # systemctl start zabbix-agent
  4.        # systemctl start zabbix-agent2
8 Clear web browser cookies and cache

After the upgrade you may need to clear web browser cookies and web browser cache for the Zabbix web interface to work properly.

Upgrade between minor versions

It is possible to upgrade between minor versions of 6.4.x (for example, from 6.4.1 to 6.4.3). Upgrading between minor versions is easy.

To execute Zabbix minor version upgrade it is required to run:

  1. $ sudo dnf upgrade 'zabbix-*'

To execute Zabbix server minor version upgrade run:

  1. $ sudo dnf upgrade 'zabbix-server-*'

To execute Zabbix agent minor version upgrade run:

  1. $ sudo dnf upgrade 'zabbix-agent-*'

or, for Zabbix agent 2:

  1. $ sudo dnf upgrade 'zabbix-agent2-*'