Installing the Windows Server agent enables Blue Matador to collect and analyze server metrics on Windows Server. After installation, the following events will be detected on your servers without configuring any thresholds:

Installing the Blue Matador Windows Server Agent requires either an active trial or paid account. Contact sales to get started.  You will also need to meet the following requirements:

1. Log in to the app and navigate to the Integrations page via Setup > Integrations

2. Expand the Windows Server installation dialog by clicking on the Install button on the Windows Server tile

3. Download and install bluematador-agent.msi on your server. The service installs immediately without any user prompts, and there is no need to restart Windows after installation.

 PowerShell

4. Specify the environment your agent will run in. This will help you identify servers in our system.

5. Copy and paste the generated configuration into C:\Program Files\Blue Matador\BlueMatador\config.ini. Ensure that the file has the correct “.ini” extension after you have saved.

6. Repeat steps 3-5 on as many servers as needed. Afterwards, verify your installation by checking the number of agents connected against the number of servers you installed on.

 If you are unable to verify that the agent is connected, first check out the agent log on the server. The log is written to Windows Event Log, which can be accessed via Start > Event Viewer. Then select Windows Logs followed by Application.

Look for logs that have a Source of BlueMatadorbase, BlueMatadorcollector, or BlueMatadorconfig. These events are the log entries from the agent. You can select an event, go to the Details tab, and expand EventData to see the log message. 

To help you debug the agent, you may want to enable verbose logging. The best way to get verbose logs is to stop the BlueMatador Agent service via Start > Services. Then, run the service in the foreground using the Command Prompt.

 Setting the flag -verbose 5 will include debug logs, and setting -log stdout sends logs to the current window.  You may also specify -log ./bluematador-agent.log to write logs to a file.

If you see a log message about the config file format, it is possible that the config file located at C:\Program Files\Blue Matador\BlueMatador\config.ini has been improperly formatted. The agent may continue working using a previous valid configuration if it had one, otherwise the agent will fail to connect to the Blue Matador servers. This issue is most easily solved by copying the config file again from step 5 above and replacing the contents of the old file completely.  

You may configure the Windows Server agent to connect to Blue Matador's servers via an HTTP proxy. To do this, add the following lines to your config file located at C:\Program Files\Blue Matador\BlueMatador\config.ini, replacing the example http proxy endpoint with your proxy's endpoint.

After updating the config file, make sure your proxy has whitelisted traffic to app.bluematador.com:443 andbluematador-flint-modules.s3.amazonaws.com:443, then restart the service via Start > Services.

Make sure that your API Keys status shows as "Active". If the status is "Inactive", you may receive an error when trying to complete your deployment of the Blue Matador agent. On your Blue Matador dashboard, use the tabs at the top-right of the page to navigate to your Account > API Keys window and ensure that your Keys are showing as "Active".

In some instances, the BlueMatador Agent service may stop working completely. Try restarting the service via Start > Services.  If this does not work, then you can uninstall and re-install the MSI. If this does not work, the service manager in Windows may be having issues in general. You can reboot the server to get the agent running again.

Do I need to install the Windows Server agent on every server? The Windows Server agent can and should be installed on any servers that you need automatic server monitoring on. This includes production servers, utility servers, databases, and dev servers. The agent only collects metrics from the servers it is running on.

Should I install the Windows Server agent if I am using the AWS integration with EC2 Instances? While the AWS integration collects many EC2 metrics, the Windows Server agent still provides additional value. Some server metrics such as disk usage, page read time, and server time drift cannot be collected from AWS.

Should I install the Windows Server agent on a Kubernetes node? The preferred method of monitoring Kubernetes is to install the Blue Matador agent as a DaemonSet in your Kubernetes cluster. Installing the Windows Server agent directly on a node will not provide any Kubernetes events, but will still provide the Windows Server events. Using both installations simultaneously can result in duplicate events.