SignalFx Agent Ansible Role

This is the signalfx-agent Ansible role that will install and configure the SignalFx Smart Agent on your remote hosts. To install it, you can clone the agent repo to your controller and add the signalfx-agent role directory to its roles_path in your ansible.cfg, or use this document's directory as your working directory. The role is also available via Ansible Galaxy:

ansible-galaxy install signalfx.smart_agent

To use this role, simply include the signalfx-agent role invocation in your playbook (or signalfx.smart_agent if installed via Galaxy). An ansible-playbook call using the provided example playbook and variable files would be similar to:

ansible-playbook -i your_inventory_file -e @example-config.yml example-playbook.yml

This role sources the following variables:

• sfx_agent_config: A mapping that gets converted to the Smart Agent configuration YAML file. See the Agent Config Schema for a full list of acceptable options and their default values. The only required key-value pair is signalFxAccessToken.

  Here is a basic sfx_agent_config that will monitor a basic set of host-level components:

  sfx_agent_config:
    signalFxAccessToken: MY-TOKEN  # Required
    monitors:
      - type: cpu
      - type: filesystems
      - type: disk-io
      - type: net-io
      - type: load
      - type: memory
      - type: vmem
      - type: host-metadata
      - type: processlist

  It is suggested to keep this mapping in a variable file in the respective group_vars or host_vars directory for your target remote hosts, or to pass it in via the -e @path/to/variable_file ansible-playbook extra vars option for a "global" configuration.

• sfx_conf_file_path: The target path for the Smart Agent configuration file generated from sfx_agent_config (default: '/etc/signalfx/agent.yaml'). See sfx_win_conf_file_path for Windows platforms.

• sfx_repo_base_url: The url provided to yum/apt for obtaining the SignalFx Smart Agent (default: https://splunk.jfrog.io/splunk)

• sfx_package_stage: The package repo stage to use: release, beta, or test (default: 'release')

• sfx_version: The agent package version. This is of the form <agent version>-<package revision> (e.g. package version 3.0.1-1 is the first package revision that contains the agent version 3.0.1). Releases with package revision > 1 contain changes to some aspect of the packaging scripts (e.g. init scripts) but contain the same agent bundle. (default: 'latest')

• sfx_service_user and sfx_service_group: Set the user/group ownership for the signalfx-agent service. The user/group will be created if they do not exist. Requires agent package version 5.1.0 or newer. (default: 'signalfx-agent'). Not used in Windows platforms.

• sfx_service_state: Set the state of signalfx-agent service. (default: 'started')

• sfx_win_install_path: The Windows installation path. (default: 'C:\Program Files\SignalFxAgent')

• sfx_win_conf_file_path: The Windows agent configuration file path. (default: '\ProgramData\SignalFxAgent\agent.yaml')

• sfx_win_dl_base_url: The base URL for Windows agent downloading (default: 'https://dl.signalfx.com')

• sfx_skip_repo (Linux only): If installing the agent from a custom or self-hosted apt/yum repo, set to true to skip the installation of the default repo (default: false)

Note: On Linux, after the signalfx-agent role is deployed, Ansible will manage the signalfx-agent service via the Ansible core service module. This module will automatically determine the host's init system for starting/stopping the signalfx-agent service, with a preference for systemd (systemctl).