The Cloud Monitoring agent gathers system and application metrics from your VM instances and sends them to Monitoring. You can also configure the Monitoring agent to monitor third-party applications.
This guide explains how to install the Cloud Monitoring agent for Monitoring on Compute Engine and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) VMs. Using the agent is optional but recommended for Compute Engine VM instances. For these VMs, Monitoring can access some metrics from the VM's hypervisor without the agent, including CPU utilization, some disk traffic metrics, network traffic, and uptime. Using the agent is required for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) VMs.
On instances running Microsoft Windows, the agent records CPU utilization and memory, pagefile, and volume usage. If you are running IIS or SQL server, the agent collects metrics from those services by default.
Before you begin
To install the agent, ensure that you have the following:
A supported VM instance in a Google Cloud project or Amazon Web Services (AWS) account.
- A minimum of 250 MiB of resident (RSS) memory is recommended to run the Monitoring agent.
Also ensure your VM is running a supported operating system.
A Workspace monitoring the AWS account containing the VM instance. For pricing information, go to Pricing for Google Cloud's operations suite.
Credentials on the VM instance that authorize communication with Cloud Logging or Cloud Monitoring. Compute Engine VM instances generally have the correct credentials by default. If either of the following scenarios applies to you, then you might not have the proper credentials and must complete the Authorizing the agent procedures:
Running AWS EC2 VM instances, you must install authorization credentials on your VMs before installing the agent.
Running very old Compute Engine instances or Compute Engine instances created without the default credentials.
To check if you have the proper credentials, run the Verifying Compute Engine credentials procedures.
Google Cloud projects for AWS EC2 VM instances
When the documentation refers to the Google Cloud project associated with your VM instance, for EC2 VM instances, this phrase refers to the AWS connector project linked to your AWS account.
When you connect your AWS account to a Workspace, the AWS connector project is created. To identify the AWS connector project, go to the Workspace's Settings tab. The connector project are listed under the heading AWS Accounts. The Project ID column displays the Google Cloud projects associated with your Workspace.
Refer to the Workspace page for more information about AWS connector projects.
VMs without remote package access
Installing the Monitoring agent requires access to remote package repositories, for both the agent package and (on Linux) its dependencies.
If you are using VPC-SC or a private network, the network configuration might also affect your ability to install agent dependencies from upstream repositories. The agent packages themselves are accessible by using Private Google Access.
If your VM host's security policy denies access to remote package repositories, we recommend creating a custom VM image with the agent pre-installed and disabling package management in that image.
Installing the agent on a Compute Engine VM
You can install the Monitoring agent on a single VM from the pre-configured Monitoring VM Instances dashboard.
To reach this dashboard, do the following:
- In the Cloud Console, select your Google Cloud project.
Go to Cloud Console - In the navigation pane, select Monitoring.
If you have never used Cloud Monitoring, then on your first access of Monitoring in the Google Cloud Console, a Workspace is automatically created and your project is associated with that Workspace. Otherwise, if your project isn't associated with a Workspace, then a dialog appears and you can either create a Workspace or add your project to an existing Workspace. We recommend that you create a Workspace. After you make your selection, click Add.
- In the Monitoring navigation pane, select Dashboards.
- In the table of dashboards, locate the VM Instances entry, and then click on the name.
The Inventory tab on the VM Instances dashboard lists all VMs and contains a status column for the agent, as shown in the following screenshot:
If the agent is not detected on a Compute Engine instance, you can click the "Not detected" link to bring up an installation workflow in the dashboard. You can also use the command-line installation technique described in Installing the agent on a single VM.
Installing the agent on a single VM
To install the agent, use the following instructions.
AMAZON LINUX AMI / CENTOS / RHEL
Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have
sudo
access.Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.
Add the agent's package repository:
curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh sudo bash add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh
Install the agent:
List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:
sudo yum list --showduplicates stackdriver-agent
For production environments, you might want to pin to a major version to avoid pulling in major versions that might include backward incompatible changes. To pin to a major version, run:
sudo yum install -y stackdriver-agent-major-version.*
For example, to pin to the 6.x.x of the agent, run:
sudo yum install -y stackdriver-agent-6.*
If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:
To install a specific version of the agent, run:
sudo yum install -y stackdriver-agent-version-number
To install the latest version of the agent, run:
sudo yum install -y stackdriver-agent
Start the agent service
sudo service stackdriver-agent start
You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.
To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:
sudo service stackdriver-agent status
The status of the agent should be OK.
You can also examine the logs and ensure there are no errors:
sudo grep collectd /var/log/{syslog,messages} | tail
If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.
DEBIAN / UBUNTU
Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have
sudo
access.Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.
Add the agent's package repository:
curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh sudo bash add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh sudo apt-get update
Install the agent:
List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:
sudo apt-cache madison stackdriver-agent
For production environments, you might want to pin to a major version to avoid pulling in major versions that might include backward incompatible changes. To pin to a major version, run:
sudo apt-get install -y 'stackdriver-agent=major-version.*'
For example, to pin to the 6.x.x of the agent, run:
sudo apt-get install -y 'stackdriver-agent=6.*'
If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:
To install a specific version of the agent, run:
sudo apt-get install -y stackdriver-agent=version-number
To install the latest version of the agent, run:
sudo apt-get install stackdriver-agent
You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.
To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:
sudo service stackdriver-agent status
The status of the agent should be OK.
You can also examine the logs and ensure there are no errors:
sudo grep collectd /var/log/{syslog,messages} | tail
If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.
SLES / SUSE
Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have
sudo
access.Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.
Add the agent's package repository:
curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh sudo bash add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh
Install the agent:
List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:
sudo zypper search -s stackdriver-agent
For production environments, you might want to pin to a major version to avoid pulling in major versions that might include backward incompatible changes. To pin to a major version, run:
sudo zypper install -y 'stackdriver-agent<major-version.0.0'
For example, to pin to the 6.x.x of the agent, run:
sudo zypper install -y 'stackdriver-agent<7.0.0'
If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:
To install a specific version of the agent, run:
sudo zypper install -y stackdriver-agent=version-number
To install the latest version of the agent, run:
sudo zypper install stackdriver-agent
Start the agent service
sudo service stackdriver-agent start
You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.
To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:
sudo service stackdriver-agent status
The status of the agent should be OK.
You can also examine the logs and ensure there are no errors:
sudo grep collectd /var/log/{syslog,messages} | tail
If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.
WINDOWS
To install the agent on a VM instance running Windows, perform the following steps:
Connect to your instance using RDP or a similar tool and login to Windows.
Open a PowerShell terminal, then run the following PowerShell commands. You don't need administrator privileges.
(New-Object Net.WebClient).DownloadFile("https://repo.stackdriver.com/windows/StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe", "${env:UserProfile}\StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe") & "${env:UserProfile}\StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe"
Alternatively, you can browse to the following URL to download and run the agent's installer:
https://repo.stackdriver.com/windows/StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe
To install the agent silently, append the
/S
option to the invocation of the installer:.\StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe /S
In “silent” mode use the
/D
option to specify the installation directory, for example:.\StackdriverMonitoring-GCM-46.exe /S /D="C:\Google Cloud's operations suite\Monitoring\"
You can delete the installer when it completes successfully.
If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.
Optional tasks
This section describes how to perform common maintenance tasks.
Configuring an HTTP proxy
If you use an HTTP proxy for proxying requests to the Logging and Monitoring APIs, do the following:
LINUX
Edit the following configuration file (should be created if does not exist):
For agent versions 6.0.0 and higher, edit:
/etc/default/stackdriver-agent
For agent versions earlier than 6.0.0, edit the appropriate file for your OS:
For Debian and Ubuntu, edit:
/etc/default/stackdriver-agent
For CentOS and SLES, edit:
/etc/default/stackdriver-collectd
Add the following lines:
export http_proxy="http://proxy-ip:proxy-port" export https_proxy="http://proxy-ip:proxy-port" export no_proxy=169.254.169.254 # Skip proxy for the local Metadata Server.
Restart the Monitoring agent by running the following command on your VM instance.
sudo service stackdriver-agent restart
WINDOWS
If you use an HTTP proxy, run the following command from an administrator command prompt. This sets the
HTTP_PROXY
andHTTPS_PROXY
environment variables so that the agent can send data to Monitoring using outbound HTTPS:setx HTTP_PROXY http://proxy-ip:proxy-port /m setx HTTPS_PROXY http://proxy-ip:proxy-port /m setx no_proxy 169.254.169.254 /m
Determining the agent version
To determine the version of the Monitoring agent on your system, run the following commands on your VM instance:
AMAZON LINUX AMI / CENTOS / RHEL
Run the following command on Amazon Linux, Red Hat, or CentOS Linux:
rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME} %{VERSION} %{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n' \
stackdriver-agent
DEBIAN / UBUNTU
Run the following command on Debian or Ubuntu:
dpkg-query --show --showformat \
'${Package} ${Version} ${Architecture} ${Status}\n' \
stackdriver-agent
SLES / SUSE
Run the following command on SUSE:
rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME} %{VERSION} %{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n' \
stackdriver-agent
WINDOWS
There is presently no way to determine the version of the Monitoring agent running on Windows.
Restarting the agent
You must restart the Monitoring agent to pick up changes in configuration files. To restart the agent, use the following instructions.
LINUX
Run the following command on your instance:
sudo service stackdriver-agent restart
WINDOWS
Requires administrator privileges: To restart the agent, run the following command in a PowerShell terminal:
Restart-Service -Name StackdriverMonitoring
Upgrading the agent
To upgrade the Monitoring agent to the latest release, use the following instructions:
AMAZON LINUX AMI / CENTOS / RHEL
Run the following command on Amazon Linux, Red Hat, or CentOS Linux:
sudo yum update stackdriver-agent
DEBIAN / UBUNTU
Run the following commands on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install stackdriver-agent
SLES / SUSE
Run the following command on SUSE:
sudo zypper update stackdriver-agent
If you're upgrading from an agent with version <= 6.0.5, you must restart the service manually:
sudo service stackdriver-agent restart
WINDOWS
To upgrade to the latest agent release, install the newest agent as described in Installing on Windows on this page. The installer prompts you to uninstall the previous version of the agent.
Uninstalling the agent
To remove the Monitoring agent and its configuration files, use the following instructions.
AMAZON LINUX AMI / CENTOS / RHEL
Run the following command on Amazon Linux, Red Hat, or CentOS Linux:
sudo yum remove stackdriver-agent
DEBIAN / UBUNTU
Run the following command on Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get remove stackdriver-agent
SLES / SUSE
Run the following command on SUSE Linux:
sudo zypper remove stackdriver-agent
WINDOWS
In the Windows Control Panel, choose Uninstall a program. You should see the Monitoring agent in the list of programs that you can uninstall.