Configuring WMA

How to configure the Webscale Monitoring Agent

The Webscale Monitoring Agent (WMA) is a multipurpose program that can be installed on a VM host to facilitate communication with Webscale. It consists of three independent processes—metric monitoring, log collection , and SSH connectivity —which you can enable or disable in the configuration file.

Configuration reference

Configure the Webscale Monitoring Agent using the file /etc/webscale/wma-config.json. The Webscale control plane automatically supplies some configuration values for VMs it creates. The file is in JSON format with the following fields.

Field	Type	Description	Default	Example
`access_token`	String	Authentication token for accessing the upload endpoint.
`autoupdate`	String	Frequency at which WMA checks for updates. A unit suffix (e.g., ’s’, ’m’, ‘h’) is required.		`"300s"`, `"24h"`
`debug`	Boolean	Enables verbose logging for troubleshooting.	`false`	`true`
`log_config`	Object	Settings for managing logging streams. See table below.
`resource_labels`	Array of Strings	Labels used when registering an SSH/resource host.		`["staging"]`
`ssh_config`	Object	Settings for SSH connectivity. See table below.

log_config Object

Field	Type	Description	Default	Example
`disabled`	Boolean	Enables log capture when set to `false`.	`true`	`false`
`log_streams`	Array of Objects	Array of objects, where each object defines a single logging stream. See table below.

log_streams Object

Field	Type	Description	Example
`application_id`	String	Required. An application identifier to associate logs with that application.	`"a1yz47n4q15s"`
`file_patterns`	Array of Strings	Required. List of file path patterns of logs to collect. The pattern may contain wildcards (`*`) to match zero or more characters.	`["/home/test/custom.log"]`
`name`	String	Required. A name used to identify the log stream.	`"my-app"`
`filters`	Array of Strings	If configured, when any of the values are found in a log line, then the log line will be captured. If not configured, then all log lines are captured, subject to `filter_regex`.	`["CRIT"]`
`filter_regex`	String	A regular expression. When configured, any matching log lines are captured. If not configured, then all log lines are captured, subject to `filters`.	`"CRIT\|EMERG\|ALERT"`

ssh_config

Field	Type	Description	Default	Example
`address`	String	Used when registering an SSH host. Typically, this should not be set manually.		`"1.2.3.4"`
`via`	String	Used when registering an SSH host. Typically, this should not be set manually.		`"ssh-hosts/xyz"`
`disabled`	Boolean	Enables SSH connectivity when set to `false`.	`true`	`false`

Sample configuration file:

{
  "autoupdate": "24h",
  "ssh_config": {
    "disabled": false,
  },
  "log_config": {
    "disabled": false,
    "log_streams": [
      {
        "name": "StreamName",
        "file_patterns": [
          "/home/test/custom.log"
        ],
        "application_id": "a1yz47n4q15s"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Metadata configuration

WMA typically runs on servers managed by the Webscale Control Plane. For servers created in a Webscale Cluster, the metadata file (/var/lib/webscale/metadata.json) contains values that WMA uses unless they are overwritten by the local configuration file. These metadata values include:

[
	{
		"key":"WEBSCALE_API_HOST",
		"value":"api.webscale.com"
	},
	{
		"key":"WEBSCALE_ACCESS_TOKEN",
		"value":"xyz"
	},
	{
		"key":"WEBSCALE_SERVER_ID",
		"value":"abcd"
	}
]

Note:

WMA must be restarted for configuration changes to take effect. WMA is restarted with:

sudo systemctl restart webscale-monitoring-agent

The WMA log can be viewed to verify the configuration was accepted using:

journalctl -u webscale-monitoring-agent

Have questions not answered here? Contact Support to get more help.

Last modified on June 3, 2026