Free IT: Article / Andutteye Surveillance

	Andutteye Surveillance
	A brief introduction and installation howto.
	Andutt Tuesday 28 September 2004
Andutteye Surveillance contains of two bundled applications. A client app that contains the actual agent you install on the servers you want to monitor. And a server app that is used for the enduser/sysadmin to view runtime statistics and active alarms and much more. The client-software(agent) is written in Perl and doesn't need any additional software to be able to function. You, as an administrator, can also directly review the code since it doesn't need to be compiled. The server software contains two parts, the web interface, programmed in PHP, that is used to view and tweak incoming andutteye data, and also a server listener written in Perl. The listener will handle incoming connections and load the active alarms and statistics into the andutteye database. The server needs some additional software to be able to work. For example mysql or other database software, and a web server like apache for the web interface. Now to the installation procedure.... we start with the client software(agent) . Installing the andutteye-client (agent) software Now, installing the agent is very easy and has a smart feature. The client program is called andutteyed performs a system discovery by default on the first installation. This means that it will automatically detect mounted filesystems and started programs and add them to the default configuration, so initially you dont have to configure anything. Its later on whise though to add more monitors, your own monitoring programs or tweak alarm leves to the best for just this system. If you are installing the system by the rpm-package this discovery will be executed automatically, if you are installing from the tarball you have to execute it by hand. So now to the hands on commands for the client software. (rpm-package) *rpm -ivh /tmp/andutteye-client-1.25-1.noarch.rpm *Edit /opt/andutteye/etc/andutteyed.conf and change ANDUTTEYE_SERVER and ANDUTTEYE_PORT to the correct hostname and port that the agent shall report to. *Start the andutteye agent /etc/init.d/andutteyed start Done! Doesnt take more then 2 minutes tops! By tarball *cd / * tar -zxvf /tmp/andutteye-client-1.25-1.tar.gz * /opt/andutteye/bin/andutteyed -genconfig *Edit /opt/andutteye/etc/andutteyed.conf and change ANDUTTEYE_SERVER and ANDUTTEYE_PORT to the correct hostname and port that the agent shall report to. *Start the andutteye agent /etc/init.d/andutteyed start Done! Now to the server software. Since the server needs additional software to be able to work you have to make sure those applications work before you start the installation procedure of andutteye. Here is a short list of what you have to do before trying to install andutteye server. * Install Mysql * Install Apache (httpd) * Install PHP with mysql + GD-support * Install Perl-DBI * Install Perl-DBD-mysql When those applications are up and running we continiue with the installation of Andutteye Surveillance server. *rpm -ivh /tmp/andutteye-server-1.25-1.noarch.rpm *By tarbundle: cd / *By tarbundle: tar -zxvf /tmp/andutteye-server-1.25-1.tar.gz *Execute the installation program /var/www/html/andutteye/install/install.sh as root *Edit /var/www/html/andutteye/config/config.php and add set HOST,DB,USER,PASS to the information you just have set with the installation program. Also change the admin password to something hard. *Edit /opt/andutteye/server/andutteye_server and set DB, DBUSER, DBPWD to the information you just have set with the installation program. The installation and configuration are now complete. Now try to execute /opt/andutteye/server/andutteye_server by hand, no error messages shall appear. That means that Perl-DBI, Perl-DBD-mysql drivers are function perfectly. Start the server listener with /etc/init.d/andutteye_server start. The server will now accept incoming connections. Now try to browse to your server with a web browser to, for example, http://localhost/andutteye/index.php. If you have installed the software on localhost, the Andutteye Surveillance start page shall now appear. The first thing to do is to log on the web interface as admin using your admin password to create a normal user. Set the user's web interface theme and add permissions. User access can be granted at three levels: read, read-write, and read-write-delete, and are applied to each server individually after they have checked in for the first time. Now restart your andutteye-client(agent) with /etc/init.d/andutteyed restart. The server shall now appear under the hearbeat section in the web interface. To add more servers to monitor you just have to install the andutteye-client(agent) on them, start it up and it shall checkcin to the Andutteye-server. Some fast FAQ:s Can andutteye-client function without an andutteye-server? Answer:Yes andutteye-client can operate in standalone mode which can be good in environments where communications between servers is forbidden. For example in DMZ:as or other secure zones. Can you encrypt communications in Andutteye? Answer:Yes andutteye has support for encrypted communicatiion thru SSL and the Perl ssl module. For more information see the Andutteye documentation. Does andutteye uses portmap, rsh or other "unsafe" protocols. No andutteye has its own communication layer which is normal tcp communications. So no portmap, rsh, rexec or rpc solutions that many other products use. Does andutteye have any failover support if the server goes down?. Yes Andutteye-client has buildtin failover support that the administrator can specify so if one server or listener is down for some reason the agent tries to send the messages to the next specified node. Can andutteye perform any actions on triggered alarms?. Yes Andutteye client can execute recovery programs, notify administrators by email right away or on schedule, to be able to resolve issues before they get critical for the system. Does the server push out the configuration from the server to the monitored node? No, Andutteye client "asks" the server if its configuration is up-to-date, if not, the client automaticly retrieves the changes and updates its local configuration to the new one. I have a couple of programs myself, can i use them under andutteye? Yes under Andutteye's every section or as a recovery program, The every section is used to execute program on every run or on schedule to even more build up monitoring on the monitored node. Can i defined my own alarm messages? Yes, you can, in two places. Andutteye web interface has filter capabilities that can switch standard incoming messages to your own defined ones. Also the client has support for user-defined messages. You can get more information on Andutteye Surveillance official site Here and a complete features list under the Features section.

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