How to Install the Nova AI Agent

5 min read Getting Started

The Nova AI agent is a lightweight daemon that collects metrics, logs, and traces from your infrastructure and sends them to the Nova platform. This guide walks you through installing the agent on Linux, macOS, or within a Docker container.

Prerequisites

A Nova AI Ops account (free trial works)
A server or VM running Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+, CentOS 7+, Amazon Linux 2+) or macOS 12+
Root or sudo access
Your Nova API key (found in Settings > API Keys)

Installation Steps

Get your API key

Log into app.novaaiops.com, navigate to Settings > API Keys, and copy your agent installation key.

Run the install script

SSH into your server and run the one-line installer. Replace YOUR_API_KEY with the key from step 1.

curl -sL https://install.novaaiops.com | sudo NOVA_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY bash

Verify the agent is running

Check the agent status to confirm it started successfully.

sudo systemctl status nova-agent

You should see active (running) in the output.

Configure the agent (optional)

Edit the configuration file to customize data collection, log paths, or proxy settings.

sudo nano /etc/nova-agent/nova-agent.yaml

Check the Nova dashboard

Go back to app.novaaiops.com. Within 30 seconds, your host will appear on the Infrastructure page with live metrics.

Tip:

For Docker environments, use our official container image: docker run -d --name nova-agent -e NOVA_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY novaaiops/agent:latest

Install on additional hosts

Repeat steps 2-3 on every server you want to monitor. All hosts share the same API key and appear automatically in your Nova dashboard.

Troubleshooting

Agent not appearing? Check firewall rules — the agent needs outbound HTTPS (port 443) access to ingest.novaaiops.com.
Permission denied? Make sure you are running the installer with sudo.
Behind a proxy? Set HTTPS_PROXY in /etc/nova-agent/nova-agent.yaml.

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