Enable Linux monitoring in N-able N-central

Last Modified

Wed Apr 05 16:13 GMT 2023

Description

  • Linux has two possibilities to enable monitoring on the device. While you can chose which method you would like to use for the monitoring, SNMP allows for much more capabilities in extending monitoring for Linux devices. This article will help explain the two, and how you might enable one or both and provide some clarity to this use case.

Environment

  • N-able N-central
  • Linux

Solution

If you choose to use the agent you must remember that you are limited to the Operating Systems that the agent will support.

Linux Agent Support

  • CentOS 7 (32/64-bit)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (32/64-bit)

Manually add your device to N-able N-central

  1. From the customer view, go to All Devices and click Add.
  2. Click More Options and Add Device under Manually Create a Device that Represents an External Website or IP Address.
  3. Fill in the Given Name and Network Address fields and choose a License Mode.
  4. Click Local Agent.
  5. Select Install Local Agent, and select Manual for Using.
  6. Click Save.

Install your device using the activation key

  1. Go to Views > All Devices and click the device Name.
  2. Select Settings > LocalAgent. The Activation Key is displayed under the Installation & Upgrade Details heading.
  3. Select the appropriate Service Organization or Customer.
  4. Go to Actions > Download Agent/Probe Software > System Software.
  5. Click the appropriate version of the agent to download.
  6. Open a Linux console on the device on which you want to install the agent, and go to the location of the downloaded file.
  7. Switch to root by typing: su root
  8. Unzip the downloaded file by typing: tar -zxf, where is the downloaded file (for example, nagent-rhel_64.tar.gz).
  9. Navigate to the new folder. For example, cd nagentrhel6.1
  10. Run the installation script. For example, en: ./install.sh
  11. Enter 1 in the Linux agent configuration menu, and press Enter.
  12. Enter 1 in the sub-menu, and press Enter.
  13. Enter the Activation Key.
    Note: You can configure multiple addresses for an Agent to communicate with both a primary and backup N-able N-central server. When typing multiple addresses, they must be separated by a comma but with no spaces between the different addresses and the comma.
  14. Enter Y in the Confirm Settings dialog box to confirm the settings.
  15. Enter 3 when the Agent installation is completed, and press Enter.

However, you are limited with what you can monitor with the N-able N-central Agent.

With SNMP (or probe-based monitoring), you are not limited by anything other than the OS ability to run SNMP and the information that is stored in the devices MIB. Generally, SNMP is widely used as the best approach to monitor Linux type devices.

Without an agent, you will be able to use the following generic services:

  • CPU (SNMP)
  • DISK (SNMP)
  • MEMORY (SNMP)
  • Process
  • Custom Services