Wondering how to install oVirt Guest Agent on CentOS 8 and RHEL 8? We can help you.

As part of our oVirt Support, Management & Monitoring Services, we assist our customers with several oVirt queries.

Today, let us focus on the installation of an oVirt guest agent.

oVirt Guest Agent

The oVirt/Red Hat Virtualization guest agent provides information, notifications, and actions between the oVirt web interface and the guest.

The agent provides the Machine Name, Operating System, IP Addresses, Installed Applications, Network, and RAM usage among other Virtual Machine information to the web interface.

The agent also provides Single Sign-On so an authenticated user to the web interface does not need to authenticate again when connected to a VM.

On CentOS 7/RHEL 7, the package to install is called ovirt-guest-agent. However, in CentOS 8/RHEL 8, the package we install is referred to by the name qemu-guest-agent.

Moving ahead, let us see how our Support Engineers proceed with the installation oVirt Guest Agent on CentOS 8 and RHEL 8

Install oVirt Guest Agent on CentOS 8

On CentOS 8, we run:

sudo yum -y install qemu-guest-agent

Initially, we install and enable the service:

sudo systemctl enable –now qemu-guest-agent

Then we check service status to ensure it is running:

$ systemctl status qemu-guest-agent
● qemu-guest-agent.service – QEMU Guest Agent
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/qemu-guest-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-01-03 15:02:16 EAT; 24min ago
Main PID: 756 (qemu-ga)
Tasks: 1 (limit: 23985)
Memory: 2.7M
CGroup: /system.slice/qemu-guest-agent.service
└─756 /usr/bin/qemu-ga –method=virtio-serial –path=/dev/virtio-ports/org.qemu.guest_agent.0 –blacklist=guest-file-open,guest-file-close,g>

Jan 03 15:02:16 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started QEMU Guest Agent.

[Couldn’t install on CentOS 8? We’d be happy to assist]

Install oVirt Guest Agent on RHEL 8

For an RHEL 8 machine, we have to enable the Red Hat Virtualization Agent repository:

sudo subscription-manager repos –enable=rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

Once done, install the package:

sudo yum -y install qemu-guest-agent

Then we ensure the service is running:

sudo systemctl start qemu-guest-agent
sudo systemctl enable qemu-guest-agent

Finally, we check the status:

$ systemctl status qemu-guest-agent

The web admin interface may take some time to display the memory usage and other types of information. If the information does not populate, restart the VM and verify that the service is running.

Heads up, feel free to download our oVirt Management Module for WHMCS

[Failed with RHEL installation? We are here for you]

Conclusion

In short, the oVirt/Red Hat Virtualization guest agent provides information, notifications, and actions between the oVirt web interface and the guest. Today, we saw a method our Support Engineers employ in order to install oVirt Guest Agent.