[Zabbix-announce] ZABBIX 1.6 released

[Alexei V. <ale...@za...>]

Greetings!

ZABBIX SIA is proud to announce the availability of ZABBIX 1.6.

We would like to thank our partners, customers and community members for 
their continuous support and efforts in aiding ZABBIX to become more and 
more mature and intelligent product.

ZABBIX is an enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring 
solution. ZABBIX is released under the GPL, thus it is free of charge 
for both commercial and non-commercial use. A complete text of the 
license is available at http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.txt.

This document contains the release notes for ZABBIX 1.6.

The following sections describe the release in detail and provide 
late-breaking or other information that supplements its main documentation.

What's New in 1.6

:: Escalations and Repeated Notifications

Support of escalations and repeated notifications has been implemented. 
Escalation can be configured in a very flexible way and may include not 
only notifications but also execution of remote and IPMI commands.

:: Much Better Performance

ZABBIX database cache module,when enabled by the parameter 
StartDBSyncers, increases speed of ZABBIX up-to 4-8x times depending on 
the configuration.

:: Support of IPv6

All ZABBIX modules support both IPv4 and IPv6. ZABBIX can be used in 
mixed or IPv6 only environments.

:: Support of IPMI

ZABBIX supports monitoring of IPMI parameters and manual execution of 
IMPI commands from its front-end as well as remote commands.

:: Better Distributed Monitoring

ZABBIX distributed monitoring has been improved for a more efficient 
Node synchronisation protocol. See also details on ZABBIX Proxy.

:: ZABBIX Proxy Process

ZABBIX Proxy is a lightweight process, which collects data on behalf of 
ZABBIX Server. The proxies can be used in order to centralise monitoring 
of remote locations by reporting to the central server or one of ZABBIX 
nodes in the distributed environment.

ZABBIX Proxy simplifies deployment and maintenances of the centralised 
distributed monitoring significantly.

:: Dashboard

ZABBIX Dashboard provides high level personalized details about the 
monitored environment. Now this is a central part of ZABBIX front-end.

:: Dynamic Screens

A screen element can be made dynamic. In this case, the information 
displayed in the element will depend on the particular host selected by 
ZABBIX user.

:: Nice Zoom for Graphs

The Zoom period can be selected by mouse for drill-down analysis.

:: Pie Charts

Pie charts (both 2D and 3D) are supported.

:: Basic Management Functions

Traceroute and Ping can be executed from a number of screens. More 
scripts can be added and configured. The scripts are executed on the 
single ZABBIX server or any ZABBIX node in the distributed setup.

:: More Efficient Communication with Agents

ZABBIX Agents support data buffering, which can be tuned by new 
configuration parameters, BufferSize and BufferSend. The communication 
protocol has been improved to support sending of multiple values by one 
TCP connection.

:: More Efficient ZABBIX Sender

ZABBIX Sender has been improved to support sending of multiple values by 
one network connection.

:: Improved View of Trigger Statuses

The screen will display information about triggers and associated events.

:: Support of SNMP Data with Dynamic Index

A new syntax can be used to monitor SNMP data with a dynamic index. See 
SNMP section for more details.

:: Special processing of well known SNMP OIDs

Simple SNMP OIDs, like ifDescr, ifInOctets, ifInOctets, and other can be 
used in ZABBIX and will be translated automatically into correct numeric 
representation by ZABBIX itself.

:: Added Printable View for All Screens

Any screen can be printed in a nice way by pressing the "Print" link.

:: Disabling of Login Rights for a Group of uUers

An entire user group can be configured not to have access to ZABBIX 
front-end.

:: Added Support of UTF-8

ZABBIX front-end is UTF-8 ready. Note that ZABBIX database and ZABBIX 
server and agent processes still are not ready for correct processing of 
UTF-8 data.

:: Added Screen for Better Management of Translations

The screen can be used to add new translations of ZABBIX front-end.

:: Added Maintenance Mode

ZABBIX Maintenance mode can be activated to temporary disable ZABBIX 
front-end.

:: Added maintenance mode

ZABBIX maintenance mode can be activated to disable ZABBIX front-end 
temporarily.

:: Unlimited Number of Map Link Styles

Any number of triggers can be linked to the map link. The style of these 
triggers will define how the link is displayed.

:: Improved User Permission Schema

In 1.6 user permissions slightly differ from permissions in 1.4.

:: Other Improvements

    * Queue moved into Administration
    * Link to Maps, Screens and Graphs moved to the Dashboard
    * Auto-login option
    * New communication protocol
    * Support of themes for ZABBIX front-end
    * User "guest" can be disabled
    * Disabling of a group of users
    * Database down screen
    * Duplicated Login removed
    * Added sorting for all screens
    * Better informative message
    * Support of import/export of the host template linkage information
    * Support of negative values in graphs
    * Support of directories in the parameter Include
    * Support of new macros
    * New after-login greeting message
    * Auto-discovery by ICMP ping
    * Increased number of log entries sent per second
    * Added mass-update functionality for hosts and triggers
    * Added full-screen icon
    * Active only mode for ZABBIX agent
    * Added monitoring of Proxy availability
    * Added protection against brute-force attacks
    * Improved event viewing
    * More accurate ICMP pings
    * Support of bulk acknowledgements
    * Added time filter to Availability Report
    * History of Actions moved under Administration
    * Required server performance value is available
    * Added support of auto-login
    * Automatic selection of the first element in drop-downs
    * Last access time is displayed for users
    * More flexible Status of Trigger screen
    * Extended host profiles
    * Plenty of other improvements

:: What's important

    * Empty passwords are no longer supported and replaced by password 
"zabbix"
    * User permissions schema differs from 1.4 for Admins and Super Admins

Installation and Upgrade Notes

Installation

See ZABBIX Manual for full details.

Upgrade

See ZABBIX Manual for a detailed upgrade procedure.

Pre-release testing

ZABBIX Server

ZABBIX Server has been tested on the following platforms:

    * Ubuntu Linux, AMD64, kernel 2.6.11, MySQL 4.x
    * Ubuntu Linux, Intel, kernel 2.6.15, MySQL 5.0.22

ZABBIX Agents

ZABBIX Agents have been compiled and tested on the following platforms:

    * AIX 5.2
    * FreeBSD 4.x, 5.x, 6.x
    * HP-UX 10.x, 11.x
    * Linux 2.4.x, 2.6.x
    * Linux CentOS
    * NetBSD 2.0
    * OS/X 10.2
    * Solaris 8, 9, 10
    * Tru64 5.1B
    * Windows XP, 2000, 2003, Vista

Note that agents are available pre-compiled from 
http://www.zabbix.com/download.php for a limited number of versions and 
platforms.

Commercial support

ZABBIX Company provides full range of professional services. Please 
contact our sales department for pricing and more details.

References

    * ZABBIX 1.6 Manual
    * ZABBIX Forums (http://www.zabbix.com/forum)
    * ZABBIX Support (http://www.zabbix.com/support.php)

Kind regards,
Alexei

-- 
Alexei Vladishev
ZABBIX Product Manager
Tel: +371 6 7473943
Fax: +371 6 7473944
Email: ale...@za...