New Relic's infrastructure monitoring agent is a lightweight executable file that collects data about your hosts. It also forwards data from infrastructure integrations to New Relic, as well as log data for log analytics.
There are multiple ways to install and deploy the infrastructure monitoring agent, depending on your setup and needs. This document describes how the infrastructure monitoring agent works and how to install it.
Tip
To use infrastructure monitoring and the rest of our observability platform, join the New Relic family! Sign up to create your free account in only a few seconds. Then ingest up to 100GB of data for free each month. Forever.
Quick start: Use our guided install
The quickest way to get started with our infrastructure monitoring agent is through our guided install.
Ready to get started? Click one of these button to try it out.
Our guided install not only installs the infrastructure agent, but also discovers the applications and log sources running in your environment. It recommends which ones you should instrument.
The guided install works with most setups. But if it doesn't suit your needs, you can find other methods below to get started monitoring your infrastructure.
One agent, many capabilities
Our infrastructure monitoring agent collects performance and health data about the system resources and processes of the host where it's enabled (on-premises or virtualized). At the same time, it acts as a forwarder for two types of data: core services metrics, which are collected by on-host integrations, and logs.
If you want to collect data about core services running on your host, you need to install the infrastructure monitoring agent first, and then install or enable on-host integrations.
Our infrastructure monitoring agent and its integrations collect data from the system and core services. It can also forward logs to New Relic. Backend application metrics (APM) are collected by separate language agents. Notice how each integration and forwarder feed different data types in the New Relic database (NRDB).
Install the infrastructure monitoring agent
If our guided install doesn't work for your setup, follow the instructions for your Linux, Windows, or other setup.
The infrastructure monitoring agent can currently run on many Linux distributions, as well as Windows Server. For more information on where you can run the agent, check the compatibility and requirements page.
Linux
The preferred way to install the Linux agent is through the package manager of your distribution. Select your distribution from the list for step-by-step instructions.
To use these installation links, you must be logged to your New Relic account.
If you don't have a New Relic account yet, or if you prefer to follow the procedure manually, see our tutorial. For advanced install needs, you can deploy the agent using our tarball files in assisted or manual mode.
Windows Server and 10
To deploy the agent on a Windows Server host, install it using our MSI installer. For a guided procedure, click the button below and follow the step-by-step instructions:
If you don't have a New Relic account yet, or prefer to follow the procedure manually, see our tutorial. For advanced installation needs, you can deploy the agent using our zip files in assisted or manual mode.
Other installation scenarios
The infrastructure monitoring agent can be deployed programmatically using several config management and deploy tools:
-
Ansible -
Chef -
Docker (install as container) -
Elastic Beanstalk -
Puppet
Check the source code
The infrastructure monitoring agent is open source software. That means you can browse its source code and send improvements, or create your own fork and build it. For more information, see the README.
What's next
After you've installed the infrastructure monitoring agent:
Learn how to configure the agent or edit the config template.
Install on-host integrations (for example, for Apache or MySQL).
Learn how to manage the agent.
For more help
If you need more help, check out these support and learning resources:
- Browse the Explorers Hub to get help from the community and join in discussions.
- Find answers on our sites and learn how to use our support portal.
- Run New Relic Diagnostics, our troubleshooting tool for Linux, Windows, and macOS.
- Review New Relic's data security and licenses documentation.