7 Upgrade procedure

Overview

This section provides upgrade information for Zabbix 6.4:

• using packages:
  • for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
  • for Debian/Ubuntu
• using sources

See also upgrade instructions for servers in a high-availability (HA) cluster.

Upgrading Zabbix agents is recommended but not mandatory.

Upgrading Zabbix proxies is highly recommended. Zabbix server fully supports proxies that are of the same major version as the server. Zabbix server also supports proxies that are no older than Zabbix server previous LTS release version, but with limited functionality (data collection, execution of remote commands, immediate item value checks). Configuration update is also disabled, and outdated proxies will only work with old configuration.

Proxies that are older than Zabbix server previous LTS release version or newer than Zabbix server major version are not supported. Zabbix server will ignore data from unsupported proxies and all communication with Zabbix server will fail with a warning. For more information, see Version compatibility.

To minimize downtime and data loss during the upgrade, it is recommended to stop, upgrade, and start Zabbix server and then stop, upgrade, and start Zabbix proxies one after another. During server downtime, running proxies will continue data collection. Once the server is up and running, outdated proxies will send the data to the newer server (proxy configuration will not be updated though) and will remain partly functional. Any notifications for problems during Zabbix server downtime will be generated only after the upgraded server is started.

If Zabbix proxy is started for the first time and the SQLite database file is missing, proxy creates it automatically. Note that starting with Zabbix 6.4.0, if Zabbix proxy uses SQLite3 and on startup detects that existing database file version is older than required, it will delete the database file automatically and create a new one. Therefore, history data stored in the SQLite database file will be lost. If Zabbix proxy’s version is older than the database file version, Zabbix will log an error and exit.

Depending on the database size, the database upgrade to version 6.4 may take a long time.

Direct upgrade to Zabbix 6.4.x is possible from Zabbix 6.2.x, 6.0.x, 5.4.x, 5.2.x, 5.0.x, 4.4.x, 4.2.x, 4.0.x, 3.4.x, 3.2.x, 3.0.x, 2.4.x, 2.2.x and 2.0.x. For upgrading from earlier versions consult Zabbix documentation for 2.0 and earlier.

Please be aware that after upgrading some third-party software integrations in Zabbix might be affected, if the external software is not compatible with the upgraded Zabbix version.

The following upgrade notes are available: