Configuring agents to communicate through a forward proxy

If your firewall rules do not allow transparent outbound HTTPS connections to external hosts, you can configure IBM® monitoring agents to send traffic to a forward proxy. Edit the KDH_FORWARDPROXY environment variable to configure agents to communicate through the forward proxy.

About this task

When a forward proxy is used, the agent first opens a TCP connection with the proxy. The agent sends an HTTP CONNECT request and the target endpoint (Cloud APM server) URL to the forward proxy. Then, the forward proxy establishes a TCP connection with the target endpoint and sets up an HTTP or HTTPS tunneling session between the agent and the Cloud APM server.

The monitoring agent does not support authenticating proxies, which means the agent does not support logging on to a forward proxy by using a configured proxy user ID and password.

Complete these steps to configure agents to communicate through a forward proxy.

1. Open the agent environment configuration file in a text editor:

   install_dir/config/global.environment file, where install_dir is the installation home directory of the agents. The global.environment file configures all agents in the installation directory.

   The customized settings in the .global.environment file are lost after agent upgrade. To preserve your settings, make customization changes in the global.environment files. The settings in this file are not overwritten by agent upgrade.

   install_dir\TMAITM6_x64\KpcENV file for 64-bit agents, and install_dir\TMAITM6\KpcENV for 32-bit agents, where pc is the agent product code. Configure the KpcENV file for each agent.

   For a list of product codes, see Using agent commands.

2. Edit the KDH_FORWARDPROXY environment variable to specify the proxy address and port:

   KDH_FORWARDPROXY=http://proxy-address:proxy-port-number

   For example:

   KDH_FORWARDPROXY=http://HostA:8085

3. Restart the agent to implement your changes. See Using agent commands.