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amplify-faq.md

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1. General

1.1. What Is NGINX Amplify?

NGINX Amplify is a tool for comprehensive NGINX monitoring. With Amplify it becomes possible to proactively analyze and fix problems related to running and scaling NGINX-based web application architectures.

You can use NGINX Amplify to do the following:

  • Visualize and identify NGINX performance bottlenecks, overloaded servers, or potential DDoS attacks
  • Improve and optimize NGINX performance with intelligent advice and recommendations
  • Get notified when something is wrong with application delivery
  • Plan web application capacity and performance
  • Keep track of the systems running NGINX

1.2. Where Is the Main System Hosted?

NGINX Amplify SaaS is currently hosted in AWS us-west-1 (US West, N. California).

1.3. Is the Traffic from the Agent to the SaaS Protected?

All communications between the Amplify Agent and the Amplify SaaS backend are done securely over SSL/TLS. All traffic is always initiated by the agent. The backend system doesn't set up any connections back to the agent.

1.4. Is the Amplify Agent Code Publicly Available?

Amplify Agent is an open source application. It is licensed under the 2-clause BSD license, and is available here.

1.5. What is This Question About My Password When Installing the Agent?

It could be that you're starting the install script from a non-root account. In this case you will need sudo rights. While it depends on a particular system configuration, with a non-root account sudo will typically ask for a password.

2. NGINX Amplify Agent

2.1. What Operating Systems Are Supported?

NGINX Amplify Agent currently works on the following Linux flavors only:

  • Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, 15.04, 15.10
  • Debian 7, 8
  • CentOS 6, 7
  • Red Hat 6, 7 (and systems based on it, e.g. Oracle Server)
  • Amazon Linux (latest release)
  • Gentoo Linux (experimental Ebuild)

2.2. What Version of Python is Required?

NGINX Amplify Agent will work with Python 2.6+.

2.3. How Do I Activate Monitoring for a System?

  1. Download and run the install script.

    # curl -sS -L -O \
https://github.com/nginxinc/nginx-amplify-agent/raw/master/packages/install.sh && \
API_KEY='ecfdee2e010899135c258d741a6effc7' sh ./install.sh

    where API_KEY is a unique API key assigned when you create an account with Amplify. You can also find the API key in the Account Information menu.

  2. Verify that Amplify Agent has started.

    # ps ax | grep -i 'amplify\-'
2552 ?        S      0:00 amplify-agent

For manual installation instructions, please check the user guide here.

2.4. What Do I Need to Configure for the Amplify Agent to Properly Report Metrics?

After you install and start the agent, normally it should just start reporting right away, pushing aggregated data to the Amplify backend at regular 1 minute intervals. It'll take about a minute for the new system to appear in the Amplify web interface.

If you don't see the new system in the web interface, or metrics aren't being collected, please check the following:

  1. The Amplify Agent package has been successfully installed.
  2. The amplify-agent process is running.
  3. stub_status is properly set up in your NGINX configuration.
  4. NGINX access.log and error.log files are readable by the user nginx (or by the user configured in NGINX config).
  5. Extra configuration steps have been performed as required for the additional metrics to be collected.
  6. The system DNS resolver is properly configured, and receiver.amplify.nginx.com can be successfully resolved.
  7. Oubound TLS/SSL from the system to receiver.amplify.nginx.com is not restricted.
  8. selinux(8) is not interfering. Check /etc/selinux/config, try setenforce 0 temporarily and see if it improves the situation for certain metrics.

2.5. How Do I Verify that the Amplify Agent Is Correctly Installed?

  1. On Ubuntu/Debian use:
    # dpkg -s nginx-amplify-agent
  1. On CentOS and Red Hat use:
    # yum info nginx-amplify-agent

2.6. How Can I Update the Amplify Agent?

  1. On Ubuntu/Debian use:
    # apt-get update && \
    apt-get install nginx-amplify-agent

    # service amplify-agent restart
  1. On CentOS use:
    # yum makecache && \
    yum update nginx-amplify-agent

    # service amplify-agent restart

2.7. What System Resources Are Required?

We worked very hard to make the agent consume as little memory and CPU as possible. Normally it shouldn't be more than a few % of CPU time and around 25–30MB of RSS memory. If you notice any anomalies in the system resource consumption, please fill in a support ticket through Intercom.

2.8. How Do I Restart the Amplify Agent?

It's as simple as

    # service amplify-agent restart

2.9 How Can I Uninstall the Amplify Agent?

  1. On Ubuntu/Debian use:
    apt-get remove nginx-amplify-agent
  1. On CentOS and Red Hat use:
    yum remove nginx-amplify-agent

2.10 How Can I Override a System's Hostname?

If the agent is not able to determine the system's hostname, you can define it manually in /etc/amplify-agent/agent.conf

Check for the following section, and fill in the desired hostname:

    [credentials]
    ..
    hostname = myhostname1

The hostname should be something real—the following aren't valid hostnames:

  • localhost
  • localhost.localdomain
  • localhost6.localdomain6
  • ip6-localhost

3. User Interface

3.1. What Browsers are Supported?

Currently the following desktop browsers are fully supported:

  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Safari
  • Opera

3.2. Is the Web Interface Traffic Secure?

We only support SSL/TLS connections to the Amplify web interface.

3.3. How Can I Delete a System or an NGINX Instance from Monitoring?

If the goal is to completely delete a previously monitored object, then do the following:

  1. Uninstall the agent
  2. Delete objects from the web interface
  3. Delete alarms

To delete a system using the web interface—find it in the list, hover, click the vertical dots on the right, extend the toolbar and choose the [i] icon. You can delete objects from the popup window that appears next.

Bear in mind—deleting objects there will not stop the agent. To completely remove a system from monitoring, please stop or uninstall the agent first, and then clean it up in the web interface. Don't forget to also clean up any alarms.

4. Metrics and Metadata

4.1. What Metrics and Metadata Are Collected?

NGINX Amplify Agent collects the following types of data:

  • System metadata. This is basic information about the OS environment where the agent runs. This could be the hostname, uptime information, OS flavor, and other data.
  • System metrics. This is various data describing key system characteristics, e.g. CPU usage, memory usage, network traffic, etc.
  • NGINX metadata. This is what describes your NGINX instances, and it includes package data, build information, the path to the binary, build configuration options, etc. NGINX metadata also includes the NGINX configuration elements.
  • NGINX metrics. Amplify Agent collects NGINX related metrics from stub_status, and also from the NGINX log files.

Amplify Agent will mostly use Python's psutil() to collect the data, but may occasionally invoke certain system utilities like ps(1).

4.2. How Is the NGINX Configuration Parsed and Analyzed?

Amplify Agent is able to automatically find all relevant NGINX configuration files, parse them, extract their logical structure, and send the associated JSON data to the Amplify backend for further analysis and reporting.

For more information on configuration analysis and reports see the Amplify documentation.