Learn how to launch a new pre-installed Nagios XI server in the Amazon EC2 cloud in order to quickly run a trial of Nagios XI without using physical hardware, migrate existing physical installations to a cloud infrastructure, and/or scale an existing XI monitoring environment. Before you begin, this document assumes the user has an Amazon AWS account. If not, one can be obtained at http://aws.amazon.com. View a printable PDF here.
Creating the Virtual Machine
To be sure you are getting the official Nagios XI public AMI (Amazon Machine Image), it is recommended that you log in to the AWS (Amazon Web Service) management console.
Images are currently available in the following zones:
- US East (Virginia)
- US West (N. California)
- US West 2 (Oregon)
- EU (Frankfurt)
- EU West (Ireland)
- Asia-Pacific (Singapore)
- Asia-Pacific (Tokyo)
- S. America (Sao Paulo)
- Australia (Sydney)
Make sure you are in the US East region and have the filter set to Public Images. In the search bar, enter: “766915741798” This is the Nagios Tech Team’s official ID.
From here, you can select the image that meets your needs and click Launch. Next, the Request Instance Wizard will begin. Within the wizard, you will be able to select your instance type and customize the allocated resource settings and naming information. We recommend that production systems run on a minimum instance size of m1.small or larger.
The wizard will have you choose or create a key pair. If you are creating a key pair for the first time, you will be asked to download the key before continuing. The private key will be required to SSH to your machine. Note: Root password login is disabled.
Additionally, you will be asked to select or create a security group. The Security Group should allow public access on ports 22 and 80; this may be fine for some installations, but keep in mind that some features and add-ons require the use of additional ports.
Note: When you first start your instance, the current version of Nagios XI is installed and compiled at boot. This will take at least 15 minutes before the instance becomes available. The amount of time will depend on the size of the instance you create.
Connecting to the New Instance
Once the instance is running, you can complete the installation of Nagios XI through the web interface. To access Nagios XI, type in the following URL:
http://ipaddress/nagiosxi (where IP address is the IP address of the virtual machine)
Note: You can find the public DNS address by selecting the instance and viewing the details.
Once you access the login screen, you can log in as the admin to begin using XI. The credentials are listed below.
XI Admin Account
Username: nagiosadmin
Password: random (this gets reset during setup).
Core Config Manager Account
Username: nagiosadmin
Password: welcome (this gets initialized during setup)
MySQL
Username: root
Password: nagiosxi
Instructions for changing these credentials can be found on the Support Wiki. You may also need to occasionally make an SSH connection to your machine. This connection must use the private key you downloaded earlier. When connecting, you must use the username ec2-user, NOT root. This user has full sudo access.
Note About System Credentials
You are strongly advised to change these passwords immediately, as they are not secure and are shipped as the default passwords for other Nagios XI virtual machines. If you forget these passwords, we can’t help you recover them, so keep track of the new credentials you choose.
