How to monitor your Linux servers with Checkmk

3 years ago 376

Find retired however to acceptable up the almighty Checkmk show to support tabs connected each of your networked servers.

As a systems/network administrator, it's connected you to support tabs connected the Linux servers successful your information halfway (be it on-premise oregon successful the cloud). Given the Linux level has a important fig of tools to assistance you show those servers, you mightiness not cognize wherever to start. Among those galore titles, determination is 1 peculiar bundle bundle that you should decidedly effort out. Said show is Checkmk.

Checkmk tin show your servers, desktops, applications, networks and unreality environments, each from a well-designed web-based GUI dashboard.

I'm going to locomotion you done the process of installing Checkmk and past adding a monitoring agent. We'll bash some connected Ubuntu Server 20.04, but cognize that this bundle supports Debian- and RHEL-based distributions.

There are 2 antithetic versions of Checkmk:

Raw - the afloat unfastened root mentation that doesn't see each feature.
Enterprise - this includes the Free mentation (which limits you to 25 hosts aft 30 days, Standard and Managed Services edition). Find retired much astir pricing and features connected the Checkmk editions matrix.

SEE: Checklist: Server inventory (TechRepublic Premium)

What you'll request

To instal Checkmk, you'll request a moving lawsuit of Ubuntu Server 20.04 and a idiosyncratic with sudo privileges. That's it. Let's get that server show up and running.

How to instal Checkmk

You won't find Checkmk successful the modular repositories. Instead, caput implicit to the download leafage and either download the mentation you privation to usage oregon log into your Ubuntu Server and contented the command:

wget https://download.checkmk.com/checkmk/2.0.0p9/check-mk-raw-2.0.0p9_0.focal_amd64.deb

You'll privation to snag the download URL by right-clicking the Download fastener (after selecting the mentation you want).

Once the download is complete, instal Checkmk with:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

The installation volition mistake out. To hole this, contented the command:

sudo apt-get instal -f

The supra bid volition instal each of the indispensable dependencies for Checkmk.

How to make a Checkmk monitoring tract

The adjacent measurement is to make everything indispensable for a Checkmk monitoring tract (which is truly conscionable a fancy word for a Checkmk instance). Let's telephone our lawsuit tr_test. We'll make that lawsuit with the command:

sudo omd make tr_test

The output of the bid volition springiness you the code of the web-based GUI and the admin login credentials for your instance. With this taken attraction of, commencement the lawsuit with:

sudo omd commencement tr_test

How to entree the web-based GUI

Open a web browser and constituent it to http://SERVER/tr_test (where SERVER is the IP code of the hosting server). Give the tract clip to load and past login with the admin credentials supplied to you by the make command. Upon palmy authentication, you'll find yourself connected the Checkmk main dashboard (Figure A).

Figure A

How to adhd a caller big

At the moment, Checkmk isn't monitoring anything. What we request to bash is adhd a host. We'll adhd the server hosting Checkmk arsenic an example.

On the near sidebar, click Setup | Agents. In the resulting leafage (Figure B), right-click check-mk-agent_2.0.0p9-1_all.dpkg and transcript the address.

Figure B

Go backmost to the terminal model and download the cause with:

wget URL

Where URL is the code of the cause you copied.

Install the cause with:

sudo dpkg -i check-mk-agent_2.0.0p9-1_all.dpkg

After the cause installs, spell backmost to the Checkmk tract and click Settings | Host, and past click Add Host. On the resulting leafage (Figure C), you'll request to participate the hostname of the big to beryllium added and past click the checkbox for IPv4 address.

Figure C

Click Save & spell to work configuration. Eventually, this caller leafage volition database retired each of the recovered services (Figure D).

Figure D

If immoderate services are listed arsenic Undecided, click Fix each to lick that problem.

At this point, Checkmk is not monitoring the server connected which it is hosted. You tin present spell backmost to the dashboard and commencement customizing it to presumption what you request for that host. You tin besides proceed adding agents to different servers and past adhd them arsenic hosts connected Checkmk.