Installing agents

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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.

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

Before you begin

Download the agents. See Download instructions.

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.

Before you install the agents, be sure to configure the agent images with the connection details for the Cloud APM server. If you downloaded the agent installation images to the same directory as the server installation image, the agent installation images are configured automatically. Otherwise, follow the procedure in Configuring the downloaded images.

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

Navigate to the directory where your configured agent images or extension packs are located.
Make sure that the directory containing your agent images does not contain an older version of the archive file.
Extract the monitoring agent 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. For a list of file names, see Part numbers.
For more information, see Downloading from Passport Advantage.

The installation script is extracted to a directory named for the archive file and version. For example: offering_Agent_Install_8.1.4. 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.
The installer checks that the agent images were configured with parameters for connecting to the Cloud APM server. If the agents images were not configured, the installation is stopped. You must configure the agent images (Configuring the downloaded images) and start the agent installation procedure from step 1.
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.
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 a firewall is enabled, ensure that the ports that are used by the monitoring agent are open and available. For more information, see Cloud APM server ports.
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.