Install Icinga2 and Icingaweb2 In One Go

We DevOps has a famous saying, “If it's not monitored, then it's not production”

Monitoring is a crucial part of any deployment. There are lots of tools out there that can be used for this purpose, the choice will depend on the requirement and also on the features of those respective tools.

Icinga2 is one of the most famous monitoring tools among them.

It can be used to monitor cloud deployments as well as on-premise deployments.

Icinga2 consists of two components

• Icinga2 server is the master server that gathers all the monitoring data and displays them. The master server consists of a daemon process (Icinga2) that runs in the background and a web app (Icingaweb2) that is used to display the results from the browser
• Nagios Remote Plugin Executor (NRPE) agents which run on the application servers and are used to publish monitoring data to the master server

In this article, I will provide a step by step guide to configure both master and agent on Red Hat 8

Configure Icinga2 Master

Below is the list of commands you would need to execute

Enable Powertools and EPEL repository

sudo dnf -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install -y 'dnf-command(config-manager)'
sudo dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools
sudo dnf install -y epel-release

Update package manager index

sudo dnf clean all
sudo dnf makecache

Install Apache

sudo yum install httpd -y

Start apache service and ensure it starts at server boot

sudo systemctl start httpd.service
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service

Install Maria DB

sudo yum install mariadb mariadb-server -y

Start Maria DB service and ensure it starts at boot

sudo systemctl start mariadb.service
sudo systemctl enable mariadb.service

Secure database installation

sudo /usr/bin/mysql_secure_installation

Install the PHP modules

sudo yum install php php-gd php-intl php-ldap php-ZendFramework php-ZendFramework-Db-Adapter-Pdo-Mysql -y

Set the timezone on php

Open file

sudo vi /etc/php.ini

Change below line accordingly

date.timezone = America/Los_Angeles

Start PHP FPM service

sudo systemctl enable --now php-fpm.service

Restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Install Icinga2 and Nagios plugins

sudo rpm --import http://packages.icinga.org/icinga.key 
sudo dnf install -y https://packages.icinga.com/epel/8/release/noarch/icinga-rpm-release/icinga-rpm-release-8-4.el8.icinga.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install icinga2 nagios-plugins-all -y

Start Icinga2 service and ensure it starts at boot

sudo systemctl start icinga2.service
sudo systemctl enable icinga2.service

Enable Icinga IDO (Icinga Data Output) modules for MySql

sudo yum install icinga2-ido-mysql -y

Configure the database

Login to the DB

mysql -u root -p

Create a database for Icinga2

CREATE DATABASE icinga;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON icinga.* TO 'icinga'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'icinga';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Create a database for Icingaweb

CREATE DATABASE icingaweb2db;

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON icingaweb2db.* to icingaweb2@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'icinga123';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Import Icinga2 IDO schema to the database we created

mysql -u root -p icinga < /usr/share/icinga2-ido-mysql/schema/mysql.sql

Enable IDO MySQL module

sudo vi /etc/icinga2/features-available/ido-mysql.conf

Uncomment the lines on the file so it would look as below

user = "icinga"
password = "icinga"
host = "localhost"
database = "icinga"

Now enable ido-mysql feature

sudo icinga2 feature enable ido-mysql
sudo systemctl restart icinga2.service

Install Icingaweb2

Setup external command pipeline

sudo icinga2 feature enable command
sudo systemctl restart icinga2.service

add “apache” user to “icingacmd” group

sudo usermod -a -G icingacmd apache

Install Icingaweb2 and Icingacli

sudo yum install icingaweb2 icingacli -y

Install Icingaweb2 selinux module

sudo yum install icingaweb2-selinux -y

Point apache webroot to icingaweb directory

sudo icingacli setup config webserver apache --document-root /usr/share/icingaweb2/public
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Generate setup token

sudo icingacli setup token create

Open your browser and navigate to Icinga2 setup page

http://<your-server-ip>/icingaweb2/setup

On the welcome page enter the setup token which was generated above

On the Authentication page select “Database” as the authentication method

On database resource page enter the details as below

• Resource Name*: icingaweb_db
• Database Type*: MySQL
• Host*: localhost
• Database Name*: icingaweb2
• Username*: icingaweb2
• Password*: icinga123

On the next page use icingaweb2 as the default Authentication Backend

On the next page enter the username and password which you would use to login to the Icingaweb2 from the browser

You don't need to change anything on the next page

On the next page review your settings and click next

On the next page click next to start configuring the monitoring module for Icingaweb2

On the next page set backend name as icinga and backend type as IDO

On the next page enter the details of Icinga database we created above.

Change only the below fields, leave the rest as it is.

Username: icinga

Password: icinga

Database Name: icinga

On the next page select the command transport.

Choose “Local Command File” as the transport type. Leave the rest of fields as it is and click next.

You don't need to do any changes to the next window. Click next.

On the next window review the configurations

Click Finish

Icinga2 and Icingaweb2 setup is now complete

Access the Icinga UI

After authenticating you will see the Icinga dashboard