Learn how to – How To Install Icinga2 Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

Learn how to – How To Install Icinga2 Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Icinga 2 is an open source, scalable and extensible monitoring tool which checks the availability of your network resources, notifies users of outages, and generates performance data for reporting. Icinga 2 can monitor large, complex environments across multiple locations and has a web interface called Icinga Web 2

With Icinga 2  you can monitor:

• Server resources – RAM usage, CPU load, disk usage
• Network services –  HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, IMAP, POP3, NNTP, ping e.t.c
• Network devices – Routers and switches

Features of Icinga 2

These are the top features which Icinga 2 provides:

• Performance-oriented: Icinga 2 has a multithreaded design, it can run thousands of checks each second without any sign of CPU strain.
• Distributed Architecture: IFor large and complex environments do a distributed setup with high availability.
• REST API: Icinga 2 provides a RESTful API which enables you to update your configurations on the fly or show live information about current problems on your custom dashboards.
• Rule-based Configuration: Monitoring as code with dynamic configurations. Apply rules to hosts and services to create a continuous monitoring environment.
• Alerting: You get instant notifications when problems occur via email, text message or mobile message applications.
• Icinga 2 has native support for  Graphite and InfluxDB. You can easily send performance data gathered directly to the third party tools.
• Icinga 2 supportNagiosGrapher, PNP4Nagios, and InGraph addons

Install Icinga2 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

With the introduction and features covered, let’s start the actual installation of  Icinga2 on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS server.

Step 1: Update your system

Run the commands below to update your system and get the latest packages

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo reboot

Step 2: Install Apache and PHP

Icinga 2 needs a web server and PHP installed on the hosting server. Run below commands to have everything setup.

sudo apt-get install php php-{xml,cli,opcache,gd,intl,readline,mysql,curl,mbstring,ldap,json}

Install apache2 and libapache2-mod-php module.

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-php

Configure php timezone

$ sudo vim /etc/php/7.2/apache2/php.ini
date.timezone = Africa/Nairobi

Restart apache2 service

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 3: Install and Configure the MariaDB database server

Install MariaDB database on your Ubuntu 18.04 server using the link:

Install MariaDB 10.3 on Ubuntu 18.04 and CentOS 7

Once done with the installation, log in to the database as root user and create database and user.

$ mysql -u root -p

Create a database and user

CREATE DATABASE icinga2_db;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on icinga2_db.* to 'icinga2_user'@'localhost' identified by 'StrongPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
quit

Also, do the same for Icinga web 2.

CREATE DATABASE icingaweb2_db;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES on icingaweb2_db.* to 'icingaweb2_user'@'localhost' identified by 'StrongPassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Step 4: Install Icinga2 and Icinga Web 2

Start by importing repo GPG key:

curl -sSL https://packages.icinga.com/icinga.key | sudo apt-key add -

Add apt repository

echo "deb https://packages.icinga.com/ubuntu icinga-bionic main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/icinga.list

Run update of package list and install Icinga2 packages

sudo apt-get install icinga2 icingaweb2 icinga2-ido-mysql

Answer yes when asked whether Icinga 2 should use MySQL

Enable Icinga 2's ido-mysql feature? YES
Configure database for icinga2-ido-mysql with dbconfig-common? NO

Configure Icinga 2 Backend

When done, enable ido-mysql and command features.

sudo icinga2 feature enable command  ido-mysql

Then restart icinga2 after making the change

sudo systemctl restart icinga2.service

Import database schema:

mysql -u root icinga2_db -p < /usr/share/icinga2-ido-mysql/schema/mysql.sql

Configure Icinga2 MySQL IDO with created database and user account

sudo vim /etc/icinga2/features-enabled/ido-mysql.conf

Make changes like below:

/**
 * The db_ido_mysql library implements IDO functionality
 * for MySQL.
 */

library "db_ido_mysql"

object IdoMysqlConnection "ido-mysql" {
  user = "icinga2_user",
  password = "StrongPassword",
  host = "localhost",
  database = "icinga2_db"
}

Restart icinga2 service after saving the changes

sudo systemctl restart icinga2

Configure Icinga2 on Web Interface

You need to create a setup token for use on web configuration

$ sudo icingacli setup token create
The newly generated setup token is: 75e269c261a15615

Take note of the given token ID. On your web browser, open and the URL:

http://serverdomain/icingaweb2 or http://server-ip-address/icingaweb2

This should take you to configuration wizard page

• Provide generated token ID and click Next. 
• On the next page, select modules you want to enable and click Next.
• The next page will do a check if all PHP modules are installed.
• On the next page, select Authentication type, the default is MySQL
• Provide MySQL database settings

• On Monitoring IDO Resource page, provide Icinga2 database settings configured earlier
• Please define below how you want to send commands to your monitoring instance.

• Configure Monitoring Security
• Configure admin user

g

• Finish the setup to get the Login page. Enter admin account username and password created earlier.

Configure Icinga 2 master node

# icinga2 node wizard
Welcome to the Icinga 2 Setup Wizard!

We will guide you through all required configuration details.

Please specify if this is a satellite/client setup ('n' installs a master setup) [Y/n]: n                                                            

Starting the Master setup routine...

Please specify the common name (CN) [ubuntu-01]: icinga2-master
Reconfiguring Icinga...
Checking for existing certificates for common name 'icinga2-master'...
Certificates not yet generated. Running 'api setup' now.
Generating master configuration for Icinga 2.
Enabling feature api. Make sure to restart Icinga 2 for these changes to take effect.                                                                
Please specify the API bind host/port (optional):
Bind Host []: 0.0.0.0
Bind Port []:

Done.

Now restart your Icinga 2 daemon to finish the installation!

sudo systemctl restart icinga2.service

To generate a ticket for the client on the master node, use syntax

# icinga2 pki ticket --cn 'clientname'

In our next article, we will cover the configuration of Icinga 2 clients to be monitored.