How to Set Up a PRTG 7 Probe on Amazon EC2
This article explains how you can set up a probe server of PRTG Network Monitor 7 as a remote probe on the EC2 cloud hosting system of the Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Due of the technical concept of EC2 you must - compared to the usual hosting systems - take a few extra steps if you want to run PRTG 7 on Amazon EC2. The most important aspect is that the virtual machines (called AMIs = "Amazon Machine Image") are not persistent. As soon as you shut down a virtual server all changes that were made to its disks will be lost.
The idea is to start with a brand new windows machine, install and configure your software on it and then take a snapshot of the system (amazon calls it "bundling an AMI"). This image can later be started and will resume its work were it was during the bundling. This is great for setting up remote probes on EC2.
Note: There is also an knowledgebase article that explains how to install a PRTG core server on Amazon EC2
The steps are:
- starting a new Windows AMI
- installing the PRTG Probe
- configuring the probe to connect to your core server
- bundling the AMI (it is like taking a snapshot of a virtual machine)
- start an instance of your AMI and let it run for your monitoring
The steps in detail are:
- If you don't have an Amazon AWS account please open an new AWS account and set up your payment etc. information
- Go to the Amazon AWS Management Console and sign in
- Preparations
- At the top left choose the desired region (US East or Europe West) where you want your monitoring system to be located
- Click "Key Pairs" and create a new Key Pair. The web page will offer you a download of a .PEM file (download it and open it in a text editor, we'll need it later to acquire the server's admin password)
- Click "Security Groups" and create a new security group. Consider this the firewall rule set for your server. After creation you can edit the allowed ports in the lower pane. Enable access to port 3389 (Remote Desktop).
- Click "Instances" and Launch a new instance. This will actually create and start a new virtual machine for you. We used the image "Basic Microsoft Windows Server 2003" (ami-d8e9c1ac). On the following page you can set various parameters:
- Number of instances: 1
- Instance type: Here you choose the CPU/memory resources of your server. The "m1.small" option should be enough for monitoring of a few hundred sensors. It costs about US$ 90 per month.
- Key Pair: Choose the key pair that you created before
- Security Group: Choose the one that you created before
- That's it. Click "Launch" and after a few minutes your virtual server will be online.
- As soon as the server is shown with a "running" state, right click the instance in the list and choose "Get Default Administrator Password". You will need to paste the content of the PEM file that you have downloaded before. Jot down the password.
- Start your Remote Desktop Client and connect to the IP adress of the virtual server, log in using "administrator" and the admin password
- In the Remote Desktop session:
- Optional: Change the password of the administrator
- Download and install the Remote probe from the web interface of your PRTG Network Monitor installation
- Please see the PRTG manual for the configuration of the security settings for probe and core
That's it. Your now have a remote probe for your PRTG Instance running on EC2.
We recommend to bundle the virtual machine into a new AMI image. This takes a snapshot of your installation and you will be able to restart a server image right at this point anytime later (You will need an Amazon S3 account to do this).