Foglight 5.9.1 - Administration and Configuration Guide

Agent Status and Agent Managers

Foglight cartridges use agents to collect information from monitored hosts. Agents communicate with the Foglight Management Server using the Foglight Agent Manager. When you install a cartridge on the Foglight Management Server, the cartridge installation process makes its agent packages available for deployment. You can only deploy those agent packages whose cartridges are already installed on the Foglight Management Server and on which the Foglight Agent Manager is installed and running.

IMPORTANT: Any agent packages that you deploy must be compatible with the host’s platform. Failing to do so can cause existing agents to be deleted, if they were previously deployed to the host, and as such can lead to unpredictable results.

Use the Agent Managers dashboard to deploy one agent package at a time, or to deploy the agent package to multiple hosts. You can also deploy agent packages to a single host from the Agent Status page.

Alternatively, use the agent:deploy command to deploy agent packages from the command line. For complete information about this and other fglcmd commands, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

NOTE: In order to select the host, the Foglight Agent Manager must be up and running on the monitored host.

NOTE: You can only deploy those agent packages whose cartridges have already been installed on the Foglight Management Server.

IMPORTANT: Do not deploy any agent packages that are not compatible with the host’s platform. Deploying incompatible agent packages on top of existing compatible agent packages deletes the existing agents which can cause unpredictable results.

NOTE: In order to select the host, the Foglight Agent Manager must be up and running on the monitored host.

NOTE: You can only deploy those agent packages whose cartridges have already been installed on the Foglight Management Server.

IMPORTANT: Do not deploy any agent packages that are not compatible with the host’s platform. Deploying incompatible agent packages on top of existing compatible agent packages deletes the existing agents which can cause unpredictable results.

 

IMPORTANT: Do not deploy any agent packages that are not compatible with the host’s platform. Deploying incompatible agent packages on top of existing compatible agent packages deletes the existing agents which can cause unpredictable results.

NOTE: You can only deploy those agent packages whose cartridges have already been installed on the Foglight Management Server.

After a successful agent package deployment, you can proceed to create agent instances using the agent types included in the newly-deployed agent package. For more information, see Create agent instances on monitored hosts.

You can remove (undeploy) an agent package from a monitored host using the Undeploy agent package option on the Agent Managers dashboard.

The Foglight Agent Manager collects information from the agents monitoring hosts and relays it to the Management Server. In some instances, such as making a change to the Agent Manager configuration, you may need to restart the Agent Manager. You can do so from the Agent Managers dashboard.

Remote updates of the Agent Manager are deployed from the Management Server. Local access to Agent Manager clients is typically not required to perform an upgrade. You cannot use the Agent Manager installer to upgrade. You must upgrade the Agent Manager through the Agent Managers dashboard.

Foglight cartridges use agents to collect information from monitored hosts. To start collecting data from the monitored system, it is necessary to create first and subsequent instances of the desired agent type. You can create an agent instance when the agent package that contains that agent type has been deployed to the monitored host. Creating an agent instance creates an agent process on the monitored host.

Use the Agent Status dashboard to create an agent instance for one host at a time. To create agent instances on multiple hosts, use the Agent Managers dashboard instead.

Alternatively, use the agent:create command to create agent instances from the command line. For complete information about this and other fglcmd commands, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

NOTE: In order to select the host, the Foglight Agent Manager must be installed and running on the monitored host.

NOTE: You can only create instances of those agent types that have already been deployed to the monitored host.

TIP: Deleting an agent instance created with the Generic Name option, followed by creating an instance of the same agent type, also with the Generic Name option, results in copying the properties of the deleted agent instance to the instance that is about to be created. If the deleted agent instance had custom properties set, those custom properties are automatically assigned to the new agent instance, which is reflected by the Property State column . This behavior is intended, and it allows you to quickly retrieve the previous settings, and start from there, without having to re-create them again.

NOTE: You can only create instances of those agents whose agent packages have already been deployed.

TIP: Refresh the page to see the complete list.

After creating an agent instance, you need to its properties. For more information, see Edit instance-specific agent properties.

Agent tagging allows you to form logical groupings of agents for sorting and selection. With tags, you can edit properties for a group of agents. For information on how to use tags to select a group of agents in order to edit their properties, see Edit instance-specific agent properties .

Agent instances can have multiple tags. You can modify the tags for each individual agent instance.

NOTE: To remove an existing tag association, in the row containing the selected tag, click the Apply To column and select None.

Foglight Management Server allows you to set the debug level of FglAM logs from the Agent Managers dashboard. The amount of debug messages depends on the specified debug level.

NOTE: If the debug level is set to “Extremely verbose debug logging”, many logs are written to the log file and the log file size becomes huge. Therefore it is strongly recommended that you do not select this debug level and print logs over than 20 minutes.

When an agent connects to the Foglight Management Server, it is provided with sets of properties that it uses to configure the agent’s running state. Foglight stores agent properties on the Foglight Management Server.

Default versions of these properties are installed with the cartridge in which the agents are included. You can edit the default properties, create sets of properties that apply only to a specific agent instance, or create edited clones of property sets that are used by a subset of the agents of a certain type.

You have the following options:

The Agent Status dashboard allows you to choose the scope of the edit operation and edit the properties of an agent instance, or of all properties of that type. Its Property State column allows you to quickly identify the agent instances that have custom properties assigned to them.

Another way to edit type-specific properties is using the Agent Properties dashboard. For more information, see Edit primary type-specific properties.

TIP: This option is available for selection only if the agent instance does not have custom property values.

NOTE: All text boxes have a limit of 64 characters.

IMPORTANT: Default list properties, associated with the agent type are type-specific, and as such global in nature, which means that any changes to them affect all instances of that agent type. To override this behavior, you can create an instance-specific list by cloning a global list and assigning the cloned list to the agent instances. Any changes to this list affect only those agent instances to which the list is assigned. Examples of situations in which you may want to clone a list include the following scenarios: You want a set of default agent properties to use different lists at different times. For example, you may want to create a clone of a list and configure it to have different settings during testing. You want to use lists with different settings in different agent instances.

Activating an agent instance starts the agent process on the machine on which the agent is installed. Deactivating an agent stops the agent process.

The Activated icon () on the Agent Status dashboard indicates if the agent is active or not. If the icon appears in the row containing the agent instance, the agent is active. If it does not appear, the agent is inactive.

Alternatively, use the agent:activate or agent:deactivate commands to activate or deactivate agents. These commands come with the fglcmd interface. For complete information, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

If an agent instance fails to activate, you can use the agent’s log file to determine the cause of the problem. For more information, see Retrieve agent logs.

TIP: Some Foglight agents require root-level privileges to run on Unix. This can be accomplished by making sure that the user account used to install the Foglight Agent Manager on the monitored host does not appear in the sudo configuration file. However, if the Foglight Agent Manager does not have root-level privileges, the agents that require those privileges fall back to normal, non-root launch. Starting those agents without root privileges does not prevent them from activating and collecting data. For more information about installing the Foglight Agent Manager with root privileges, see the Installation and Configuration Guide.

NOTE: It may take some time for the Activated () and Collecting Data () icons to appear even if activation of the agent was successful. The Activated icon appears when the Management Server has confirmed that the agent has started and is running. If the activation command was executed successfully but the agent fails after starting, the Activated icon will not appear.

When you cause an agent to start data collection, the agent begins to monitor the applicable part of your environment and send data about it to the Foglight Management Server. When you stop data collection for an agent, the agent no longer collects information from the monitored host. Only activated agents can collect data.

You can stop or start data collection for an active agent using the Agent Status dashboard.

The Collecting Data icon () indicates that the agent is collecting data while the Not Collecting Data icon () indicates the opposite. An empty column indicates that the agent is inactive.

IMPORTANT: Any changes made to an agent’s data-collection status do not take effect if the agent enters a blackout period. See Suspending Alarms and Data Collection for information about agent blackouts.

Alternatively, use the agent:start or agent:stop commands to start or stop data collection. These commands come with the fglcmd interface. For complete information, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

NOTE: It may take some time for the Collecting Data icon () to appear even if activation of the agent was successful. The Activated icon appears when the Management Server has confirmed that the agent has started and is running. If the activation command was executed successfully but the agent fails after starting, the Activated icon does not appear.

NOTE: The Collecting Data icon () indicates that the agent is collecting data.

By default, the Foglight Management Server accepts only the data that is collected within one hour from the moment it is received. The one-hour window allows the server to accept the data that Foglight agents collect during such short-term disruptions. When the connection with the server is lost, Foglight agents continue to collect and store data from monitored hosts, and forward that data to the server when the connection is restored without any additional configuration of the agents or agent manager components.

This feature is useful in situations when an agent temporarily loses a connection with the server. However, in some situations, such as a longer-term network outage, you may need to increase the one-hour time window to prevent the Foglight Management Server to discard the data with timestamps that are older than one hour.

The length of that time window can be controlled with a virtual machine (VM) option, foglight.data_service.max_past_timestamp_delta. Add this option to the configuration file <Foglight_home>/config/server.config to change the length of the store-and-forward period in milliseconds.

Any data with older timestamps that is received and accepted by the Foglight Management Server triggers data-driven rules and derived metrics. Time-driven rules do not re-evaluate data with older timestamps, even if that data meets their conditions and would cause them to fire if collected in real-time.

CAUTION: Changes made to the data-collection status of an agent by following the instructions below will not be persisted if: • The server is restarted. • The agent exits a blackout period. See Suspending Alarms and Data Collection for information about agent blackouts.

IMPORTANT: In order for the changes to take effect, you need to restart the Foglight Management Server.

When you delete an agent, that agent instance is removed from the monitored host. You can only delete those agent instances that you create after the installation. This excludes agent adapters that also appear in the Agent Status dashboard, such as the SPI Network adapter. Selecting the row containing the SPI Network adapter entry disables the Delete button.

Alternatively, use the agent:delete command to delete an agent instance. The command comes with the fglcmd interface. For complete information about this command, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

TIP: To select multiple agent instances, press the CTRL or SHIFT key while selecting the rows containing the instances for which you want to start data collection.

Agent log files contain entries that describe the operations an agent process performs while it is running on the monitored host. Use agent logs to solve problems related to an agent’s state or behavior. For example, if an agent instance fails to activate, you can use an agent log file to determine the cause of the problem.

Foglight stores agent logs on the monitored host, with their path and file names using the following syntax:

<foglight_client_home>/state/default/logs/<cartridge_name>/<cartridge_version>/logs/<agent_type>/<agent_name>_<date>_<time>_<file_ID>.log

Where:

For example:

C:\Quest\Foglight_Agent_Manager\state\default\logs\HostAgents\5.9.1\WindowsAgent\WindowsAgent_on_Host1_2011-11-21_124119_001.log

An agent instance can generate one or more log files, one for each period of time the agent is running. Use the Agent Status dashboard retrieve the latest log file generated for an agent instance.

Alternatively, use the agent:getlog command to obtain an agent’s log file. The command line offers more flexibility in that it allows you to obtain older log files.The command comes with the fglcmd interface. For complete information, see the Command-Line Reference Guide.

NOTE: The appearance of the dialog box varies, depending on the type and version of your web browser.

NOTE: Copying agent logs into the <Foglight_home>/logs directory enables them to be added to the server support bundle. For more information about server support bundles, see Managing Support Bundles.

Some Foglight dashboards have reports associated with them. This allows you to run a report based on the current dashboard. You can generate the report using the Reports menu in the top-right corner.

The Agent Managers and Agent Status dashboards are associated with the Hosts Report. Run this report by choosing Hosts Report from the Reports menu, and specifying the input parameters in the report wizard.

The report wizard provides more information about the Hosts Report and instructions on how to set the input values. For more information about reports in Foglight, see the Foglight User Help.

Agent Properties

There are two basic types of agent properties in Foglight: simple (primary) properties and list-based (secondary) properties. Primary properties are specific to the agent type or an instance of that type.

Use the Agent Properties dashboard to edit type-specific properties. Edit a primary property by specifying the desired value or option.

If you do not change agent properties for an instance, Foglight uses the default properties that come with that agent type.

NOTE: Use caution when modifying type-specific agent properties, as these settings can apply to multiple agents.

NOTE: All text boxes on the Agent Properties dashboard have a limit of 64 characters.

Each secondary property can be associated with one or more lists. Cloning a list allows you to create multiple instances of the same list and assign them to different agent instances. This type of configuration can create instance-specific lists, overriding the default behavior of lists in which they are shared amongst agent instances. When you clone a list, its entries remain unchanged. You can alter a cloned list to suit your needs.

A list contains one or more rows, with each row containing a name and value pair. Editing a list involves adding, editing or deleting its rows. For example, you can clone a list and edit the cloned version for different agent instances.

CAUTION: If a list is shared among multiple agent instances, any changes made to that list affect all of those instances.

CAUTION: Secondary agent properties can apply to multiple agents. If you want to edit a cloned list that is instance-specific, ensure that you select that list in the property box before clicking the Edit button.

TIP: The appearance of the list depends on its complexity and contents.

NOTE: All text values have a limit of 64 characters.

TIP: To select multiple entries, press the CTRL key while clicking rows.

You can only remove cloned lists. Any lists that are included with Foglight cannot be deleted.

CAUTION: Secondary agent properties can apply to multiple agents. If you want to edit a cloned list that is instance-specific, ensure that you select that list in the property box before clicking the Edit button.

The FglAMAdapter agent comes with Foglight Agent Manager. It includes a set of default agent properties that can be viewed on the Agent Properties dashboard. These settings control how often the Foglight Agent Manager instructs downstream hosts and agents to connect and poll for messages. The more hosts that are connected to the server, the less often they are instructed to poll. Changing these settings is only recommended when instructed to do so by Quest Support. Most instances of the FglAMAdapter agent do not need to change these settings.

Some Foglight dashboards have reports associated with them. This allows you to run a report based on the current dashboard. You can generate the report using the Reports menu in the top-right corner.

The Agent Properties dashboard is associated with the Agent Properties Report. Run this report by choosing Agent Proeprties Report from the Reports menu, and specifying the input parameters in the report wizard.

The report wizard provides more information about the Agent Properties Report and instructions on how to set the input values. For more information about reports in Foglight, see the Foglight User Help.

Disconnected Agent Managers

To edit tags for the disconnected agent manager(s), see Edit agent tags .

Agent Adapters

Use the Agent Adapters dashboard to view information about the existing agent adapters that your Foglight agents use to communicate with the Foglight Management Server.

Activating an agent adapter starts the agent adapter process on the Management Server while deactivating an agent adapter stops that process.

If it is requested by Quest Support, you can activate and deactivate agent adapters. The Status column indicates if an adapter is active or not.

TIP: To select multiple agent adapters, press the SHIFT key while selecting the rows containing the adapters that you want to activate.

TIP: To select multiple agent adapters, press the SHIFT key while selecting the rows containing the adapters that you want to activate.