The official release of Zabbix 5.0 was actually released on 2020.05.12. It has a series of important improvements in usability, security and integrity!

Before browsing the new features of Zabbix 5.0, let's take a look at the release cycle and history of Zabbix products.

Zabbix product release cycle

In order to ensure that Zabbix provides its users and customers with products that meet the expected quality and planned support, each new Zabbix software release follows the standards of product cycle and expiration time. For Zabbix end users, Zabbix's product cycle makes the content of the new version more predictable and manageable.

Since the first release of Zabbix software in 2001, a new stable version is released once every half year. For all stable versions, Zabbix customers will receive five years of service and support. You can check the current Zabbix version support services and their time limit:

Existing Zabbix version

Comprehensive support services include repairing some basic, urgent and safety issues;
The minimum support service only includes the repair of urgent and security issues. Zabbix does not guarantee any source code repair for any old version and unstable version.

Zabbix version release plan

Our current release schedule is six months, and a new stable version of Zabbix will be released every six months.

Zabbix release frequency list

Zabbix will release every year and a half:

"Zabbix LTS (long-term support version) is released.". The Zabbix LTS version provides support services for Zabbix users within five years, including three years of comprehensive support (basic, emergency and security issues) and two years Minimal support (only for urgent and safety issues). The release of Zabbix LTS version will be reflected in the change of the first digit of the version number.
**"The Zabbix standard version is released." ** The Zabbix standard version will provide support services for Zabbix users within six months of full support (basic, emergency and security issues) until the next stable version of Zabbix is released, and then Add one month of additional minimum support (only for emergency and safety issues). The Zabbix standard version will cause the second version number to change.

❝When the life cycle of any Zabbix version expires, Zabbix will stop further maintenance updates, including blocker and serious bug fixes. Therefore, we strongly recommend that you upgrade the Zabbix monitoring solution to the latest version.
❞

Life cycle of Zabbix standard version

Life cycle of Zabbix LTS (long-term support version)

Zabbix's upcoming new version life cycle

Below you will find an overview of the life cycle of the planned stable version of Zabbix. Please note that all the mentioned life cycles are estimates, so their timing may be adjusted.

About Zabbix LTS

LTS stands for Long Term Support Version. The Zabbix LTS version is released once every half year and provides five years of support services for Zabbix customers

3 Years of comprehensive support-support to repair basic, urgent and safety issues
2 Years of minimum support-only support to fix urgent and safety issues

The Zabbix LTS (long-term support) version does not have any additional or hidden consumption costs. Zabbix is a 100% open source software, everyone can download and use.

Zabbix LTS features:

The support period is longer, for example: iterative updates for potential security issues and bugs
Expected high-quality updates and new features
Fast update, suitable for changing and complex environment
In terms of version upgrades, it is easier to plan and manage

New features of Zabbix 5.0 LTS

1、 Supports installation on more operating systems

In addition to the existing official software packages and appliances, Zabbix 5.0 now supports the following platforms:

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15
Debian 10
Ubuntu 20.04
Raspbian 10
Mac OS/X
RHEL 8
CentOS 8
MSI for Windows Agent

Zabbix 5.0 download experience address: https://www.zabbix.com/cn/download

2、 Support integration with more cloud vendors

Zabbix provides a set of integrations with industry standard cloud service providers out of the box:

AWS
Azure
Google Cloud Platform
Digital Ocean
Docker
IBM/RedHat Cloud
Oracle Cloud

Zabbix Cloud Images:

3、 Support single sign-on based on SAML authentication

SAML is used to provide single-point authentication at the security identity provider, which means that user login authentication needs to meet the security policy of the firewall, and then SAML is used to declare the identity to Zabbix and other applications. SAML support enables Zabbix to integrate with various local and cloud identity providers (such as Microsoft ADFS, OpenAM, Secureath, Okta, Auth0, etc.) out of the box.

4、 Monitoring is more secure and reliable

Zabbix 5.0 has made significant improvements for safer monitoring:

HTTP proxy supporting Webhook makes the connection from Zabbix server to external alarm and ITSM system more secure and controllable
Monitoring indicators on the agent side support blacklist and whitelist
All Zabbix components can be configured with passwords to avoid using insecure passwords in TLS connections
Support encrypted connection to MySQL and PostgreSQL backend
A stronger SHA256 is used to save the hash value of the user password

5、 Confidential information is more secure

Zabbix 5.0 supports more secret user macros, which are used to store any sensitive information, such as passwords and API tokens that you do not want to disclose to end users.

6、 Performance and scalability improvements

Zabbix 5.0 supports optional compression of data collected by TimescaleDB. In addition to the general advantages of TimescaleDB (automatic table partitioning, high performance, and scalability), it also helps to further improve performance and reduce storage costs.

The Zabbix user interface has also been improved to support monitoring and management of millions of monitored devices.

7、 Agent developed by a new generation of Golang

The new generation of agent provides a series of new functions and advanced monitoring functions for Linux and Windows:

Written in Golang
Plug-in framework for monitoring various services and applications
Maintain the current state while performing monitoring checks (for example, maintain a persistent database connection)
Support trapping
Built-in scheduler, support flexible time interval
Use bulk data transfer for efficient network usage
Support continuous storage of collected data
Directly replace the existing agent on Linux and Windows

❝**「Tips:」** Existing Zabbix still supports!
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8、 It's easier to use and manage

Zabbix 5.0 has a lot of usability and automation improvements, these improvements really help:

The same event supports multiple threads to generate email notifications
New preprocessing function Replace (Replace), new operator of JSONPath
Function to cancel confirmed events
Support the creation of notification message templates for alarm media to achieve rapid and direct configuration of alarm notifications
CCLI tool, support testing JavaScript-based preprocessing and WebHooks
Ability to test new and existing indicators from the user interface
Support batch update of user macros
Move SNMP settings to host-level interface to achieve more simple templates and easier management
Use the nodata() function to monitor the availability of hosts and indicators to focus on the availability of proxy

9、 Monitoring is more flexible

Zabbix 5.0 has extended functions to make it more flexible:

Triggers support text data operations
Host macro supporting host prototype
Support Float64 data type
Support for covering low-level discovery (LLD) helps create smarter templates

10、 Enhanced automatic discovery function

Automation is an important part of Zabbix. Zabbix 5.0 strengthens this function through the following support:

Discover Windows performance counters
Discover JMX counter
Better ODBC monitoring, able to configure all options individually for each indicator

11、 Advanced visualization

Presenting the data in a readable way is essential to the operation. Zabbix 5.0 improves the following contents to achieve better results:

New layout of Zabbix user interface optimized for widescreen
Display a new view of the monitoring device list (monitoring -> host), with advanced filtering functions
Support for certain dashboard widgets to filter by event tag
Ability to copy dashboard graphics as pictures
Support UI modules to extend Zabbix functions
Thanks to the ability to copy widgets, dashboards can be created faster
Improved the consistency of Map tags

12、 Embedded integration with ITSM system

Zabbix 5.0 improves a series of new out-of-the-box integration solutions to achieve integration with ITSM systems based on industry standards (either cloud or local).

The official webhook coding guidelines [https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/guidelines/webhooks] were introduced to set standards and simplify the creation of webhook-based integrations.

More integration with ITSM system: integration.

13、 Embedded integration with alarm system

Zabbix 5.0 has improved a series of out-of-the-box integration solutions to achieve integration with alarm and notification systems based on industry standards:

More integration with the alarm system: integration.

14、 Added and upgraded some templates and plugins

Most of the existing templates have been updated, and new templates and plug-ins have been improved to monitor different services, applications and devices.

Now, most of the templates make use of intelligent automatic discovery of various resources.

More templates and plugins: integration.

More new and improved features of Zabbix 5.0 LTS

Increase the size of the confirmation message from 255 characters to 4096 characters
Added support for LIBSSH to support new platforms like RHEL 8
Support ElasticSearch 7.x (7.4, 7.6)
Display the latest data for unfiltered data
Increase the time accuracy of zabbix_sender to nanoseconds
Monitoring -> latest data: if the filter is empty, the data will be displayed
Use new functions atob() and btoa() for Base64 processing in JavaScript
Will not log system.run[] locally
Increase the size of the monitored item key value from 255 characters to 2048 characters
Ability to refresh SNMP cache, SNMPv3 context changes
Faster internal hash function operation
Documented how to filter vmware.event monitoring
Improved the consistency of Map tags
Support the filtering of individual level problems in Monitoring->Problems
Ability to use user macros for IPMI username and password
Remotely monitor the version of Zabbix components
Added filtering function for discovery rules
New API method to get auditlog data

Say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, build better products faster

Internet Explorer 11 is not supported
No longer supports IBM DB2
mbedTLS (formerly polarSSL) no longer supports encryption. Only OpenSSL and GnuTSL libraries
The minimum version supported by PHP is now 7.2: safer and stricter code

there are more! For a more complete list of new features, please check the release notes, refer to Zabbix 5.0 Manual for Zabbix 5.0 Manual.

List of new features of Zabbix 5.0 LTS