About the StackState Agent

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StackState version 4.4
Overview
The StackState Agent functions as a collector and gateway. It connects to external systems to retrieve data and pushes this to StackState.
StackState Agent architecture
StackState Agent V2 can be run on Linux or Windows systems or inside a Docker container. It is not necessary to deploy the StackState Agent on every machine to retrieve data. Each deployed StackState Agent can run multiple checks to collect data from different external systems.
StackState Agent architecture
In Docker Swarm mode, the Cluster Agent is deployed on the manager node and one Agent on each node.
On Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters, a single Cluster Agent is deployed per cluster and one Agent on each node. The ClusterCheck Agent can optionally be deployed to run checks that are configured on the Cluster Agent.
The API Integration Agent (Legacy) can be run on Linux.
Integrate with external systems
In StackState, the StackState Agent V2 StackPack includes all the settings required to integrate with a number of external systems. Data from other external systems can be retrieved by installing additional StackPacks in StackState.
To integrate with an external system, an Agent must be deployed in a location that can connect to both the external system and StackState. An Agent check configured on the Agent can then connect to the external system to retrieve data.
Documentation for the available StackState integrations, including how to configure the associated Agent checks, can be found on the StackPacks > Integrations pages.
Deploy and run StackState Agent V2
Deployment instructions, commands to work with StackState Agent V2 and other platform-specific details can be found on the pages listed below:
​StackState Agent V2 on Docker​
​StackState Agent V2 on Kubernetes​
​StackState Agent V2 on Linux​
​StackState Agent V2 on OpenShift​
​StackState Agent V2 on Windows​
Open source
StackState Agent V2 is open source and can be found on GitHub at: https://github.com/StackVista/stackstate-agent.
Agent overhead
StackState Agent V2 consists of up to four different processes - stackstate-agent, trace-agent, process-agent and cluster-agent. To run the basic Agent, the resources named below are required. These were observed running StackState Agent V2 v2.13.0 on a c5.xlarge instance with 4 vCPU cores and 8GB RAM. They give an indication of the overhead for the most simple set up. Actual resource usage will increase based on the Agent configuration running. This can be impacted by factors such as the Agent processes that are enabled, the number and nature of checks running, whether network connection tracking and protocol inspection are enabled, and the number of Kubernetes pods from which metrics are collected on the same host as the Agent.
stackstate-agent
process-agent
trace-agent
Resource
Usage
CPU
~0.18%
Memory
95-100MB RAM
Disk space
416MB (includes stackstate-agent, process-agent and trace-agent)
Resource
Usage
CPU
up to 0.96%
Memory
52-56MB
Disk space
416MB (includes stackstate-agent, process-agent and trace-agent)
Resource
Usage
CPU
less than 0.04%
Memory
less than 16.8MB
Disk space
416MB (includes stackstate-agent, process-agent and trace-agent)
On Kubernetes, limits are placed on CPU and memory usage of the Agent, Cluster Agent and Cluster checks. These can be configured in the Agent Helm chart (github.com).
Release notes
Release notes for StackState Agent V2 can be found on GitHub at: https://github.com/StackVista/stackstate-agent/blob/master/stackstate-changelog.md​
See also
​StackState Agent V2 StackPack​
​StackState integrations​
​StackState Agent V1 (Legacy)​
Setup - Previous
StackState Agent
Docker
Last modified 27d ago
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Contents
Overview
StackState Agent architecture
Integrate with external systems
Deploy and run StackState Agent V2
Open source
Agent overhead
Release notes