Installing IBM Electronic Service Agent

You must install IBM® Electronic Service Agent to enable problem detection, reporting, and transmission of service information to the IBM Electronic Support website.

Before you begin

The IBM Electronic Service Agent is available in both RPM and Docker formats.
  • ESA as a container (in Docker or Podman) can be installed only on x86 systems.
  • ESA as a RPM can be installed on both Power Systems running Linux®, and x86 Systems.
Additionally, IBM Electronic Service Agent requires the following products:
  • IBM Java™
  • The open source Power® Linux diagnostics package ppc64-diag
  • Discovery of BMC devices is supported from ESA 4.3 and later versions. To discover BMC devices, it is mandatory to install IPMI tool (ipmitool 1.8.15 or later) on the ESA installed machine.

Uninstalling previous versions of IBM Electronic Service Agent

You must uninstall previous 1.x versions of IBM Electronic Service Agent before installing a new version. For the 2.x versions of IBM Electronic Service Agent, you can directly upgrade to IBM Electronic Service Agent 3.0 and later.

To determine whether a version of IBM Electronic Service Agent is already installed on a system, enter the following command: 
rpm -qa | grep -i esagent
  • If no information is returned, then IBM Electronic Service Agent is not installed.
  • If information is returned, then IBM Electronic Service Agent is installed and must be uninstalled before installing the new version.

    For information about uninstalling IBM Electronic Service Agent, see Uninstalling IBM Electronic Service Agent.

Upgrade IBM Electronic Service Agent

To upgrade to IBM Electronic Service Agent 4.0 and later versions, enter the command:
rpm -Uvh esagent.pLinux-<version>.ppc.rpm
For example, rpm -Uvh esagent.pLinux-4.9.0-0.ppc.rpm

About this task

IBM Electronic Service Agent3.0.0 and later is bi-endian, supporting both big-endian and little-endian modes. But from IBM Electronic Service Agent 4.0.0 and later, you can use the same IBIBM Electronic Service Agent package for both the modes. To install IBM Electronic Service Agent, go through the following sections.

Installing IBM Electronic Service Agent Container

Procedure

ESA as a container (in Docker / Podman) can be installed only on x86 systems. To download and install ESA on x86 systems, go through the following steps:

  1. Download ESA image from this link .
  2. Run the following commands: 
    gunzip esa-images-all-1.0.0.tar.gz
docker load < ibmjava-jre.tar.gz
docker load < ibmesabase-1.0.2.tar.gz
docker load < ibmesa-1.0.4.tar.gz
  3. Create a docker network using the following command: 
    docker network create -d bridge --subnet=<<subnetwork>> --gateway=<<gateway IP>><<name>>
    For example, 
    docker network create -d bridge --subnet=10.1.0.0/24 --gateway=10.1.0.1 esanet
  4. Pull the ESA container image and start the Docker container: 
    docker container run -itd --name=IBMESAContainer  --restart=unless-stopped --ip 10.1.0.23 --net 
esanet -p 5024:5024 -e HOST="HOST IP Address" docker.io/ibmcom/ibmesa:1.0.4_beta

Installing IBM Electronic Service Agent RPM

Procedure

ESA RPM can be installed on Power Systems and x86 systems. To download and install ESA RPM, go through the following steps:

  1. Download the respective ESA RPM from the ESA website https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/esa/us-en/downloads.
  2. Go to the directory that contains the IBM Electronic Service Agent RPM file.
  3. Use your normal installation process to install IBM Electronic Service Agent.
    The IBM Electronic Service Agent fileset name is
    • For IBM PowerLinuxesagent.pLinux-<version>.noarch.rpm where version, where version is the ESA version.
    • esagent.x86Linux-<version>.noarch.rpm where version, where version is the ESA version.
  4. Enter the RPM installation command: 
    rpm -ivh esagent.pLinux-4.5.9.noarch.rpm
    Tip: Both Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) provide utilities that simplify installation of a software package with prerequisites. For RHEL, the yum utility installs the prerequisites of a software package before attempting to install the package itself. For SLES, the zypper utility provides a similar capability. You can use yum or zypper utilities to install IBM Electronic Service Agent.

What to do next

When the installation is complete, you must activate and configure IBM Electronic Service Agent to enable it to report problems and transmit service information to the IBM Electronic Support website. For information, see Operating systems for IBM Electronic Service AgentActivating and configuring IBM Electronic Service Agent.