Add a new machine

In this section, you will see:

  • How to manage a new server with Rudder

  • What does the Rudder server knows about managed nodes

In the demo platform, you have two nodes:

  • The server we already used

  • A node machine

This machine already has Rudder installed, and we will see how to add the second one.

An inventory contains hardware and software information about a node. It is sent to register the node to the server after agent installation, and then gets updated daily (during the night, at a random time).

You can manually trigger an inventory with rudder agent inventory.

To get information about the agent state on a node, run:

# rudder agent info
Hostname: server.rudder.local
UUID: root
Key Hash: 9fe57bb0dd0795c571b54fcb537c290004ab6454
Policy server: 127.0.0.1
Roles: rudder-agent
Report mode: full-compliance
Run interval: 5 min
Agent is enabled
Policy updated: 2020-06-28 22:20:01
Inventory sent: 2020-06-28 02:05:49
Version: Rudder agent 6.0.4

How does adding a new node to Rudder work?

  • Install rudder-agent on the new node (using a standard software repository)

  • Configure the agent with the hostname or IP of the Rudder server that should manage it by editing /opt/rudder/etc/policy-server.conf.

  • It will automatically register itself to its server

  • Accept the new node on the server, and it is done

In the demo platform, the agent has already be installed and configured, and it should have already sent an inventory to the server.

Let’s have a look at what this inventory contains. Go to Node management → Accept new nodes.

You will see the node machine in the list. Click line, this will unfold the content of this node’s inventory.

You can navigate through the tabs, to see software and hardware information.

Inventory content

Then you have to choose to accept this node or not. Once accepted, a node will get access to a configuration, so this can be a security-sensitive step.

Let’s accept our node, select the checkbox on the right, and click on Accept.

And you can go back to the Nodes list, you will see we now have two nodes. A configuration has already be generated, and will be applied to our node within 5 minutes. It includes the two directives we defined before as they apply to all the nodes managed by Rudder.


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