Install sfAgent on Linux

Overview

sfAgent is a lightweight agent installed on VMs to collect metrics, logs and tracing data.

Tested on

• Ubuntu 16 LTS, 18 LTS, 20 LTS
• Centos 7, 8
• RHEL 7, 8.5
• Linux SUSE

Pre-requisites

sfAgent requires certain pre-requisites for monitoring. Common pre-requisites are mentioned below. Further, all pre-requisites and configurations needed for monitoring a specific application are mentioned under Integrations section.

• For Linux OS monitoring, install iostat

  sudo apt-get install sysstat

  or

  sudo yum install sysstat 

  or

  sudo zypper install sysstat

• For JVM monitoring, install java headless service for jcmd & jmap command

  sudo apt-get install –y openjdk-12-jdk-headless

  or

  sudo yum -y install  java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel-1.8.0*

Installation

Run the following commands to install sfAgent on VMs:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/snappyflow/apm-agent/master/install.sh -O install.sh
chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh

info

sfAgent executes commands such as iostat or jcmd to fetch metrics. If the utilities are not included in the PATH variable or not installed in the default location, use -p or --include-paths to add PATH in sfAgent.

Example:

./install.sh -p /opt/jdk1.8.0_211/bin/

To install sfAgent on multiple end-points using Ansible playbook, refer the following script at https://github.com/snappyflow/ansible-role-apm-agent

Configuration

sfAgent can be either configured manually or automatically. In an automatic configuration step, sfAgent discovers services running in a VM and automatically generates a default configuration for monitoring the discovered services. User can further modify the configurations as needed. Check Configuration format for more details. Detailed configuration for a specific application types are present in Integrations section.

Follow the steps below for automatic discovery & configuration

• Run following commands to discover services and generate config:

  sudo su 
  cd /opt/sfagent 
  ./sfagent -generate-config 
  cp config-generated.yaml config.yaml

• Add the profile key and SnappyFlow tags in the configuration file (config.yaml).

  • Copy profile key from SnappyFlow and update key:

  • Set values for Name:, appName:, projectName: under tags: section. Name: is the host name and the projectName: and appName: are the project name and application name used on the Snappyflow portal.

  • Verify configuration and restart sfAgent

    ./sfagent -check-config 
    service sfagent restart 

note

sfAgent log file is present in the path /var/log/sfagent/sfagent.log.

Upgrade sfAgent on Linux

Run following commands to upgrade sfAgent:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/snappyflow/apm-agent/master/install.sh -O install.sh 
chmod +x install.sh 
sudo ./install.sh --upgrade 

sfAgent Configuration Format

sfAgent is configured through its config.yaml file. There are sections for metrics and logs where appropriate plugins with their configurations have to added to these sections. sfAgent config is expected in the following format:

key: <add profile key here> 
generate_name: true 
tags: 
  Name: <add name tag> 
  appName: <add application name tag> 
  projectName: <add project name tag> 
metrics: 
  plugins: 
    - name: <metric-plugin> 
      enabled: true 
      interval: <time in secs> 
logging: 
  plugins: 
    - name: <logger-plugin>
      enabled: true 
      config: 
        log_level: 
          - list
          - of
          - log
          - levels 
        log_path: <comma separated log paths> 

info

Uninstallation

Run the following commands to uninstall sfAgent on VMs:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/snappyflow/apm-agent/master/uninstall.sh -O uninstall.sh
chmod +x uninstall.sh
sudo ./uninstall.sh