Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zabbix.list and paste the following lines

deb http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/2.2/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
deb-src http://repo.zabbix.com/zabbix/2.2/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

Then add the gpg key

gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv D13D58E479EA5ED4
gpg --export --armor D13D58E479EA5ED4 | sudo apt-key add -

and update the apt package list with

apt-get update

Install the Zabbix server (if mysql has not been installed before, please note down the root password!)

apt-get install mysql-server zabbix-server-mysql zabbix-release

If everything went well, we can also add the Zabbix Web UI (not needed but really, really useful) with

apt-get install zabbix-frontend-php

Now edit /etc/apache2/conf.d/zabbix, uncomment the date.timezone line and set the correct timezone. Mine looks like

  php_value date.timezone Europe/Rome

Finally, restart apache2 service with

service apache2 restart

and point your browser to http://my-zabbix-server/zabbix

Complete the initial setup and then login using username Admin (case sensitive!) with password zabbix to connect as Zabbix superuser.

If you plan to monitor devices and computers via SNMP, install a few additional packages

apt-get install snmp snmp-mibs-downloader libsnmp-mib-compiler-perl libsnmp-base

Then update MIBs with

download-mibs

And add

mibs +ALL

to /etc/snmp/snmp.conf

When using net-snmp tools (for example with the tool snmpwalk), Debian / Ubuntu users often get errors like

Bad operator (INTEGER): At line 73 in /usr/share/mibs/ietf/SNMPv2-PDU
Undefined OBJECT-GROUP (diffServMIBMultiFieldClfrGroup): At line 2195 in /usr/share/mibs/ietf/IPSEC-SPD-MIB
Undefined OBJECT-GROUP (diffServMultiFieldClfrNextFree): At line 2157 in /usr/share/mibs/ietf/IPSEC-SPD-MIB
Undefined OBJECT-GROUP (diffServMIBMultiFieldClfrGroup): At line 2062 in /usr/share/mibs/ietf/IPSEC-SPD-MIB
Unlinked OID in IPATM-IPMC-MIB: marsMIB ::= { mib-2 57 }
Undefined identifier: mib-2 near line 18 of /usr/share/mibs/ietf/IPATM-IPMC-MIB
...

If you are getting these messages, follow the instructions posted in this page to solve the issue.

Finally, you can add the agent in this host to monitor the status of the zabbix server with zabbix

apt-get install zabbix-agent