You will need a machine on which to install the server, and the permissions to install the software on it. Since the overhead of running a Hyperic server is noticeable but not huge, we recommend running it on a dedicated machine, or at least a machine that is not hosting the critical parts of your infrastructure. The server needs to meet a few requirements, such as a static IP address for communication with the agents, a Java 1.5 or higher JVM, Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X or Windows 2003 or a later operating system, a 1 GHz processor with at least 1 GB RAM (4 recommended), and at least 1 GB of free disk space. For more details on the requirements, see the documentation at https://support.hyperic.com/display/DOC/Installation+Requirements.

You will need to download the Hyperic HQ installer (either community or enterprise) from http://www.hyperic.com/hyperic-open-source-download. This recipe uses the community (open source) version; so if you are using Hyperic enterprise, you may find a few differences in the installation process.

Follow these steps to install the Hyperic server:

Hyperic HQ has an architecture based on a server and agents. The server component consists of a database, used to store configuration data together with the historical metrics that have been gathered. The server also provides a web application, which can be used to view the data and configure the collection of metrics and the creation of alerts.

The server is implemented by using a Tomcat-based web server, and is bundled with a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) to run it. It also ships with its own embedded PostgreSQL database for storing configuration data and metrics.

In this recipe, we installed the community version of Hyperic, and accepted most of the default settings. In a production setup, you may want to consider using a more resilient deployment by using a more reliable database and using real SSL certificates, rather than the demo self-signed certificates that are distributed with the Hyperic server.