Installing and Configuring Foglight for AWS Host agents (4369835)

Installing and Configuring Foglight for AWS Host agents

What are the installation instructions for Foglight for AWS host agents?

Installation instructions for Foglight for AWS Hosts are detailed in the following sections and should be performed in order

AWS Pre-Configuration

Monitoring of AWS hosts requires the agent to be provided with an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user. That user should have sufficient privileges to access instance metadata as well as access to metrics through CloudWatch. The following is a brief list of steps on how to do this. Skip any steps in user or RDS configuration that were previously completed. For additional information, refer to the complete AWS IAM Documentation and RDS Documentation .

IAM User Setup

1. Using the IAM service, create an IAM user
2. Create a name for the user and select the "Programmatic Access Option" (uses access ID and secret access key). Save these keys as they are used later for configuring the agent.
3. When configuring permissions, select the "Attach existing policies directly" option and search for and add the following permissions:
   1. CloudWatchReadOnlyAccess
   2. AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess
   3. AmazonRDSReadOnlyAccess
4. Finish creating or modifying the user

RDS Enhanced Monitoring Configuration

Enhanced monitoring is supported for all RDS database types except for SQL Server. AWS MS-SQL will be supported in an upcoming release. Enabling enhanced monitoring will allow the collection of more detailed metrics for CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk utilization and tasks and processes. The agent will automatically detect whether enhanced monitoring is enabled for a database, though an agent restart may be necessary if enhanced monitoring is enabled while the agent is running.

1. Create or modify an RDS instance
2. In the Additional Configuration > Monitoring section, check the "Enable Enhanced monitoring" box
3. For the Monitoring Role dropdown, select either an IAM role that has the AmazonRDSEnhancedMonitoringRole permission or "default," in which case AWS will automatically create rds-monitoring-role and assign it to the database. This role allows the DB instance to publish metrics to the CloudWatch Logs service and can be used for all instances where enhanced monitoring is enabled

Cartridge Installation

1. Open the Foglight Web Console.
2. From the navigation pane, select: Administration > Cartridges > Cartridge Inventory. The Cartridge Inventory screen appears.

For more information on agents, see the Foglight User Guide.
3. Load the AWSHostsAgent-x_x_xx.car file by browsing to the location where the .car file exists and then clicking on "Install Cartridge." Leave the "Enable on Install" check box checked.
4. Once the installation is complete on the Foglight Management Server, the AWSHostsAgent Cartridge will appear in this list below as an installed cartridge.

Creating and Configuring Agents

Using the Agent Status Dashboard

The Agent Status page can be used to create new agents and configure and manage existing agents. To access the page from the navigation pane, select: Dashboards > Administration > Agents > Agent Status.

Use the following steps to create a new agent instance:

1. If the AWSHosts agent package was not previously deployed to the FglAM hosting the agent, it must be done before an agent has been created, or it will be performed automatically when the first agent is created on that FglAM. You can use the Deploy Agent Package button on the Agent Status or Agent Managers page to perform this.

   

2. Click the Create Agent button

   

   and follow the instructions for the cards:
   1. Host Selector - Choose the Agent Manager on which the agent should run. Considerations for this may include physical or virtual locality to the monitored instance, allocated resources, or grouping with other agents of the same type or monitored environment.
   2. Agent Type and Instance Name – Select the AWSHostsAgent type. Then, select the Specify Name radio button and provide a name for the agent that will be created. This is not canonical and should be representative of the database instance that this agent will monitor.
   3. Summary – Click Finish.
3. Once the agent has been created, click the checkbox next to the AWS Hosts agent.
4. Click the Edit Properties button.
5. Select Modify the default properties for this agent.
6. Edit the agent properties for the AWS Hosts agent instance as described in Knowledge base article 4369836
7. Click the Activate button.

To modify the properties for an existing agent, skip to step 3 and Deactivate, then Reactivate the agents after changing the configuration