Connect Your First Site

GridNMS Cloud needs a collector inside your network to do the actual watching. The collector connects outbound to your GridNMS instance — you never open any inbound firewall ports. This page gets your first collector online.

New to collectors? Read What Is a Collector? first.

Before you start

• A machine on the network you want to monitor (a small Linux VM is ideal — 1–2 CPUs and 1 GB RAM is plenty to start).
• Outbound HTTPS (443) access from that machine to your GridNMS instance.
• Admin access to your GridNMS instance.

1. Get your join command

1. In GridNMS, go to Configure → Collectors.
2. Select Add collector. GridNMS shows a ready-to-run command containing your instance address and a one-time join token.
3. Copy that command — you’ll run it on your collector machine in the next step.

Configure → Collectors: add a collector and watch it come online.

2. Run the collector

Run the command from the previous step on your collector machine. The Docker image (gridnms/collector:latest) pulls straight from the public registry — no download needed. For the desktop app, grab the installer from the Customer Portal → Downloads (sign-in required) or see Installing a Collector for every option.

Linux (recommended)

Run it with host networking so the collector sees the real source IP of syslog and SNMP traps:

docker run -d --name gridnms-collector --restart unless-stopped \
  --network host \
  -e GRIDNMS_TUNNEL_URL="https://tunnel.gridnms.io/api/tunnel/ws" \
  -e GRIDNMS_JOIN_TOKEN="<your-join-token>" \
  -e GRIDNMS_STATE_DIR=/var/lib/gridnms \
  -v gridnms-collector-state:/var/lib/gridnms \
  gridnms/collector:latest

(The Add collector screen fills in the tunnel URL and token for you.)

Desktop (Mac/Windows)

For a small site, install the GridNMS Collector desktop app — it runs the collector natively and preserves real source IPs. Download it from the Customer Portal → Downloads, then follow Installing a Collector.

3. Confirm it’s online

Back on Configure → Collectors, your new collector appears and turns online within a few seconds.

Why source IP matters

Syslog and SNMP traps identify the sending device by their source IP. Docker’s default networking can hide that behind a gateway address. Host networking (or the desktop app) keeps it intact. Full details — and what to do when the IP is hidden — are in Getting the Real Source IP.

4. Tell the collector what to watch

A collector only monitors the networks you assign to it:

1. Open your collector on Configure → Collectors.
2. Add the networks (IP ranges / CIDRs) it’s responsible for.
3. Save. The collector begins discovering and watching devices in those ranges.

More on this in Networks & Sites.

What’s next

Your network is connected. Now add devices and see GridNMS in action:

→ Getting Started Walkthrough