Foglight 6.0.0 - Administration and Configuration Guide

Configuring Foglight Agents for Host Monitoring

Foglight® agents collect data from monitored environments and send it to the Management Server. Each agent type can monitor a specific part of your environment, such as an operating system, application, or server. Foglight cartridges that you install on the server include one or more agent types. Foglight also includes internal agents that monitor Foglight components and services.

Foglight uses the Foglight Agent Manager to communicate with monitored hosts. A server installation includes an embedded Foglight Agent Manager. The embedded Agent Manager starts up and stops with the Foglight Management Server. This embedded instance can be used to monitor the host on which the Management Server is installed. To monitor additional hosts in your environment, most cartridges require an Agent Manager installation on each host computer.

After installing and enabling a cartridge, and downloading remaining cartridge components, deploy its agent package to each host running an Agent Manager that you want to monitor. After deployment, create an agent instance for each monitored host, edit the agent’s properties, and start its data collection. See the Installation and Setup Guide set for information on installing the Agent Manager on the hosts that you want to monitor.

There are two dashboards that allow you to deploy agent packages and create agent instances: Agent Status and Agent Managers. To access the Agent Managers dashboard, from the navigation panel, click Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Agent Managers.

To access the Agent Status dashboard, from the navigation panel, click Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Status.

For more information, see the following topics:

Editing Agent Properties by Type

When an agent connects to the Foglight® Management Server, it is provided with a set of properties that it uses to configure its correct running state. Foglight stores agent properties on the Management Server.

You can edit the properties of agent types (global properties), or the properties of individual agent instances (private properties). Typically, after creating an agent instance, before its activation, you edit the agent properties. This causes the agent property values to become private. Agent instances with private properties are not affected by any subsequent changes made to its global properties. Changes to global properties are only carried over to new agent instances that are created after those changes.

Another classification of agent properties refers to their format, complexity, and shareability. Primary properties are typically text, number, or Boolean values. These types of values are easily specified and changed. Secondary or shared properties are in list form and contain multiple values organized into rows and columns. They can be easily cloned and modified to suit the needs of individual agent instances. The difference between primary and secondary (shared) properties is that secondary properties can be shared amongst multiple agent instances, meaning that a list can be associated with multiple agent instances of the same type. However, any changes made to a shared list affect all of those agents.

Any passwords that are defined in agent properties are encrypted. This feature is useful in situations when a database password is defined in agent properties, and there are multiple databases in your environment, for example, a Foglight database and a production database. Encrypting database passwords prevents unauthorized database administrators from accessing the database.

Agent properties can be edited using the Agent Properties dashboard. You can use it to edit the properties globally, for all instances of the same type, or only for a specific agent instance. To access this dashboard, from the navigation panel, click Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Agent Properties, or select an agent instance on the Agent Status dashboard and click Edit Properties.

Moving FglAM agents

The Agent Status dashboard allows you to move the FglAM agents within various FglAM hosts, if needed. To access the Agent Status dashboard, from the navigation panel, click Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Status. For the detailed information about the Agent Status dashboard, see Explore the Agent Status dashboard .

To move an FglAM agent:

NOTE: The agent movement function is only applicable for the FglAM agent which type is one of the following: FileLogMonitorAgent, UnixAgentPlus, WindowsEventLogMonitorAgent, MultiHostProcessMonitorAgent, PowerVMHMCAgent, UnixAgent, and WindowsAgent.

2	Select an agent that you want to move from the agents list, and click the move icon .

NOTE: The target FglAM host must have the same lockbox as the source FglAM host. For more information, see Managing lockboxes.

Several Operating System (OS) and environment-specific issues, which include the following, may arise when moving an FglAM agent.

For more information, see the following topics:

Viewing Agent Adapters

Foglight uses agent adapters to communicate with agents that collect information from monitored hosts. The majority of Foglight agents use the Foglight Agent Manager (FglAM). There are some agents that use other types of agent adapters.

The Agent Adapters dashboard allows you to view information about agent adapters and to activate or deactivate them, if instructed by Quest Support. To access this dashboard, from the navigation panel, click Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Adapters.

For more information, see the following topics: