Build fully working zabbix server with database in seconds thanks to docker

To install zabbix server quickly zabbix comes with help as they have prebuild their product with docker images. There is lots of official zabbix images on dockerhub so it can just overwhelm you. There are mixes of all different possibilities like zabbix with mysql or postgres or either sqlite, zabbix served bt nginx or apache or java gateway. Depending on stack which is closest to you you can easily build docker-compose that will just run selected stack in seconds. My pick was nginx mysql so to set up fully running zabbix server we need 3 images

• mysql-server

• zabbix-web - web interface

• zabbix-server - main zabbix process responsible for polling and trapping data and sending notifications to users.

In addition you can add postfix mail server for notifying users but its not a must as you can use your own mail server if so - just remove postfix service from example below.

Notice(you may want to use some specific versions or alpine versions for production env)

Create some directory (directory name is crucial here for visibility and future maitenance of your containers and volumes or networks as the name will be used as prefix for docker containers created by docker-compose and also volumes directories so it will be easier to identify in future which volume belongs to which stack In Ubuntu volumes are usually being kept in/var/lib/docker/volumes but you can mount any directory from host by just specifying absolute or relative path in service configuration so for instance for mysql in example to mount mysql_data_dir just outside of our containers folder

volumes:
  - '../mysql_data_dir:/var/lib/mysql'

Now within directory create docker-compose.yml with selected technologies in my case it is: #docker-compose.yml

version: '3'

services:
  db:
    image: mysql:latest
    restart: always
    expose:
      - '3336'
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'my_secret_password'
      MYSQL_USER: 'zabbixuser'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'zabbix_password'
      MYSQL_ROOT_HOST: '%'
    volumes:
      - 'mysql_data_dir:/var/lib/mysql'


  zabbix-server:
    image: zabbix/zabbix-server-mysql
    links:
      - "db:mysql"
      - "postfix:postfix"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'my_secret_password'
      MYSQL_USER: 'zabbixuser'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'zabbixpassassword'
      DB_SERVER_HOST: 'mysql'


  zabbix-web:
    image: zabbix/zabbix-web-nginx-mysql
    ports:
      - '7777:80'
    links:
      - "db:mysql"
      - "zabbix-server:zabbix-server"
      - "postfix:postfix"
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: 'my_secret_password'
      MYSQL_USER: 'zabbixuser'
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: 'zabbixpassassword'
      DB_SERVER_HOST: 'mysql'
      ZBX_SERVER_HOST: "zabbix-server"
      PHP_TZ: "Europe/London"
  postfix:
    image: catatnight/postfix
    hostname: support
    environment:
      - maildomain=mydomain.com
      - smtp_user=admin:my_password
    ports:
      - "25:25"
    expose:
      - "25"
    volumes:
      - /etc/nginx/ssl/postfix:/etc/postfix/certs
      - /etc/nginx/ssl/postfix:/etc/opendkim/domainkeys
volumes:
  mysql_data_dir:
    driver: local

The above solution is just enough to start zabbix server up and running in couple seconds. To do it just run: .. code-block:: bash

sudo docker-compose up

Thats it!!! You now have your zabbix running on port 7777

So what happened here docker-compose up has build and runned 3 containers by running zabbix container it discovered there are no tables in mysql and has built them.

Now you just need to add agents/servers you want to monitor. Check out adding agent in separate post

Versions: (versions I've used in this example Feb 2018):

Docker-compose: 1.17.0, build ac53b73 Docker: 17.09.1-ce, build 19e2cf6 Kernel: 4.13.0-36-generic System: Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS