Icinga 2 is an open-source monitoring tool that helps track the health of your network infrastructure, servers, and applications. It provides powerful features for monitoring and alerting, making it an excellent tool for system administrators. In this guide, we will walk you through how to install and configure Icinga 2 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. This guide can be applied whether you're hosting your monitoring system on a Windows VPS UK or another VPS platform.

Prerequisites

Before starting, ensure you have the following:

• An Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server, which could be hosted on a UK Windows VPS or another Windows Virtual Private Server Hosting environment.
• Root or sudo privileges on your server.
• A functional LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP) installed on your server.

Step 1: Update Your System

First, update your system packages to ensure everything is up to date. Run the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Step 2: Install Icinga 2

Next, install Icinga 2 and its dependencies. Icinga 2 is available in the default Ubuntu repositories. Run the following command to install Icinga 2:

sudo apt install icinga2 -y

Once the installation is complete, start and enable the Icinga 2 service:

sudo systemctl start icinga2
sudo systemctl enable icinga2

Step 3: Install Icinga Web 2

To access Icinga 2 via a web interface, you need to install Icinga Web 2. First, install the required PHP extensions:

sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-php php php-cli php-common php-curl php-gd php-json php-xml php-mysql php-intl php-ldap -y

Then, install Icinga Web 2 and the Icinga 2 monitoring module:

sudo apt install icingaweb2 icinga2-ido-mysql -y

Step 4: Configure the Database

During the installation of icinga2-ido-mysql, you will be prompted to configure a database for Icinga 2. Select "Yes" and provide a password for the Icinga 2 database user.

If you missed the prompt, you can manually configure the database by running the following commands:

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE icinga;
CREATE USER 'icinga'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON icinga.* TO 'icinga'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Now, enable the IDO (Icinga Data Output) feature by running:

sudo icinga2 feature enable ido-mysql
sudo systemctl restart icinga2

Step 5: Set Up Icinga Web 2

To set up Icinga Web 2, first create a setup token:

sudo icingacli setup token create

Copy the token and then open your web browser to begin the web setup by visiting:

http://your-server-ip/icingaweb2/setup

Enter the setup token you copied earlier to proceed with the configuration wizard. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete the setup, including connecting to the database and configuring administrative access.

Step 6: Configure Monitoring for Services

Once the installation is complete, you can start adding hosts and services to be monitored by Icinga 2. You can do this by editing configuration files or using the web interface provided by Icinga Web 2.

Step 7: (Optional) Install Nagios Plugins

Icinga 2 can use Nagios-compatible plugins to monitor services. To install Nagios plugins, run the following command:

sudo apt install monitoring-plugins -y

These plugins allow Icinga 2 to monitor various services such as HTTP, FTP, SSH, and more.

Step 8: Secure Icinga 2 with SSL (Optional)

For added security, it is recommended to secure Icinga Web 2 with SSL. You can use Let's Encrypt to generate a free SSL certificate. First, install Certbot:

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y

Then, run the following command to generate and install the SSL certificate:

sudo certbot --apache -d your-domain.com

Follow the prompts to complete the SSL installation, and Certbot will automatically configure Apache to redirect HTTP traffic to HTTPS.

Conclusion

By following these steps, you have successfully installed and configured Icinga 2 on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Icinga 2 provides powerful monitoring capabilities, making it an essential tool for managing infrastructure and applications. Whether you're hosting on a Windows VPS UK, Windows VPS Italy, or another VPS solution, Icinga 2 will help you keep your systems running smoothly.