Zabbix Windows and Linux agent installation

In previous posts we saw how to install Zabbix latest version, this time I am going to explain how to install the Zabbix agents on both Windows and Linux so that they send the information to the server.

Step by step tutorial with images

Windows agent installation

First of all, we will go to the official Zabbix website to download the agent.

Once downloaded, the installation is simple since we will do it through an assistant.

We press Next .

We accept the license and press Next .

On this screen we will have to specify the IP address of the Zabbix server both in the “Zabbix server IP/DNS” field and in the “Server or Proxy for active checks” field .

The rest of the parameters are left by default.

Parameter	Description
Host name	Specify host name.
Zabbix server IP/DNS	Specify IP/DNS of Zabbix server.
Agent listen port	Specify agent listen port (10050 by default).
Server or Proxy for active checks	Specify IP/DNS of Zabbix server/proxy for active agent checks.
Remote commands	Mark the checkbox to enable remote commands.
Enable PSK	Mark the checkbox to enable TLS support via pre-shared keys.
Add agent location to the PATH	Add agent location to the PATH variable.

We install all the features.

Click Install to start the installation process.

And ready we have the agent installed.

Once the installation of the agent is finished, we will have to open port 10050/tcp to allow incoming connections in the Firewall that we have enabled on our Windows platform.

Linux agent installation

Installation Ubuntu 20.04

wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/ubuntu/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_5.2-1+ubuntu20.04_all.deb
dpkg -i zabbix-release_5.2-1+ubuntu20.04_all.deb
apt update
apt install zabbix-agent

Installation Centos 8

rpm -Uvh https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/rhel/8/x86_64/zabbix-release-5.2-1.el8.noarch.rpm
dnf clean all
dnf install zabbix-agent
Installation Debian 10
wget https://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/5.2/debian/pool/main/z/zabbix-release/zabbix-release_5.2-1+debian10_all.deb
dpkg -i zabbix-release_5.2-1+debian10_all.deb
apt update
apt install zabbix-agent

Agent Configuration

Once installed we must configure the agent, for this we will have to open the agent configuration file using our favorite editor, in my case I will use nano.

sudo nano /etc/zabbix/zabbix_agentd.conf

We indicate the IP address of our Zabbix server and save the changes.

Server=10.200.10.11
ServerActive=10.200.10.11

We restart the agent for the changes to take effect and configure it to start at the same time as the operating system boots.

sudo systemctl restart zabbix-agent 
sudo systemctl enable zabbix-agent

Finally we will have to allow incoming traffic to port 10050/tcp in our firewall so that our server can contact the agent.

Note: These instructions are for opening the Firewall on CentOS, if you have a different distribution you should proceed accordingly to open the ports.

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=10050/tcp
firewall-cmd --reload

And ready we will have the agent installed in our Linux distribution.

Add the host to the Zabbix monitoring system

Once we have installed the agent on our client computer we have to add it to Zabbix, for this we access Zabbix via the web and go to Configuration-Hosts .

At the top right, click on the Create Host button .

In the Host tab we fill in the following information:

Host name: name of the host.
Groups: Here we will select one of the groups that we have created.
Interfaces: Click on Add , select Agent and specify the IP address of our client as shown in the image. Also, if you prefer, we can specify the DNS name of the client.

In the Templates tab we select, within Templates/Operating Systems, Template OS Linux by zabbix agent or Template OS Windows by Zabbix agent depending on whether the client we are configuring has a Windows or Linux operating system.

Click on Add to add our host.

And that's it, after a few minutes it will begin to obtain information from the client such as CPU usage, memory, disk space and much more information that will help us to have our system in perfect condition.