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Vultr profile image Sanskriti Harmukh
Sanskriti Harmukh for Vultr

Posted on with Aashish Chaurasiya • Originally published at docs.vultr.com

Deploying Zabbix Open-Source Monitoring Platform on Ubuntu 24.04

#docker #observability #devops #monitoring

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring platform that tracks the health and performance of servers, networks, applications, and services, with built-in alerting and visualisation. This guide deploys the Zabbix server, web UI, agent, and MySQL database using Docker Compose, with Traefik handling automatic HTTPS for the dashboard. By the end, you'll have Zabbix monitoring its own host with a secured dashboard at your domain.

Set Up the Project Directory

1. Create the project directory:

$ mkdir ~/zabbix-docker
$ cd ~/zabbix-docker
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2. Create the environment file:

$ nano .env
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DOMAIN=zabbix.example.com
LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=admin@example.com
MYSQL_PASSWORD=YOUR_DB_PASSWORD
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=YOUR_ROOT_PASSWORD
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Deploy with Docker Compose

1. Add your user to the Docker group:

$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
$ newgrp docker
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2. Create the Compose manifest:

$ nano docker-compose.yaml
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services:
  traefik:
    image: traefik:v3.6
    container_name: traefik
    restart: unless-stopped
    command:
      - "--providers.docker=true"
      - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
      - "--entrypoints.web.address=:80"
      - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.to=websecure"
      - "--entrypoints.web.http.redirections.entrypoint.scheme=https"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.le.acme.httpchallenge=true"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.le.acme.httpchallenge.entrypoint=web"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.le.acme.email=${LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL}"
      - "--certificatesresolvers.le.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - ./letsencrypt:/letsencrypt
    networks:
      - zabbix-net

  mysql-server:
    image: mysql:8.4.8
    container_name: zabbix-mysql
    environment:
      MYSQL_DATABASE: zabbix
      MYSQL_USER: zabbix
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    volumes:
      - ./mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
    networks:
      - zabbix-net
    restart: unless-stopped

  zabbix-server:
    image: zabbix/zabbix-server-mysql:7.4.8-alpine
    container_name: zabbix-server
    environment:
      DB_SERVER_HOST: mysql-server
      MYSQL_DATABASE: zabbix
      MYSQL_USER: zabbix
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
    ports:
      - "10051:10051"
    volumes:
      - ./zabbix-server-data:/var/lib/zabbix
    networks:
      - zabbix-net
    depends_on:
      - mysql-server
    restart: unless-stopped

  zabbix-web:
    image: zabbix/zabbix-web-apache-mysql:7.4.8-alpine
    container_name: zabbix-web
    environment:
      DB_SERVER_HOST: mysql-server
      MYSQL_DATABASE: zabbix
      MYSQL_USER: zabbix
      MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_PASSWORD}
      ZBX_SERVER_HOST: zabbix-server
      PHP_TZ: UTC
    networks:
      - zabbix-net
    depends_on:
      - mysql-server
      - zabbix-server
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - "traefik.enable=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.zabbix.rule=Host(`${DOMAIN}`)"
      - "traefik.http.routers.zabbix.entrypoints=websecure"
      - "traefik.http.routers.zabbix.tls=true"
      - "traefik.http.routers.zabbix.tls.certresolver=le"
      - "traefik.http.services.zabbix.loadbalancer.server.port=8080"

  zabbix-agent:
    image: zabbix/zabbix-agent:7.4.8-alpine
    container_name: zabbix-agent
    environment:
      ZBX_HOSTNAME: "Zabbix server"
      ZBX_SERVER_HOST: zabbix-server
    ports:
      - "10050:10050"
    networks:
      - zabbix-net
    depends_on:
      - zabbix-server
    restart: unless-stopped

networks:
  zabbix-net:
    driver: bridge
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3. Start the stack:

$ docker compose up -d
$ docker compose ps
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Sign In and Change the Admin Password

  1. Open https://zabbix.example.com.
  2. Sign in with admin / zabbix.
  3. Open Users → Users, click Admin, click Change password, enter the current password, set a new one, and click Update.

Verify the Built-in Host

  1. Navigate to Monitoring → Hosts.
  2. Find Zabbix server in the list and check the ZBX availability badge.
  3. If the badge is red, click the host name, open Configuration → Host, change the agent Connect to field from IP to DNS, enter zabbix-agent in the DNS name field, and click Update.
  4. Refresh — the badge should turn green.
  5. Open Monitoring → Latest data, filter by host Zabbix server, and confirm CPU, memory, and network metrics arrive.

Next Steps

Zabbix is running and served securely over HTTPS. From here you can:

  • Add more hosts by deploying the Zabbix agent on remote servers and registering them
  • Import community templates for common workloads (PostgreSQL, Nginx, MySQL, Linux)
  • Configure media types (email, Slack, PagerDuty) and triggers for alerting

For the full guide with additional tips, visit the original article on Vultr Docs.

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