Install agent and certificate on Linux computers using the command line

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Important

This version of Operations Manager has reached the end of support. We recommend you to upgrade to Operations Manager 2022.

This article provides details of the latest version of the Linux agent for System Center Operations Manager 1801 and the process for installing it.

This version of the Linux agent supports Fluentd, an open source data collector for Linux that collects data from a variety of sources. The existing OMI based monitoring for currently supported Linux workloads will continue to work without change.

What's new in version 1801

  1. A new converter plugin is included that enables customers to use third party plugins for Operations Manager log file monitoring.
  2. Added support to Server Authentication.
  3. Added support to additional Linux distros.

Supported platforms

The Linux distributions in the following table are supported in this release.

Linux Operating System Version Supported
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5 (x86/x64)
6 (x86/x64)
7 (x86/x64)
Cent OS 5 (x86/x64)
6 (x86/x64)
7 (x64)
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (x86/x64)
14.04 LTS (x86/x64)
16.04 LTS (x86/x64)
Debian 6 (x86/x64)
7 (x86/x64)
8 (x86/x64)
Oracle Linux 5 (x86/x64)
6 (x86/x64)
7 (x64)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86/x64)
12 (x64)

Upgrade from the existing Operations Manager/OMS agents isn't currently supported.

Supported deployment configurations

Operations Manager supports the following agent reporting configurations in the management group.

  1. Linux servers reporting directly to a management server
  2. Linux server reporting to a Gateway server
  3. Linux servers reporting to a chained Gateway server

Agent installation

You can choose to install the latest version of the Linux agent for Operations Manager using automatic discovery or manual installation. Automatic discovery hasn't changed since the previous version, and you can follow the same procedure at Discover and install agent on UNIX and Linux.

Use the following procedures to manually install agents to UNIX and Linux computers. The agent packages can be found in the following folder on a management server - %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft System Center\Operations Manager\Server\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\DownloadedKits after you import the required management packs for the specific version of UNIX/Linux you need to monitor. The management packs are available in the Operations Manager installation media in the \ManagementPacks directory.

Manual installation

The agent is provided as a self-extracting, installable shell script bundle. This bundle contains both Debian and RPM packages for each of the agent components and can be installed directly or extracted to retrieve the individual packages. Separate bundles are available for x64 and x86 architectures.

This will require the following steps:

  1. Install the agent and register Operations Manager as your workspace
  2. Open TCP port on management server or gateway server
  3. Configure a server authentication certificate
  4. Discover the Linux server using the Discovery Wizard

The following sections describe the steps required to manually install the Linux agent.

Install agent

  1. The agent install bundles will be located in %Program Files%\Microsoft System Center\Operations Manager\Server\AgentManagement\UnixAgents\DownloadedKits. Transfer the appropriate bundle (x86 or x64) to the Linux computer, using scp/sftp.

  2. Install the bundle with the following command. The enable-opsmgr parameter ensures that port 1270 is open for the management server to communicate with the agent.

    sudo sh ./omsagent-1.4.0-45.universald.1.x64.sh --install --enable-opsmgr

  3. Run the omsadmin.sh command supplying scom for your workspace ID. This command must be run as root (with sudo elevation). This script will generate a certificate at /etc/opt/microsoft/omsagent/scom/certs/scom-cert.pem, which will need to be signed by the Management Server in a later step.

    /opt/microsoft/omsagent/bin/omsadmin.sh -w scom

  4. Create a configuration file called omsadmin.conf in /etc/opt/microsoft/omsagent/scom/conf/ with the following contents. Fill in the name of the machine and use 8886 for the port of the OMED service.

    WORKSPACE_ID=scom SCOM_ENDPOINT=https://<FQDN_OF_OM_MACHINE>:<PORT_OF_OMED_SERVICE>

Configure TCP port for OMED service

Operations Manager requires that TCP port 8886 be used to establish inbound communication between the Linux agent and the management server or gateway server to enable data collection.

Configure certificates

In the previous version of the Linux agent, the management server accessed each Linux computer with a server authentication certificate. With the new agent, Fluentd acts as the client accessing the management server, so the certificate requires client authentication. You need to obtain a new certificate to work with the new agent. Operations Manager will use the new certificate for Fluentd communications and the old certificate for other communications.

  1. Locate/etc/opt/omi/ssl/omi-host-<hostname>.pem and /etc/opt/microsoft/omsagent/scom/certs/scom-cert.pem on the Linux computer and copy them to any location on the management server.

  2. Open a command prompt on the management server and run the following command to sign your certificate.

    scxcertconfig -sign omi-host-<hostname>.pem omi_new.pem and scxcertconfig -sign scom-cert.pem scom-cert_new.pem

  3. Copy the file - omi_new.pem to /etc/opt/omi/ssl/ and scom-cert_new.pem to /etc/opt/microsoft/omsagent/scom/certs/ on the Linux computer. Remove the old certificate files and rename the new certificate files to replace them.

Restart the agent

  1. Restart the agent with the following command.

    scxadmin –restart

Discovery

After you've manually deployed agents to UNIX and Linux computers, they still need to be discovered by Operations Manager using the Discovery Wizard. For the Discovery type, select Discover only computers with the UNIX/Linux agent installed. For more information, see Install Agent on UNIX and Linux using the Discovery Wizard.

Next steps