Installing agents

You can install any combination of monitoring agents on a managed system. For example, if you install the Ruby agent to monitor Ruby On Rails applications, you might want to also install the Response Time Monitoring Agent, the Linux® OS agent, or both agents. With the Response Time Monitoring agent, you can gather more response time information for your Ruby applications. With the Linux OS agent, you can monitor other aspects of the system, such as the overall CPU, memory, and disk.

The offering determines which monitoring agents are available for installation. For a list of the agents included in each offering, see Capabilities.

For a list of the agents that run on Linux systems, see Installing agents on Linux systems.

Before you begin

Download the agents. See Downloading your agents and data collectors.

Review the information in System requirements to make sure that you have met the requirements for the agents you plan to install.

Review the agent preinstallation tasks before you install the agents. For details, see Preinstallation on Linux systems.

Note: Java™ Runtime is installed only when the agent requires it and is not always available. Also, ksh is no longer required for agent installation, except for installation of the Summarization and Pruning agent, which is installed during Cloud APM server installation. SELinux in enforcing mode is supported.

About this task

You can install monitoring agents as a root user or non-root user. If you do not have root privileges and you want to install a monitoring agent, you can install the agent as a non-root user, see Installing agents as a non-root user. Also, you can install the agent as a non-root user if you are a host administrator and you do not want to run the monitoring agent as a root user. Installation flow is the same as for a root user.

Agent coexistence is supported. You can install IBM Cloud Application Performance Management agents on the same computer where IBM Tivoli® Monitoring agents are installed. However, both agent types cannot be installed in the same directory. For more information about agent coexistence see Cloud APM agent and Tivoli Monitoring agent coexistence.

Procedure

Open a terminal shell session on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux system.
On your system, navigate to the directory where you downloaded the .tar file

The agents must be installed on the system where the application that you want to monitor is installed. If needed, transfer the installation archive file to the system to be monitored. The archive file contains the agents and installation script.

Remember: Make sure that the directory does not contain an older version of the archive file.
Extract the installation files by using the following commands, which depend on your offering:
```
tar -xf ./installation files.tar
```
where installation files is the installation file name for your offering.

The installation script is extracted to a directory named for the archive file and version. For example: offering_Agent_Install_8.1.4.0. Agent binary and configuration-related files are extracted into subdirectories within that directory.
Run the installation script from the directory that is named for the archive file and version:
```
./installAPMAgents.sh
```
To install the agents in silent mode, see Installing agents silently.
Specify whether to install individual agents, a combination of the agents, or all of the agents.
Depending on whether you are installing or upgrading the agents, take one of the following steps:
- If you are installing the agents, specify a different agent installation home directory or use the applicable default directory:
  - /opt/ibm/apm/agent
- If you are upgrading the agents, after you are prompted for the agent installation home directory, enter the installation directory of the previous version of the agents.
  1. If an older version of the agents exists in the /opt/ibm/apm/agent directory, you must specify a new installation directory. In the next step, you are asked if you want to migrate agent configuration from the /opt/ibm/apm/agent directory.
  2. If you confirm that you want to migrate the agent configuration from the old installation directory (/opt/ibm/ccm/agent) to the new installation directory, for example, /opt/ibm/apm/agent, you must start the agent in the new installation location.
    Restriction: The older version of the agent is stopped automatically in the old installation location, but it is not started automatically in the new installation location.
  3. After installation is complete and you verify that the agent works in the new installation directory, you must uninstall the older version of the agent from the /opt/ibm/ccm/agent directory. If you want to remove all agents, run the /opt/ibm/ccm/agent/bin/smai-agent.sh uninstall_all command.
When you are asked if you accept the license agreement, enter 1 to accept the agreement and continue, or enter 2 to decline.
After you enter 1 (accept), a prerequisite scan of your environment starts and takes a few moments to complete. If any requirements are missing, a message directs you to a log file with the reason for the failure. A missing prerequisite, such as a missing library or insufficient disk space, stops the installation. You must address the failure, and start the installation script again.
Note: If the installation exits with the following message, check whether the Server service is started (Start -> Administrative Tools -> Services). If not, start the Server service and run installAPMAgents.bat again.
```
This script [installAPMAgents.bat] must be run as Administrator.
```
If you installed the agents by using a non-root user ID, you must update the system startup scripts (see Installing agents as a non-root user).
After installation is complete and the command line is available, you can repeat the steps in this procedure to install more monitoring agents on the managed system.

What to do next

Configure the agent as required. If your monitoring agent requires configuration as described in Agent and data collector deployment or if you want to review the default settings, see Configuring your environment.

If you are using a forward proxy because your firewall does not allow transparent outbound HTTPS connections to external hosts, you must edit the agent environment configuration file. For instructions, see Configuring agents to communicate through a forward proxy.
If you upgraded an agent from a previous version, identify any reconfiguration or migration tasks that you must complete before logging in to the Cloud APM console. For information about those tasks, see Upgrading your agents. After an upgrade, you must restart any agent that is not both automatically configured and started by the installer.

To start an agent, run the following command:

./name-agent.sh start

For information about the monitoring agent commands, including the name to use, see Using agent commands. For information about which agents are started automatically and manually, see Agent and data collector deployment.

After an upgrade, you must restart any agent that is not both automatically configured and started by the installer.

After you configure and start the agent, view the data that the agent is collecting.

If you are not logged in, follow the instructions in Starting the Cloud APM console.
If you want to view managed systems from your IBM Tivoli Monitoring domain in the Application Performance Dashboard, complete the tasks that are described in Integrating with IBM Tivoli Monitoring V6.3.
Restart the apmui service on the Cloud APM server so that agent online help updates are displayed in the Cloud APM console. The apmui service is restarted by using the apm restart apmui command.