Quick installation guide for Percona Cloud Tools for MySQL

Here in Percona Support, we’re receiving several requests per day for help with Percona Cloud Tools installation steps.

So I decided to prepare a step-by-step example of the installation process with some comments based on experience. Percona Cloud Tools is a hosted service providing access to query performance insights for all MySQL uses. After a brief setup, you’ll unlock new information about your database and how to improve your applications. You can sign up here to request access to the free beta, currently under way.

Some notes

It’s recommended to do the installation under root.
If you’re installing pt-agent as root then .pt-agent.conf should be placed in root $HOME
You could became root with “sudo -s” command and in this case your homedir is still unchanged and not homedir of root user.
So I would strongly recommend to login as root or to “sudo -i” to become root and check if your HOME and PWD are the same: env | egrep -i ‘home=|pwd=’

Sign Up

Go to the URL and sign up (or log-in): https://cloud.percona.com/

Prepare

Copy your API key:
On this URL: https://cloud.percona.com/api-key
Or by menu: Agents -> API Key

Percona-Toolkit Download

Download Percona-Toolkit:
http://www.percona.com/downloads/percona-toolkit/LATEST/
For example:

DEB: for Debian/Ubuntu like systems
RPM: for RedHat, CentOS

Percona-Toolkit Installation

CentOS:
yum install http://www.percona.com/redir/downloads/percona-toolkit/LATEST/RPM/percona-toolkit-2.2.6-1.noarch.rpm

Ubuntu:
wget http://www.percona.com/redir/downloads/percona-toolkit/LATEST/deb/percona-toolkit_2.2.6_all.deb dpkg -i percona-toolkit_2.2.6_all.deb

pt-agent installation

Run this command:
pt-agent --install --user={mysql username} --password={password} --api-key={API Key copied from web site}

Note: add there your username, password and API Key

pt-agent installation output

You should see this:

=============================================================================
pt-agent --install --user={user} --password={password} --api-key={api-key}
Step 1 of 11: Verify the user is root: OK
Step 2 of 11: Check Perl module dependencies: OK
Step 3 of 11: Check for crontab: OK
Step 4 of 11: Verify the API key: OK
Step 5 of 11: Connect to MySQL: OK
Step 6 of 11: Check if MySQL is a slave: NO
Step 7 of 11: Create a MySQL user for the agent: OK
Step 8 of 11: Initialize /etc/percona/agent/my.cnf: OK
Step 9 of 11: Initialize /root/.pt-agent.conf: OK
Step 10 of 11: Create the agent: OK
Step 11 of 11: Run the agent: 2014-01-29T20:12:17 INFO Starting agent
pt-agent has daemonized and is running as PID 13506:
--lib /var/lib/pt-agent
--log /var/log/pt-agent.log
--pid /var/run/pt-agent.pid
These values can change if a different configuration is received.
OK
INSTALLATION COMPLETE
The agent has been installed and started, but it is not running any services yet. Go to https://cloud.percona.com/agents#node1 to enable services for the agent.
=============================================================================

Agent is installed