Installing agents

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

Your 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 a Windows system, see Preinstallation on Windows 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 prerequisite tasks before you install the agents. For details, see Preinstallation on Windows systems.

Before you install the agents, you must 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

Ensure that you have adequate permission to run the agent installation script and agent commands. You must be logged in using one of the following user account types:
  • default Windows administrator user account
  • administrator user account
  • user account, which is a member of the administrators group
  • user account, which is registered as an administrator in Active Directory services

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

Complete these steps to install monitoring agents on VMs and systems where the Windows operating system is installed:

  1. On your system, navigate to the directory where your configured agent images are located.
  2. Extract the agent installation files for your offering (or offerings) to the location where you want to install the monitoring agent software.
    For a list of file names, see Part numbers.

    For more information, see Downloading from Passport Advantage

    The .bat 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.
  3. Open a command prompt as administrator.
    1. From the Start menu, type command in the search box.
    2. Right-click Command Prompt from the list that displays and select Run as administrator.
  4. From the command prompt, run the installation script with Administrator privileges from the directory that is named for the archive file and version: 
    cd offering_Agent_Install_version
installAPMAgents.bat
    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.
    Restriction: For the WebSphere® Applications agent, the Administrator privileges must be the same privileges that were used to install the WebSphere Application Server.
    To install the agents in silent mode, see Installing agents silently.
  5. If you are installing the agents, provide the name of the installation directory.
    The default installation path is C:\IBM\APM. The name of the installation directory cannot exceed 80 characters or contain non-ASCII, special, or double-byte characters. Directory names in the path can contain only the following characters: abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ _\:0123456789()~-./.
    Note:
    • When short file name creation (8dot3Name) is disabled, if directory names in the path contain spaces, installation is not supported.
    • If you want to install the WebLogic agent and JBoss agent on the same Windows machine, you need to use different installation directories for the WebLogic agent and JBoss agent.

    If you are upgrading the agent, this step is skipped, and the agent installs into the previous installation directory.

  6. 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.
  7. After installation is complete and the command prompt is available, repeat these steps to install more monitoring agents.

What to do next

Configure your agents as required. To check if your monitoring agent requires manual configuration, see Agent and data collector deployment. For configuration instructions, or, if you want to review default configuration settings, see Configuring your environment.

Before installing new agents, Windows Installer temporarily stops all agents currently running in the installed product location. After installation completes, the installer restarts any stopped agents. You must manually restart any monitoring agent that is not automatically started by the installer.

  • 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 you log in to the Cloud APM console. For information about those tasks, see Upgrading your agents.
Use one of the following methods to start the agent:
  • Click Start > All Programs > IBM Monitoring agents > IBM Cloud Application Performance Management. Right-click on an agent and click Start.
  • Run the following command
    name-agent.bat 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.