Visualizing Zabbix Metrics with Grafana (Part 1) — Installation and Getting Started Guide on Ubuntu

📘 Overview

By collecting data with Zabbix and visualizing it through Grafana, operators can build dashboards that show the meaning behind metrics, not just plain monitoring screens.

This series focuses on practical Zabbix–Grafana integration.
Part 1 covers installation and initial configuration of Grafana 12.2.1 on Ubuntu 22.04.

The guide is based on official documentation but trimmed down to the minimum commands and verification steps actually required in real-world environments.
While installation steps may look similar to many reference sites, later parts of this series will offer content that’s genuinely useful for production engineers.

1. Installing and Starting Grafana

1.1 Install Required Packages

Before installing Grafana, install the essential utilities for accessing HTTPS repositories:

# apt-get install -y apt-transport-https software-properties-common wget

1.2 Register the GPG Key

Add Grafana’s official GPG key to verify package authenticity:

# mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings/
# wget -q -O - https://apt.grafana.com/gpg.key | gpg --dearmor | tee /etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg > /dev/null

1.3 Add the Repository (Choose Stable or Beta)

Apply only one of the following.
Use stable for production environments, or beta for testing the latest features.

Stable version:

# echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg] https://apt.grafana.com stable main" \
| tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

Beta version:

# echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/grafana.gpg] https://apt.grafana.com beta main" \
| tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list

1.4 Update Package Lists

# apt-get update

1.5 Install Grafana

# apt-get install grafana

1.6 Start Grafana Service and Enable Auto-Start

Start the service immediately and register it to start on boot:

# systemctl enable --now grafana-server

1.7 Check Service Status

# systemctl status grafana-server

Expected output example:

● grafana-server.service - Grafana instance
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/grafana-server.service; enabled)
     Active: active (running) since ...

If you see active (running), the installation was successful.

2. Logging in to Grafana

Open your browser and access:

http://<server_IP>:3000

Default credentials:

• Username: admin
• Password: admin

After the first login, you’ll be prompted to change the password → enter a new one → Submit.

⚠️ Security note: Change the admin password immediately.
For production environments, consider integrating LDAP or SSO instead of using local accounts.

3. Verifying Operation and Environment

4. Coming Next

In the next part, we’ll install the Zabbix integration plugin
alexanderzobnin-zabbix-app and connect Grafana to the Zabbix API
to start importing real monitoring data.

🛠 마지막 수정일: 2025.11.08