Auto Deployment

If you need to install the agent onto several servers or run an automated environment, there are a couple of ways you can mass deploy the agent. Using our automated script will help with multiple installs whereas our auto-copy using the same agent key will help with automated deployments.

Auto-copy using the same agent key

If you are using something like Amazon EC2, you specify a standardised machine image which is used as the base for all your virtual machine instances. Instead of having to manually configure the agent for each server, you can use the same config file with the same agent key for every server and Server Density will detect the different machines, automatically copying the settings from the original server to a new one. This includes any configured alerts for that server.

See Cloud Deployment for more details (applicable even if you're not using the so-called cloud).

Using our automated script

We have an automatic deployment script which will automatically install the agent and add the new server into your account. All you need to do is run the script and then launch the agent on each server.

1. Download

The script is bundled with the agent package but is also available as a separate download.

wget http://www.serverdensity.com/downloads/sd-deploy.tar.gz

2. Extract

Once downloaded, you need to extract the agent files. They will be extracted to the current directory:

tar xvfz sd-deploy.tar.gz

3. Execute

The script is written in Python and can be executed using the following command line:

python sd-deploy.py [API URL] [SD URL] [username] [password] [[init]]

Arguments

[API URL] - The URL to the API endpoint. For hosted Server Density users this will be http://api.serverdensity.com.
[SD URL] - The URL to your Server Density account. For hosted Server Density users this will be example.serverdensity.com where example is your account subdomain.
[username] - The username of a Server Density user with API access (see below).
[password] - The password of a Server Density user with API access (see below).
[[init]] (optional) - If this is specified, the deploy script will also install the init.d startup scripts. The deploy script must be run as root for this option to work.

Example usage

To install without the init.d scripts:

python sd-deploy.py http://api.serverdensity.com example.serverdensity.com ausername apassword

Or to install with the init.d scripts:

python sd-deploy.py http://api.serverdensity.com example.serverdensity.com ausername apassword init

API User

The deploy script uses the Server Density API to add the new server and so you must specify the login details of a user with API access. To enable API access:

Log into your Server Density account as an admin user.
Click the Users tab.
Click Edit next to the user you wish to enable API access for.
Tick the API enabled? box and click Edit.
This user now has access to the API using their username and password.

4. Launch

All that is left to do is launch the newly installed agent.

If you did not install the init.d scripts

python /path/to/sd-agent/agent.py start

If you did install the init.d scripts

/etc/init.d/sd-agent start