Table of Contents
5 What's new in Zabbix 7.4.0
See breaking changes for this version.
Managing history cache
In some data collection scenarios, specific items can temporarily block the server/proxy history cache. This may delay writing history data to the database and slow down the system. To help manage the history cache, the following improvements have been introduced:
- Manual cache clearing: The new history_cache_clear=target runtime command for Zabbix server/proxy allows you to manually clear the history cache for a specific item by its ID.
- Automatic cache clearing: When you disable an item, it is immediately removed from the history cache (except for its last value, which is kept for logs). Similarly, when you disable a host, all its items are removed from the history cache (except for their last values).
- Cache diagnostics logging: When the history cache is full, Zabbix server/proxy now logs history cache diagnostic information starting from DebugLevel=3 (previously DebugLevel=4). The log contains items with the most values in the history cache.
For long-term system stability, make sure that data collection is balanced with available resources (database performance, cache size, collection intervals, log item parameters, etc.). You can monitor Zabbix history cache using the zabbix[wcache] internal item. You can also consider increasing the size of the history cache for Zabbix server/proxy.
Widgets
Item history
- In the Item history widget the scrolling position will now be bottom if new values are configured to be positioned at the bottom. This is useful for reading the latest values of logs.
Items
ICMP ping item with retry option
A new icmppingretry[<target>,<retries>,<backoff>,<size>,<timeout>,<options>] simple check has been added for host accessibility monitoring by ICMP ping with the ability to modify retries.
Functions
Timestamp tracking
New history functions have been added for timestamp tracking:
firstclock- timestamp of the oldest value within the defined evaluation period;lastclock- timestamp of the Nth most recent value within the defined evaluation period;logtimestamp- log message timestamp of the Nth most recent log item value.
Macros
Item value time tracking
New macros have been added for item-value time tracking:
| Macro | Description |
|---|---|
| {ITEM.LASTVALUE.AGE} | The time that elapsed between the latest item value collection and macro evaluation. |
| {ITEM.LASTVALUE.DATE} | The date when the latest item value was collected. |
| {ITEM.LASTVALUE.TIME} | The time when the latest item value was collected. |
| {ITEM.LASTVALUE.TIMESTAMP} | The timestamp when the latest item value was collected. |
| {ITEM.VALUE.AGE} | The time that elapsed between the item value collection and macro evaluation. |
| {ITEM.VALUE.DATE} | The date when the item value was collected. |
| {ITEM.VALUE.TIME} | The time when the item value was collected. |
| {ITEM.VALUE.TIMESTAMP} | The timestamp when the item value was collected. |
Notifications
Separate menu section for user notifications
For better visibility of user media, user notifications now have their own menu section under User settings.
The new Notifications section contains two tabs - Media and Frontend notifications, which previously were part of the user profile section.
Processes
History syncer transaction statistics
The history syncer process title now displays detailed statistics about history syncer transactions for Zabbix server and proxy.
Security
Resolving secret vault macros by server/proxy independently
It is now possible to configure that secret vault macro values are retrieved by Zabbix server and Zabbix proxy independently.
Plugins
Custom query path configuration for loadable plugins
The Plugins.*.CustomQueriesPath parameter in Zabbix agent 2 plugin configuration files for MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL, as well as Plugins.MSSQL.CustomQueriesDir for MSSQL, now has a default value. This functionality is disabled by default and can be enabled using the newly introduced Plugins.*.CustomQueriesEnabled parameter.