Hosted edition
Agents and Enrollment
The NginxWatch agent is a small program you install on each server running Nginx. It connects outbound to NginxWatch over HTTPS — no inbound firewall rules needed.
How enrollment works
Each agent needs two things to talk to your account:
- The shared agent token — proves the caller is a legitimate NginxWatch agent build (comes with the agent install).
- A one-time enrollment token — proves which organization the agent belongs to. Generate one from Agents → Enroll New Agent in the dashboard. It's shown to you exactly once, is tied to your account, and is consumed the first time an agent successfully registers with it — after that, the agent stays linked to your account permanently (you don't need to re-enroll on every restart).
Installing the agent
- Download the agent binary for your platform.
- Set its config: the
stub_statusURL for the Nginx instance to monitor, the path tonginx.conf(needed for the config-test/reload commands), and the enrollment token from step above. - Start the agent. On first successful contact it registers, and its server appears in your dashboard.
What the agent reports
- A heartbeat, so NginxWatch knows it's alive
- Periodic
stub_statussnapshots (active connections, reading/writing/waiting, request counters) - Results of any lifecycle command you trigger from the dashboard (reload, config test, restart, status)
- Tailed access/error log lines used for response-time sampling
If an agent goes offline
The server's status flips to offline after the agent misses its expected heartbeat window. Nothing is lost — history up to that point is retained, and the server picks back up automatically once the agent reconnects.