Install or Upgrade Instance Manager

Follow the steps in this guide to install or upgrade NGINX Management Suite Instance Manager.

Before You Begin

Security Considerations

To ensure that your NGINX Management Suite deployment remains secure, follow the recommendations in this section:

Install NGINX Management Suite and its modules on a dedicated machine (bare metal, container, cloud, or VM).
Make sure that no other services are running on the same machine.
Make sure that the machine is not accessible from the Internet.
Make sure that the machine is behind a firewall.

Installation Prerequisites

Important:
Before you can install this module, you need to have NGINX and ClickHouse installed on your system. Additionally, you will need to add the NGINX Management Suite repository. The Prerequisites topic has detailed instructions on how to fulfill these requirements.

To install the latest version of Instance Manager, run the following command:
```
sudo yum install -y nms-instance-manager
```
IMPORTANT! The Instance Manager’s administrator username (default is admin) and generated password are displayed in the terminal during installation. You should make a note of the password and store it securely.

To install the latest version of Instance Manager, run the following commands:
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y nms-instance-manager
```
IMPORTANT! The Instance Manager’s administrator username (default is admin) and generated password are displayed in the terminal during installation. You should make a note of the password and store it securely.

Enable and start the NGINX Management Suite platform services:
```
sudo systemctl enable nms nms-core nms-dpm nms-ingestion nms-integrations --now
```
NGINX Management Suite components started this way run by default as the non-root nms user inside the nms group, both of which are created during installation.
Restart the NGINX web server:
```
sudo systemctl restart nginx
```

Post-Installation Steps

The following steps may be optional, depending on your installation configuration.

(Optional) If you used a custom address, username, or password or enabled TLS when installing ClickHouse, follow the steps in the Configure ClickHouse guide to update the /etc/nms/nms.conf file. If you don’t do so, NGINX Management Suite won’t be able to connect to ClickHouse.
(Optional) If you use Vault, follow the steps in the Configure Vault guide to update the /etc/nms/nms.conf file. If you don’t do so, NGINX Management Suite won’t be able to connect to Vault.
(Optional) If you use SELinux, follow the steps in the Configure SELinux guide to restore SELinux contexts (restorecon) for the files and directories related to NGINX Management suite.

Accessing the Web Interface

To access the NGINX Management Suite web interface, open a web browser and go to https://<NMS_FQDN>, replacing <NMS_FQDN> with the Fully Qualified Domain Name of your NGINX Management Suite host.

The default administrator username is admin, and the generated password was displayed in the terminal during installation. If you’d like to change this password, refer to the “Set or Change User Passwords section in the Basic Authentication topic.

Add License

A valid license is required to make full use of all the features in Instance Manager.

Refer to the Add a License topic for instructions on how to download and apply a trial license, subscription license, or Flexible Consumption Program license.

Upgrade Instance Manager

CentOS, RHEL, RPM-Based
Debian, Ubuntu, Deb-Based

To upgrade to the latest version of the Instance Manger, run the following command:
```
sudo yum update -y nms-instance-manager
```

To upgrade to the latest version of the Instance Manager, run the following command:
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y --only-upgrade nms-instance-manager
```

Restart the NGINX Management Suite platform services:
```
sudo systemctl restart nms
```
NGINX Management Suite components started this way run by default as the non-root nms user inside the nms group, both of which are created during installation.
Restart the NGINX web server:
```
sudo systemctl restart nginx
```
(Optional) If you use SELinux, follow the steps in the Configure SELinux guide to restore the default SELinux labels (restorecon) for the files and directories related to NGINX Management suite.

What’s Next

Set Up the Data Plane

Complete the following steps for each data plane instance you want to manage using Instance Manager:

Install NGINX OSS or NGINX Plus on your data plane instances.
Install the NGINX Agent on your data plane instances to register them with NGINX Management Suite.

Set up NGINX App Protect WAF

To set up Instance Manager to manage configurations for NGINX App Protect WAF, follow the steps in the Set Up App Protect WAF Configuration Management guide.