Handy Tips #24: Preventing downtimes with The Zabbix HA cluster

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Zabbix Certified Expert & Trainer

February 24, 2022

Configure automated failover between Zabbix server nodes with the native Zabbix server HA cluster. Preventing downtimes is as vital for a monitoring solution as it is for any other component of an organization’s IT infrastructure. High availability and automated failover can help you prevent unwanted downtimes by supporting multiple application nodes and failing over between […]

Configure automated failover between Zabbix server nodes with the native Zabbix server HA cluster.

Preventing downtimes is as vital for a monitoring solution as it is for any other component of an organization’s IT infrastructure. High availability and automated failover can help you prevent unwanted downtimes by supporting multiple application nodes and failing over between them once a primary node has failed.

Deploy native Zabbix server High availability cluster:

Deploy two or more Zabbix server nodes
No external tools are required to deploy a Zabbix server HA cluster

Define custom failover delay before failing over to another node
Monitor the status of your Zabbix cluster on Zabbix dashboards

Check out the video to learn how to deploy the Zabbix server High availability cluster:

How to deploy the Zabbix server High availability cluster:

Deploy two or more Zabbix server nodes
On all cluster nodes open the Zabbix server configuration file – zabbix_server.conf
On all cluster nodes provide arbitrary node name in the HANodeName parameter
On both nodes provide the node address in the NodeAddress parameter
Open your Zabbix frontend configuration file – zabbix.conf.php
Comment out the //$ZBX_SERVER and $ZBX_SERVER_PORT parameters
From the active node check the HA cluster status with zabbix_server -R ha_status command
Open your Zabbix frontend GUI
Navigate to Reports → System information
Confirm the Zabbix server HA cluster node status

Tips and best practices:

Specifying the HANodeName parameter in the Zabbix server configuration file enables the HA cluster mode
The NodeAddress parameter is used by the Zabbix frontend to connect to the active cluster node
Zabbix frontend configuration file parameters – $ZBX_SERVER and $ZBX_SERVER_PORT must be commented out for the frontend to automatically detect the active cluster node
The current status of the HA cluster can be managed using the dedicated runtime control options