How to Install PandoraFMS Server on CentOS 7 / RHEL 7 – Monitoring Solution for your Infrastructure

Pandora FMS is a flexible monitoring solution for your servers, networks, virtual infrastructure, and applications. It is a Free software and released under GNU General Public License.

Pandora FMS is highly scalable, and it is very well suitable for complex, dynamic and larger environments.

Pandora FMS can be used to monitor the status and performance of servers, databases, web servers, applications and network hardware systems such as firewalls or routers.

Pandora FMS uses WMI, SNMP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, HTTP protocols and server agents to collect performance metrics. Also, it uses TCP/IP stack for monitoring the hardware systems such as load balancers, router, printer or switches.

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Components of Pandora FMS:

Pandora Server:

Pandora Server is a bundle of twelve different servers, which are in charge of collecting and processing data ex. The data server processes the information sent by the agents where as The network server executes the remote monitoring tasks.

Pandora server is also responsible for inserting the gathered data into Pandora’s database and generate monitoring alerts. Pandora server can be installed on Linux and Windows operating system.

Web console:

Web console allows users to operate and manage the monitoring system. It is developed on PHP and depends on backend database and a web server. You can setup web console Linux, Solaris, Windows and AIX operating systems.

Agents:

Agents are used for collecting the performance metrics from client servers. The agent supports almost all platforms including Microsoft, AIX, Solaris, Linux, IPSO, Mac OS or FreeBSD and also SAP.

Database:

The database holds data’s gathered by agents, configuration defined by administrator, incidents, events, audit info, etc. It supports MySQL and Oracle as a database server.

System requirements:

Systems requiremensts are depends on number of monitoring agents.

Up to 500 agents – 3GB of RAM, a 2.5GHz single-core CPU and a Hard drive with 7200 RPM.

Up to 2.000 agents – 6GB of RAM, a dual core 2.5GHz CPU and a Hard drive with 10000 RPM or more.

For more than 4.000 agents – 12GB of RAM, a 3GHz quad-core CPU and a Hard drive with 15000 RPM or more.

Environment:

In this tutorial, we use two systems for demonstration, as mentioned below.

HostName	IP Address	OS	Purpose
server.itzgeek.local	192.168.1.10	CentOS 7	Pandora Server & Pandora Console
client.itzgeek.local	192.168.1.20	CentOS 7	Client server running Pandora Agent

Install MariaDB:

Let’s install MariaDB database server on Pandora server.

yum -y install mariadb-server

Start MariaDb service using the following command.

systemctl start mariadb

Enable MariaDB to start automatically on system start-up.

systemctl enable mariadb

Since this is a new DB setup, so we will run mysql_secure_installation command to secure MySQL instance.

Install Pandora Console:

You need to configure Pandora FMS repository for the Pandora server and console installation. Create a .repo file under /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory.

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/pandorafms.repo

Use the following repository information.

[artica_pandorafms]
name=CentOS6 - PandoraFMS official repo
baseurl=http://firefly.artica.es/centos7
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1

Now, install Pandora console using YUM command.

yum -y install pandorafms_console

Since Pandora console works on top of Apache web server, you need to start Apache service. Also, enable the auto start of service during system boot.

systemctl start httpd
systemctl enable httpd

Firewall:

Add allow rules in the firewall to allow HTTPD port 80 accessible by external machines.

firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=80/tcp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

SELinux:

Pandora console will write configurations to disk at the time of console setup. SELinux may block the writing of files, so you need to allow it in SELinux.

yum install -y policycoreutils-python
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/pandora_console/include'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/pandora_console/attachment'
restorecon '/var/www/html/pandora_console/include'
restorecon '/var/www/html/pandora_console/attachment'

Setup Pandora Console:

Now, let us begin the console installation via the web browser. Open up a web browser and point to

Click Next.

Accept the license agreement.

The installer now checks for required dependencies.

Enter the root password of MySQL.

The console will create the database for Pandora server. Note down the password as you may need it later during the Pandora Server configuration.

Click Next.

Pandora console is complete, now. Remove the install.php file from the pandora_console directory.

rm -rf /var/www/html/pandora_console/install.php

Login to Pandora Console:

The default user is admin and password is pandora. Please change it as soon as you log in.

Select the language, time zone, and enter an email address for receiving alerts.

Click Finish.

Dashboard: