Install Vector on RHEL

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. This page will cover installing and managing Vector on the RHEL operating system.

Install

YUM

• Agent Role
• Aggregator Role

The agent role is designed to collect all data on a single host. Vector runs as a background process and interfaces with a host-level APIs for data collection. By default, Vector will collect logs from Journald via Vector's journald source and metrics via the host_metrics source, but it is recommended to adjust your pipeline as necessary using Vector's sources, transforms, and sinks.

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1. Add the Vector repo

   curl -1sLf \
       'https://repositories.timber.io/public/vector/cfg/setup/bash.rpm.sh' \
       | sudo -E bash

2. Install Vector

   sudo yum install vector

3. Configure Vector

   cat <<-'VECTORCFG' > /etc/vector/vector.toml
   # Vector's API for introspection
   [api]
   enabled = true
   address = "127.0.0.1:8686"
   
   # Host-level logs
   [sources.logs]
   type = "journald"
   
   # Host-level metrics (cpu, memory, disk, etc)
   [sources.host_metrics]
   type = "host_metrics"
   
   # Vector's own internal metrics
   [sources.internal_metrics]
   type = "internal_metrics"
   
   # --> Add transforms here to parse, enrich, and process data
   
   # print all events, replace this with your desired sink(s)
   # https://vector.dev/docs/reference/sinks/
   [sinks.out]
   type = "console"
   inputs = [ "logs", "host_metrics", "internal_metrics" ]
   encoding.codec = "json"
   VECTORCFG

4. Restart Vector

   sudo systemctl restart vector

5. Observe Vector

   • Logs
   • Metrics

   sudo journalctl -fu vector

   explain this command

How was it? Did this tutorial work?  Yes  No

Deployment

Vector is an end-to-end observability data platform designed to deploy under various roles. You mix and match these roles to create topologies. The intent is to make Vector as flexible as possible, allowing you to fluidly integrate Vector into your infrastructure over time. The deployment section demonstrates common Vector pipelines:

Common Deployment Pipelines

Administration

YUM

Start

sudo systemctl start vector

explain this command

Stop

sudo systemctl stop vector

explain this command

Reload

systemctl kill -s HUP --kill-who=main vector.service

explain this command

Restart

sudo systemctl restart vector

explain this command

Observe

• Logs
• Metrics

sudo journalctl -fu vector

explain this command

Upgrade

sudo yum upgrade vector

explain this command

Uninstall

YUM

sudo yum remove vector

explain this command