3 Housekeeping

Overview

The housekeeper is a periodical process, executed by Zabbix server. The process removes outdated information and information deleted by user.

In this section housekeeping tasks can be enabled or disabled on a per-task basis separately for: events and alerts/IT services/user sessions/history/trends. Audit housekeeping settings are available in a separate menu section.

If housekeeping is enabled, it is possible to set for how many days data records will be kept before being removed by the housekeeper.

Deleting an item/trigger will also delete problems generated by that item/trigger.

Also, an event will only be deleted by the housekeeper if it is not associated with a problem in any way. This means that if an event is either a problem or recovery event, it will not be deleted until the related problem record is removed. The housekeeper will delete problems first and events after, to avoid potential problems with stale events or problem records.

For history and trends an additional option is available: Override item history period and Override item trend period. This option allows to globally set for how many days item history/trends will be kept (1 hour to 25 years; or “0”), in this case overriding the values set for individual items in History storage period/Trend storage period fields in item configuration. Note, that the storage period will not be overridden for items that have configuration option Do not keep history and/or Do not keep trends enabled.

It is possible to override the history/trend storage period even if internal housekeeping is disabled. Thus, when using an external housekeeper, the history storage period could be set using the history Data storage period field.

If using TimescaleDB, in order to take full advantage of TimescaleDB automatic partitioning of history and trends tables, Override item history period and Override item trend period options must be enabled as well as Enable internal housekeeping option for history and trends. Otherwise, data kept in these tables will still be stored in partitions, however, the housekeeper will not drop outdated partitions, and warnings about incorrect configuration will be displayed. When dropping of outdated partitions is enabled, Zabbix server and frontend will no longer keep track of deleted items, and history for deleted items will be cleared when an outdated partition is deleted.

Time suffixes are supported in the period fields, e.g. 1d (one day), 1w (one week). The minimum is 1 day (1 hour for history), the maximum - 25 years.

The Reset defaults button allows to revert any changes made.