Installing the Ops Agent on a single VM

This feature is covered by the Pre-GA Offerings Terms of the Google Cloud Platform Terms of Service. Pre-GA features may have limited support, and changes to pre-GA features may not be compatible with other pre-GA versions. For more information, see the launch stage descriptions.

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The Ops Agent collects logs and metrics on Compute Engine instances, sending your logs to Cloud Logging and your metrics to Cloud Monitoring.

Before you begin

To install the agent, ensure that you have the following:

• A supported VM instance in a Google Cloud project.

• A supported operating system.

• Credentials on the VM instance that authorize communication with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring. Compute Engine VM instances generally have the correct credentials by default. If you are running very old Compute Engine instances or if you created Compute Engine instances without the default credentials, then you might not have the proper credentials. You must complete the Authorizing the agent procedures.

• Ensure your VM doesn't have the standalone Cloud Logging agent or Cloud Monitoring agent installed on it. This can cause ingestion of duplicate logs or a conflict in metrics ingestion. In addition, this agent uses new configuration files that are not compatible with the old agents.

  If you have the old agents installed, save the custom configuration files for the Cloud Monitoring agent and the custom configuration files for the Cloud Logging agent, and complete the uninstall steps for the Cloud Monitoring agent and the uninstall steps for the Cloud Logging agent.

VMs without remote package access

Installing the Google Cloud's operations suite agent requires access to remote package repositories, for both the agent package and (on Linux) its dependencies. 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 single VM

To install the agent, use the following instructions.

Installing the latest version of the Ops Agent

To install the latest version of the agent, complete the following steps.

1. Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have sudo access.

2. Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.

3. Run:

   curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh --also-install
   

Installing a specific version of the Ops Agent

To install a specific version of the agent, complete the following steps.

CENTOS / RHEL

1. Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have sudo access.

2. Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.

3. Add the agent's package repository:

   curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   

4. Install the agent:

   1. List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:

      sudo yum list --showduplicates google-cloud-ops-agent
      

   2. 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 google-cloud-ops-agent-major-version.*
      

      For example, to pin to the 1.x.x of the agent, run:

      sudo yum install -y google-cloud-ops-agent-1.*
      

   3. If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:

      1. To install a specific version of the agent, run:

           sudo yum install -y google-cloud-ops-agent-version-number
         

      2. To install the latest version of the agent, run:

           sudo yum install -y google-cloud-ops-agent
         

You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.

• To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:

  sudo systemctl status google-cloud-ops-agent"*"
  

  The status of the agent should be OK.

If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.

DEBIAN / UBUNTU

1. Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have sudo access.

2. Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.

3. Add the agent's package repository:

   curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   sudo apt-get update
   

4. Install the agent:

   1. List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:

      sudo apt-cache madison google-cloud-ops-agent
      

   2. 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 'google-cloud-ops-agent=major-version.*'
      

      For example, to pin to the 1.x.x of the agent, run:

      sudo apt-get install -y 'google-cloud-ops-agent=1.*'
      

   3. If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:

      1. To install a specific version of the agent, run:

           sudo apt-get install -y google-cloud-ops-agent=version-number
         

      2. To install the latest version of the agent, run:

           sudo apt-get install google-cloud-ops-agent
         

You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.

• To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:

  sudo systemctl status google-cloud-ops-agent"*"
  

  The status of the agent should be OK.

If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.

SLES / SUSE

1. Open a terminal connection to your VM instance using SSH or a similar tool and ensure you have sudo access.

2. Change to a directory you have write access to, for example your home directory.

3. Add the agent's package repository:

   curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
   

4. Install the agent:

   1. List the available versions of the agent in order to select which version to install:

      sudo zypper search -s google-cloud-ops-agent
      

   2. 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 'google-cloud-ops-agent<major-version.0.0'
      

      For example, to pin to the 1.x.x of the agent, run:

      sudo zypper install -y 'google-cloud-ops-agent<2.0.0'
      

   3. If you don't want to pin to a major version, you can select one of the other installation options:

      1. To install a specific version of the agent, run:

           sudo zypper install -y google-cloud-ops-agent=version-number
         

      2. To install the latest version of the agent, run:

           sudo zypper install google-cloud-ops-agent
         

You can delete the installation script after it runs successfully.

• To verify that the agent is working as expected, run:

  sudo systemctl status google-cloud-ops-agent"*"
  

  The status of the agent should be OK.

If you have trouble with the installation, refer to the Troubleshooting page.

Optional tasks

This section describes how to perform common maintenance tasks.

Determining the agent version

To determine the version of the Google Cloud's operations suite agent on your system, run the following commands on your VM instance:

CENTOS / RHEL

Run the following command on Red Hat or CentOS Linux:

rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME} %{VERSION} %{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n' \
     google-cloud-ops-agent

DEBIAN / UBUNTU

Run the following command on Debian or Ubuntu:

dpkg-query --show --showformat \
    '${Package} ${Version} ${Architecture} ${Status}\n' \
     google-cloud-ops-agent

SLES / SUSE

Run the following command on SUSE:

rpm --query --queryformat '%{NAME} %{VERSION} %{RELEASE} %{ARCH}\n' \
     google-cloud-ops-agent

Restarting the agent

You must restart the Google Cloud's operations suite 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 systemctl restart google-cloud-ops-agent.target

Upgrading the agent

To upgrade the Google Cloud's operations suite agent to the latest release, use the following instructions:

Note: If you upgraded your instance's Linux operating system to a new major release, then you should first remove the agent and then re-install it using the procedures on this page, instead of completing these upgrade procedures.

CENTOS / RHEL

Run the following command on Red Hat or CentOS Linux:

sudo yum upgrade google-cloud-ops-agent

DEBIAN / UBUNTU

Run the following commands on Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install --only-upgrade google-cloud-ops-agent

SLES / SUSE

Run the following command on SUSE:

sudo zypper update google-cloud-ops-agent

Uninstalling the agent

To remove the Google Cloud's operations suite agent and its configuration files, use the following instructions.

CENTOS / RHEL

Run the following command on Red Hat or CentOS Linux:

sudo yum remove google-cloud-ops-agent

DEBIAN / UBUNTU

Run the following command on Debian or Ubuntu:

sudo apt remove google-cloud-ops-agent

SLES / SUSE

Run the following command on SUSE Linux:

sudo zypper remove google-cloud-ops-agent