Setting up Collection Agents

Depending on your environment, you can choose to use an agent type (Collection Station or Collection Agent) that is suitable to your data collection purposes. If you decide to use the Collection Agent for your data collection purposes, then you use one of the following types of Collection Agents.

• Standalone Collection Agent – a light-weight mechanism to collect data locally from the target hosts; this Agent is bundled with the product and does not require the PATROL infrastructure.
• Collection Agent available for the PATROL infrastructure – same as the standalone Agent, but it is specifically designed to run on target hosts that have existing PATROL Agents installed and running on them.

To be able to use a Collection Agent for data collection, you need to first set it up.

This topic provides information about setting up Collection Agents:

Setting up Collection Agents available for the PATROL infrastructure

If you already have PATROL components installed in your environment, and you want to use the Collection Agent for data collection, then you need to first install PATROL for IT Data Analytics. After completing the installation, you need to configure Collection Agents by using PATROL for IT Data Analytics.

PATROL for IT Data Analytics not only helps you configure Collection Agents to collect data, it also helps you monitor the health and performance of the configured Collection Agents.

This following table provides links to the PATROL for IT Data Analytics online documentation portal. These links provide information about installing, configuring, and using PATROL for IT Data Analytics.

Setting up standalone Collection Agents

To collect data by using the standalone Collection Agent, you need to perform the following tasks:

BMC recommends that you not install the standalone Collection Agent on the computer where the product is already installed. To collect data from the computer where all the components of the product are installed, you must use the Collection Station. If the Collection Station is not able to handle the current load, then you need to consider scaling the Collection Station. For more information, see  Multiple-server deployment .

For information about upgrading standalone Collection Agents, see Upgrading the standalone Collection Agent.

Configuring the Collection Agent

If you expect a significant change in the amount of data that is sent to the Collection Station, you must configure the Collection Agent to meet the change in data load. This configuration is required for all types of Collection Agents.

To configure the Collection Agent

1. Navigate to the %BMC_ITDA_HOME%\agent\collection\conf directory.
2. Make a backup copy of the existing flume.conf file.

3. Depending on your setup and data load, download one of the following configuration files:

   Setup / Data Load	File
   Small	flume-smallcollectionagent.conf
   Medium	flume-medcollectionagent.conf
   Large	flume-largecollectionagent.conf

4. Rename the downloaded file as flume.conf and save it in the configuration directory, %BMC_ITDA_HOME%\agent\collection\conf.
5. Restart the Collection Agent.

Where to go from here

• Start data collection in one of the following ways:
  • To actually start data collection, create data collector by setting the Collection Host (Agent) to Collection Station or Collection Agent. For more information, see Collecting data into the system. OR
  • To automatically create particular kinds of data collectors, create collection profiles that define data collector templates. For more information, see Creating multiple data collectors with collection profiles.
• Create data patterns that define how data must be indexed. This information is necessary while creating data collectors. For more information, see Editing or cloning data patterns.
• (Optional) Create hosts to capture host credentials to subsequently use while creating data collectors. For more information, see Setting up host profiles for target computers.
• (Optional) Create credential profiles to capture system credentials to subsequently use while creating data collectors. For more information, see Setting up credentials to access the target computers.