Tags on hosts would be invaluable, especially when drilling down through a huge list of hosts.
Currently we use host groups to categorise hosts but the result is a monstrous list of host groups which is near unusable and we can only filter by one host group at a time.

Using custom tags, we could filter based on whatever we want and use host groups for their intended purpose; simply delegating permissions. Tags would in turn be used for filtering and searching.

In my mind, if we could assign any tag we liked, I'd give each host a tag for operating system, OS version, physical/virtual state, dev/test/prod environment, hosted application, etc. Then I could filter the latest data screen for all 'physical', 'production' servers running 'centos' version '6'.

FYI, Tagging hosts is a very successful feature in both AWS and Azure.

Even better would be the ability to assign tags using item values (the same way we can populate inventory items) and to assign tags via host auto registration.

Moving from host groups to tags would be a huge usability improvement. This FR should have higher priority, right now Zabbix is lagging behind in host classification.

Trigger level tags implemented with ZBXNEXT-2087.

I am pretty sure host level tags are coming soon. Item level tags are coming as well, as a side effect they will replace applications as we know them.

Hey all! Please have a look at the attached acceptance criteria document that describes proposed enhancements for host and template level tags. It has all chances to be implemented in Zabbix 4.2.

Let me know what you think. Is there anything to improve? I appreciate any feedback.

Hi Alexei,
i have read the document and i think is a great improvement but do you think is possible to extend the tag usage also for Items? Because on most of our user cases that kind of approach (Item tags) could help and could provide a more granular information (Meta Information) during an event or to classify the metrics for a post analysis with third party software.
For example:

• Host with multiple Oracle instances (track a specific resource usage by Oracle SID)
• Network Switch: events and capacity by group of ports

Thanks very much

Item tags may possibly even replace Item applications.

We are replacing item applications by tags in Zabbix 5.4, stay tuned!

@Alexei very good news!

@Alexei Only today i re-read the Feature Spec and i have some question at this time (from last comment of 2018...).

Do you want use TAGS inside a Trigger formula? I ask that because could be a very nice feature to solve issue related to monitoring Cloud environment.

Usually the trigger is based on Items in my idea the Items could be replaced by their "tags"

For example: Item key: vfs.file.cksum[/etc/passwd]  - Tag: passwdcheck

Trigger Expression: {passwdcheck.diff()}>0 

In my idea if we use a Tag for a trigger we could have a single Trigger referred to all the Items that have the Tag "passwdcheck", so if we have one or more items (discovered items) we still use a single Trigger.

PS: I know you have already think about but i asked only to be sure

dimitri.bellini, selection of items by tags will be implemented for calculated items and trigger expressions under https://support.zabbix.com/browse/ZBXNEXT-6374. 

Ok understood! Thanks so much

Implemented in development branch feature/ZBXNEXT-2976-5.3.

Implemented in:

• 5.4.0rc1 (master) c655ede2616, 3ff70eca0f3

Is this change breaking the Zabbix data source in Grafana with 'Method not found. Incorrect API "application"'?

negrusti, it may break things because we do not support application anymore. I think this question should be addresses to the author of the Grafana's Zabbix plugin.

@alexei can you please correct the specification then:
https://www.zabbix.com/documentation/5.4/manual/api/reference/application
as the other developers can't obviously fix anything without it

negrusti, documentation be be adjusted soon, the work on Zabbix 5.4 is still in progress.

@Alexei Vladishev how can we help? This broke the setups of many people without reasonable options for rollback. Is there any API document for Tags that we can use?

negrusti, there is nothing you can help, just wait for this feature to be documented. It will happen before release of Zabbix 5.4. I do not think that it is a good idea to rely on release candidates or beta software for any serious use.

Hi,

I encountered this behavior today when my automatic zabbix upgraded kicked in for 5.4.x.  All my zabbix-grafana integrated dashboards are broken now.

Please share any documentation for people who care. 

There are now many many people who will come and complain. You Zabbix should consider Grafana as huge market here.

I'm quite disappointed here. 

Did I read it right?you released (docker hubs now having latest at 5.4.0) undocumented feature which removes backward's compatibility ?! shame.

@Alexei Vladishev
For us this is also a mean disaster, all dashboards with the zabbix plugin can no longer be used.
I also disappointed with such poor communication with the community and plugin developers.
We very much hope that there will be a solution here soon.

PS: Thanks for zabbix which we have been using since version 1.7.

gorciuch , StefanSa As far as I am aware all API changes are documented and the release notes contains a link to the API changes. Probably we should wait developers of 3rd party apps to catch up. What else we could do?

@Alexei Vladishev

In the case of such important changes, it would be helpful to point them out "more clearly", as the example of Elasticsearch shows.

StefanSa, I agree, we should better emphasise breaking changes. It should be part of release notes and probably also what's new section on our web site.

What else we could do?

1. You should stick to Zabbix API feature removal policy:

   When making backward incompatible changes between major releases, we usually leave the old features as deprecated in the next release, and only remove them in the release after that.

2. When

   Occasionally, we may remove features between major releases without providing any backward compatibility.

   you should notify third party developers in advance, at least those who maintain projects that have substantial amount of stars on GitHub. (Fun fact: Grafana Zabbix plugin has more than Zabbix itself )

Updated API documentation:

API objects updated:

• Action object
• Audit log object
• Item object
• Item prototype object
• Map object
• Web scenario object

API methods updated:

• configuration.export
• configuration.import
• event.get
• host.get
• item.create
• item.get
• item.update
• itemprototype.create
• itemprototype.get
• itemprototype.update
• discoveryrule.get
• map.get
• map.create
• problem.get
• template.get
• trigger.get
• triggerprototype.get
• hostgroup.get
• httptest.update
• httptest.create
• httptest.get

Other changes:

• Changes from 5.2 to 5.4
• Method reference

Grafana users, looks like you're saved: https://mobile.twitter.com/alexanderzobnin/status/1394669353061265409?s=19

Updated general documentation:

• Item configuration
• Items, Template items
• Item mass update
• LLD discovery overrides
• LLD macros, supported locations
• Hosts, templates
• Map export tags
• Host export format
• Template export format
• Web scenario configuration
• Web scenarios, Template web scenarios
• Web monitoring items
• Adding map elements
• Problem filter
• Latest data
• Trigger/data overview
• Data overview widget
• Trigger overview widget
• Web monitoring widget
• Action conditions
• Global search results
• Host inventory details
• Tagging
• What's new
• Upgrade notes
• New item
• Screenshots in multiple sections was updated