Install Wazuh manager

Once the Ansible repository has been cloned, we proceed to install the Wazuh manager. The installation will follow the steps below:

1 - Accessing the wazuh-ansible directory

We access the contents of the directory on the Ansible server where we have cloned the repository to. We can see the roles we have by running the command below in the cloned directory:

# cd /etc/ansible/roles/wazuh-ansible/
# tree roles -d
roles
├── ansible-galaxy
│   └── meta
└── wazuh
    ├── ansible-filebeat-oss
    │   ├── defaults
    │   ├── handlers
    │   ├── meta
    │   ├── tasks
    │   └── templates
    ├── ansible-wazuh-agent
    │   ├── defaults
    │   ├── handlers
    │   ├── meta
    │   ├── tasks
    │   └── templates
    ├── ansible-wazuh-manager
    │   ├── defaults
    │   ├── files
    │   │   └── custom_ruleset
    │   │       ├── decoders
    │   │       └── rules
    │   ├── handlers
    │   ├── meta
    │   ├── tasks
    │   ├── templates
    │   └── vars
    ├── wazuh-dashboard
    │   ├── defaults
    │   ├── handlers
    │   ├── tasks
    │   ├── templates
    │   └── vars
    └── wazuh-indexer
        ├── defaults
        ├── handlers
        ├── meta
        ├── tasks
        └── templates

And we can see the preconfigured playbooks we have by running the command below.:

# tree playbooks/
playbooks
├── ansible.cfg
├── wazuh-agent.yml
├── wazuh-dashboard.yml
├── wazuh-indexer.yml
├── wazuh-manager-oss.yml
├── wazuh-production-ready.yml
└── wazuh-single.yml

Using the ansible-wazuh-manager and ansible-filebeat-oss roles, we will install and configure the Wazuh manager, and Filebeat components.

Let’s see below, the content of the YAML file /etc/ansible/roles/wazuh-ansible/playbooks/wazuh-manager-oss.yml that we are going to run for a complete installation of the server.

# cat wazuh-manager-oss.yml
---
- hosts: managers
  roles:
    - role: ../roles/wazuh/ansible-wazuh-manager
    - role: ../roles/wazuh/ansible-filebeat-oss
      filebeat_output_indexer_hosts:
      - "<indexer-node-1>:9200"
      - "<indexer-node-2>:9200"
      - "<indexer-node-2>:9200"

Let's take a closer look at the content.

  • The first line hosts: indicates the machines where the commands below will be executed.

  • The roles: section indicates the roles that will be executed on the hosts mentioned above. Specifically, we are going to install the role of wazuh-manager (Wazuh manager + API) and the role of filebeat.

  • The parameter filebeat_output_indexer_hosts: indicates the host group of the Wazuh indexer cluster.

There are several variables we can use to customize the installation or configuration. If we want to change the default configuration:

  • We can change the following files:

    • /etc/ansible/roles/wazuh-ansible/roles/wazuh/ansible-wazuh-manager/defaults/main.yml

    • /etc/ansible/roles/wazuh-ansible/roles/wazuh/ansible-filebeat-oss/defaults/main.yml

  • Alternatively, we also can create another YAML file with the content we want to change for Filebeat and the Wazuh manager. We can find more information about the roles in this section

More details on default configuration variables can be found in the variables references section.

2 - Preparing to run the playbook

We can create a similar YAML file or modify the one we already have to adapt it to our configuration. In this case, we are going to modify the wazuh-manager-oss.yml file and include the IP address of the machine where we are going to install the Wazuh manager in the hosts section and the IP address of the machine where we installed the Wazuh indexer service to the filebeat_output_indexer_hosts field.

Our resulting file is:

---
- hosts: all_in_one
  roles:
    - role: ../roles/wazuh/ansible-wazuh-manager
    - role: ../roles/wazuh/ansible-filebeat-oss
      filebeat_node_name: node-1
      filebeat_output_indexer_hosts:
      - "127.0.0.1:9200"

3 - Running the playbook

Now, we are ready to run the playbook and start the installation. However, some of the operations to be performed on the remote systems will need sudo permissions. We can solve this in several ways, either by opting to enter the password when Ansible requests it or using the become option (to avoid entering passwords one by one).

  1. Let’s run the playbook.

    Switch to the playbooks folder on the Ansible server and proceed to run the command below:

    # ansible-playbook wazuh-manager-oss.yml -b -K
    
  2. We can check the status of the new services on our Wazuh server.

    • Wazuh manager

      # systemctl status wazuh-manager
      
    • Filebeat

      # systemctl status filebeat
      

Note

  • The Wazuh dashboard can be accessed by visiting https://<wazuh_server_IP>

  • The default credentials for Wazuh deployed using ansible is:

    Username: admin
    Password: changeme
    These credentials should be changed using the password changing tool.