Grafana Zabbix Plugin

Video Lecture

Grafana is good for monitoring time series data, and so is Zabbix,

Grafana is another option for viewing Zabbix Data, and data from many other data sources.

In this lecture, I will install Grafana on the same server as my Zabbix Server.

1
2
3

sudo apt-get install -y libfontconfig1
wget https://dl.grafana.com/oss/release/grafana_7.0.5_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i grafana_7.0.5_amd64.deb

Then start the service

1	sudo service grafana-server start

Your Grafana server will be hosted at

1	http://[your zabbix server ip or domain name]:3000

Default login is

username : admin

password : admin

I add a MySQL data source and I also need to add a specific user which has read only access to the zabbix database.

mysql

CREATE USER 'grafana'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
GRANT SELECT ON zabbix.* TO 'grafana'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

I then need to add a zabbix datasource plugin,

1	grafana-cli plugins install alexanderzobnin-zabbix-app

Since Grafana v7, unsigned plugins won't be visible unless you explicitly allow them in the Grafana.ini file.

Open /etc/grafana/grafana.ini, and uncomment the line

1	;allow_loading_unsigned_plugins

and change to

1	allow_loading_unsigned_plugins = alexanderzobnin-zabbix-datasource

And then restart the grafana server

1	sudo service grafana-server restart

When configuring the Zabbix plugin, your API URL will be similar to this below.

1	https://[your zabbix server ip or domain name]/zabbix/api_jsonrpc.php

Also select the option for direct db access, and choose the MySQL data source you created a minute ago.

Warning

Since Grafana v7, unsigned plugins won't be visible unless you explicitly allow them in the Grafana.ini file

Open /etc/grafana/grafana.ini, uncomment the

;allow_loading_unsigned_plugins

and change it to

allow_loading_unsigned_plugins = alexanderzobnin-zabbix-datasource

And then restart the grafana server

sudo service grafana-server restart

If you are serious about using Grafana long term, then I suggest installing it on a separate server, rather than on the Zabbix server.

To uninstall Grafana,

1	sudo dpkg -r grafana

If you want to try a more detailed course on Grafana, then you can visit my Grafana tutorials.