NGINX Amplify Agent

Questions about NGINX Amplify Agent

What Operating Systems are Supported?

The agent is currently officially packaged and supported for the following Linux flavors only:

Ubuntu 22.04 “jammy” (amd64/arm64)
Ubuntu 20.04 “focal” (amd64/arm64)
Ubuntu 18.04 “bionic” (amd64/arm64)
Debian 11 “bullseye” (amd64/arm64)
Debian 10 “buster” (amd64/arm64)
RHEL/CentOS/OEL 8 (amd64/arm64)
RHEL/CentOS/OEL 9 (amd64/arm64)
Amazon Linux 2 LTS (amd64/arm64)

The following platforms are no longer supported but still can be used with older agent packages powered by Python 2:

Ubuntu 16.04 “xenial” (i386/amd64/arm64)
Debian 9 “stretch” (i386/amd64)
RHEL/CentOS/OEL 6 (i386/amd64)
RHEL/CentOS/OEL 7 (amd64)
Amazon Linux (amd64)

Other OS and distributions below are not fully supported yet (and no agent packages are available), however you can grab a specialized install script here and see if it works for you. Run install-source.sh (as root) instead of install.sh and follow the dialog. You can copy the API key from the Amplify UI (find it in the Settings or in the New System pop-up).

FreeBSD
SLES
Alpine
Fedora

Feel free to submit an issue or a PR if you find something that has to be fixed.

We also have an experimental Ebuild for Gentoo.

What Version of Python is Required?

NGINX Amplify Agent starting from version 1.8.0, works with Python >= 3.6.

Previous versions were powered by Python 2.6 and 2.7, depending on the target platform.

How Do I Start to Monitor My Systems with NGINX Amplify?

Download and run the install script.

  # curl -sS -L -O \
  https://github.com/nginxinc/nginx-amplify-agent/raw/master/packages/install.sh && \
  API_KEY='YOUR_API_KEY' sh ./install.sh

where YOUR_API_KEY is a unique API key assigned when you create an account with NGINX Amplify. You can also find the API key in the Account menu.

Verify that the Agent has started.

# ps ax | grep -i 'amplify\-'
2552 ?        S      0:00 amplify-agent

For manual installation, please check the user guide.

What Do I Need to Configure the NGINX Amplify Agent to Report Metrics Correctly?

After you install and start the agent, it should start reporting right away, pushing aggregated data to the Amplify backend at regular 1-minute intervals. It’ll take about a minute for the new system to appear in the Amplify web interface.

If you don’t see the new system or NGINX in the web interface, or (some) metrics aren’t being collected, please check the following:

The Amplify Agent package has been successfully installed, and no warnings were shown during the installation.
The amplify-agent process is running and updating its log file.
The agent is running under the same user as your NGINX worker processes.
The NGINX instance is started with an absolute path. Currently, the agent can’t detect NGINX instances launched with a relative path (e.g., “./nginx”).
The user ID that is used by the agent and the NGINX, can run ps(1) to see all system processes. If ps(1) is restricted for non-privileged users, the agent won’t be able to find and properly detect the NGINX master process.
The time is set correctly. If the time on the system where the agent runs is ahead or behind the world’s clock, you won’t be able to see the graphs.
stub_status is properly configured, and the stub_status module is included in the NGINX build (this can be checked with nginx -V).
NGINX access.log and error.log files are readable by the user nginx (or by the user set in NGINX config).
All NGINX configuration files are readable by the agent user ID (check owner, group, and permissions).
Extra configuration steps have been performed as required for the additional metrics to be collected.
The system DNS resolver is correctly configured, and receiver.amplify.nginx.com can be successfully resolved.
Outbound TLS/SSL from the system to receiver.amplify.nginx.com is not restricted. This can be checked with curl(1). Configure a proxy server for the agent if required.
selinux(8), apparmor(7) or grsecurity are not interfering with the metric collection. E.g. for selinux(8) check /etc/selinux/config, try setenforce 0 temporarily and see if it improves the situation for certain metrics.
Some VPS providers use hardened Linux kernels that may restrict non-root users from accessing /proc and /sys. Metrics describing system and NGINX disk I/O are usually affected. There is no easy workaround except for allowing the agent to run as root. Sometimes fixing permissions for /proc and /sys/block may work.

How Do I Verify that NGINX Amplify Agent Is Correctly Installed?

On Ubuntu/Debian use:
```
# dpkg -s nginx-amplify-agent
```
On CentOS and Red Hat use:
```
# yum info nginx-amplify-agent
```

How Can I Update NGINX Amplify Agent?

On Ubuntu/Debian use:

# apt-get update && \
apt-get install nginx-amplify-agent

On CentOS use:

# yum makecache && \
yum update nginx-amplify-agent

What System Resources are Required?

We work hard to make the agent consume as little memory and CPU as possible. Usually, it should be under 10% of CPU usage and a few dozen MBs of RSS memory. If you notice any anomalies in the system resource consumption, please fill in a support ticket through Intercom.

How Do I Restart NGINX Amplify Agent?

# service amplify-agent restart

How Can I Uninstall NGINX Amplify Agent?

On Ubuntu/Debian use:
```
apt-get remove nginx-amplify-agent
```
On CentOS and Red Hat use:
```
yum remove nginx-amplify-agent
```

How Can I Override System Hostname?

If the agent is not able to determine the system’s hostname, you can define it manually in /etc/amplify-agent/agent.conf

Find the following section, and fill in the desired hostname:

[credentials]
..
hostname = myhostname1

The hostname should be valid — the following aren’t valid hostnames:

localhost
localhost.localdomain
localhost6.localdomain6
ip6-localhost

How Can I Override the User ID for the Agent to Use?

Please check the Configuring the Agent section of the documentation.

Can I Use NGINX Amplify Agent with Docker?

Please check the following section of the agent repository to find out more. Keep in mind that the support for a Docker environment is currently experimental.