Install and Configure NGINX Agent

Follow the instructions in this guide to install and configure the NGINX Agent on your data plane systems.

Prerequisites

This section lists the prerequisites for installing and configuring NGINX Agent. Follow the steps below to complete the requirements:

1. NGINX Management Suite is installed on a server.

   Note:
   When installing and configuring NGINX Management Suite, take note of the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) and gRPC port number. You’ll need this information to properly configure the NGINX Agent to communicate with NGINX Management Suite.

2. Make sure NGINX is running on your instance:

   ps aux | grep nginx
   

3. If a previous version of NGINX Agent was installed, you must stop the current NGINX Agent process before running the NGINX Agent install script. To check if any NGINX Agent processes are running, run the following command:

   ps aux | grep nginx-agent
   

4. If a previous version of NGINX Agent was installed, make sure to uninstall nginx-agent-selinux before running the NGINX Agent install script. To see if nginx_agent_selinux is installed, run the following command:

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

   rpm -qa | grep nginx_agent_selinux
   

   dpkg -s nginx_agent_selinux
   

5. Review the Technical Specifications guide for system requirements.

Install NGINX Agent

You can choose one of the following two methods to install the NGINX Agent on your data plane host:

• Install via the NGINX Management Suite API Gateway
• Install from packages downloaded from MyF5 Customer Portal or from your NGINX/F5 sales team.

Note:

You can also install NGINX Agent in the following ways:

• From the GitHub releases
• From the NGINX Repository
• From the NGINX Plus Repository.

Install using the API

Note: To complete this step, make sure that gpg is installed on your system. You can install NGINX Agent using various command-line tools like curl or wget. If your NGINX Management Suite host is not set up with valid TLS certificates, you can use the insecure flags provided by those tools. See the following examples:

• curl
• wget

Enable and Start NGINX Agent

Run the following command to enable and start the NGINX Agent service:

sudo systemctl enable nginx-agent --now

Verifying NGINX Agent is Running and Registered

Run the following command on your data plane to verify that the NGINX Agent process is running:

ps aux | grep nginx-agent

You should see output that looks similar to the following example:

root      293850  109  1.1 1240056 23536 ?       Ssl  22:00   0:07 /usr/local/bin/nginx-agent
vagrant   293866  0.0  0.0   8160   736 pts/0    S+   22:00   0:00 grep --color=auto nginx-agent

Once you’ve verified the NGINX Agent is running on your data plane, you should confirm it’s registered with NGINX Management Suite. You can do this two ways:

• API
• WEBUI

curl -u <user>:<password> https://<NMS_FQDN>/api/platform/v1/systems | jq

Once you’ve verified the NGINX Agent instance is registered with NGINX Management Suite, no additional action is required for monitoring the instance.

Note:
If you need to remove the instance, ensure that the NGINX Agent service is stopped first. Then you can remove the instance from the inventory.

Configuring the NGINX Agent

The following sections explain how to configure the NGINX Agent using configuration files, CLI flags, and environment variables.

Note:

• The NGINX Agent interprets configuration values set by configuration files, CLI flags, and environment variables in the following priorities:

  1. CLI flags overwrite configuration files and environment variable values.
  2. Environment variables overwrite configuration file values.
  3. Config files are the lowest priority and config settings are superseded if either of the other options is used.

• The NGINX Agent is configured by default to connect to the NGINX Management Suite on port 443 based on the address used to download the install script. If this setting doesn’t work, you can change the server fields in the nginx-agent.conf file. Instructions are provided in the following sections.

• Open any required firewall ports or SELinux/AppArmor rules for the ports and IPs you want to use.

Configure with Config Files

The configuration files for the NGINX Agent are /etc/nginx-agent/nginx-agent.conf and /var/lib/nginx-agent/agent-dynamic.conf. These files have comments at the top indicating their purpose.

Note:
If you’re running Instance Manager 2.10.1 or earlier or NGINX Agent 2.25.1 or earlier, the agent-dynamic.conf file is located in /etc/nginx-agent/.

Examples of the configuration files are provided below:

#
# /etc/nginx-agent/nginx-agent.conf
#
# Configuration file for NGINX Agent.
#
# This file tracks agent configuration values that are meant to be statically set. There
# are additional agent configuration values that are set via the API and agent install script
# which can be found in /var/lib/nginx-agent/agent-dynamic.conf.

# specify the server grpc port to connect to
server:
  # host of the control plane
  host: <NMS_FQDN>
  grpcPort: 443
# tls options
tls:
  # enable tls in the nginx-agent setup for grpcs
  # default to enable to connect with secure connection but without client cert for mtls
  enable: true
  # controls whether the server certificate chain and host name are verified.
  # for production use, see instructions for configuring TLS
  skip_verify: false
log:
  # set log level (panic, fatal, error, info, debug, trace; default "info")
  level: info
  # set log path. if empty, don't log to file.
  path: /var/log/nginx-agent/
nginx:
  # path of NGINX logs to exclude
  exclude_logs: ""
# data plane status message / 'heartbeat'
dataplane:
  status:
    # poll interval for dataplane status - the frequency the agent will query the dataplane for changes
    poll_interval: 30s
    # report interval for dataplane status - the maximum duration to wait before syncing dataplane information if no updates have been observed
    report_interval: 24h
metrics:
  # specify the size of a buffer to build before sending metrics
  bulk_size: 20
  # specify metrics poll interval
  report_interval: 1m
  collection_interval: 15s
  mode: aggregated

# OSS NGINX default config path
# path to aux file dirs can also be added
config_dirs: "/etc/nginx:/usr/local/etc/nginx:/usr/share/nginx/modules:/etc/nms:/etc/app_protect"

extensions:
  - nginx-app-protect

# Enable reporting NGINX App Protect details to the control plane.
nginx_app_protect:
  # Report interval for NGINX App Protect details - the frequency the NGINX Agent checks NGINX App Protect for changes.
  report_interval: 15s
  # Enable precompiled publication from the NGINX Management Suite (true) or perform compilation on the data plane host (false).
  precompiled_publication: true

#
# /var/lib/nginx-agent/agent-dynamic.conf
#
# Dynamic configuration file for NGINX Agent.
#
# The purpose of this file is to track agent configuration
# values that can be dynamically changed via the API and the agent install script.
# You may edit this file, but API calls that modify the tags on this system will
# overwrite the tag values in this file.
#
# The agent configuration values that API calls can modify are as follows:
#    - tags
#
# The agent configuration value that the agent install script can modify are as follows:
#    - instance_group

instance_group: devenv-group
tags:
  - devenv
  - test

CLI Flags & Environment Variables

This section details the CLI flags and corresponding environment variables used to configure the NGINX Agent.

Usage

CLI Flags

nginx-agent [flags]

Environment Variables

export ENV_VARIABLE_NAME="value"
nginx-agent

CLI Flags and Environment Variables

Warning:

Before version 2.35.0, the environment variables were prefixed with NMS_ instead of NGINX_AGENT_.

If you are upgrading from an older version, update your configuration accordingly.

Note:

Use the --config-dirs command-line option, or the config_dirs key in the nginx-agent.conf file, to identify the directories NGINX Agent can read from or write to. This setting also defines the location to which you can upload config files when using a control plane.

NGINX Agent cannot write to directories outside the specified location when updating a config and cannot upload files to directories outside of the configured location.

NGINX Agent follows NGINX configuration directives to file paths outside the designated directories and reads certificates’ metadata. NGINX Agent uses the following directives:

• ssl_certificate

Enable NGINX App Protect WAF Status Reporting

You can configure NGINX Agent to report the following NGINX App Protect WAF installation information to NGINX Management Suite:

• the current version of NGINX App Protect WAF
• the current status of NGINX App Protect WAF (active or inactive)
• the Attack Signatures package version
• the Threat Campaigns package version

You can also configure NGINX Agent to enable the publication of precompiled NGINX App Protect policies and log profiles from the NGINX Management Suite.

To enable NGINX App Protect WAF reporting or precompiled publication, edit the /etc/nginx-agent/nginx-agent.conf to add the following directives:

# path to aux file dirs can also be added
config_dirs: "/etc/nginx:/usr/local/etc/nginx:/usr/share/nginx/modules:/etc/nms:/etc/app_protect"

# Enable necessary NAP extension
extensions:
    - nginx-app-protect

nginx_app_protect:
  # Report interval for NGINX App Protect details - the frequency the NGINX Agent checks NGINX App Protect for changes.
  report_interval: 15s
  # Enable precompiled publication from the NGINX Management Suite (true) or perform compilation on the data plane host (false).
  precompiled_publication: true

Additionally, you can use the agent installation script to add these fields:

# Download install script via API
curl https://<NMS_FQDN>/install/nginx-agent > install.sh

# Specify the -m | --nginx-app-protect-mode flag to set up management of NGINX App Protect on
# the instance. In the example below we specify 'precompiled-publication' for the flag value
# which will make the config field 'precompiled_publication' set to 'true', if you would like to
# set the config field 'precompiled_publication' to 'false' you can specify 'none' as the flag value.
sudo sh ./install.sh --nginx-app-protect-mode precompiled-publication

Enable NGINX Plus Advanced Metrics

• To enable NGINX Plus advanced metrics, follow the steps in the Install NGINX Plus Metrics Module guide.

SELinux for NGINX Agent

This section explains how to install and configure the SELinux policy for the NGINX Agent.

Installing NGINX Agent SELinux Policy Module

The NGINX Agent package includes the following SELinux files:

• /usr/share/man/man8/nginx_agent_selinux.8.gz
• /usr/share/selinux/devel/include/contrib/nginx_agent.if
• /usr/share/selinux/packages/nginx_agent.pp

To load the NGINX Agent policy, run the following commands:

sudo semodule -n -i /usr/share/selinux/packages/nginx_agent.pp
sudo /usr/sbin/load_policy
sudo restorecon -R /usr/bin/nginx-agent
sudo restorecon -R /var/log/nginx-agent
sudo restorecon -R /etc/nginx-agent

Adding Ports for NGINX Agent SELinux Context

You can configure the NGINX Agent to work with SELinux. Make sure you add external ports to the firewall exception list.

The following example shows how to allow external ports outside the HTTPD context. You may need to enable NGINX to connect to these ports.

sudo setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

For additional information on using NGINX with SELinux, refer to the guide Using NGINX and NGINX Plus with SELinux.

Secure the NGINX Agent with mTLS

Important:
By default, communication between the NGINX Agent and NGINX Management Suite is unsecured.

For instructions on how configure mTLS to secure communication between the NGINX Agent and NGINX Management Suite, see NGINX Agent TLS Settings.

NGINX Metrics

After you register an NGINX instance with NGINX Management Suite, the NGINX Agent will collect and report metrics. For more information about the metrics that are reported, see Overview: Instance Metrics.

Container Support

NGINX Agent is a companion daemon for NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus instances and must run in the same container to work. The NGINX Agent repository includes Dockerfiles that can be used to build custom container images. Images are created with an NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus instance and are available for various operating systems.

See the requirements and supported operating systems in the NGINX Agent Technical Specifications topic.

See the Build Container Images topic for instructions on building container images.