Deploy Observium on a VPS

Target: Observium Community Edition on Apache + PHP + MySQL/MariaDB + RRDtool, with SNMP-based discovery/polling driven by cron. Community edition is git-based (no installer script like the Pro/Enterprise tarball releases), so this pulls straight from the public repo mirror.

0. Assumptions

Fresh Ubuntu 24.04 LTS VPS, non-root sudo user
Community edition — if you're actually licensing Observium Pro/Ent, use their observium_installer tarball/script instead of git clone; everything else below (Apache/PHP/MySQL layer) still applies

1. Base packages

shell

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y apache2 libapache2-mod-php php php-cli php-mysql \
    php-gd php-json php-curl php-snmp php-xml php-mbstring php-zip \
    mariadb-server mariadb-client snmp fping rrdtool subversion \
    python3-mysqldb whois git graphviz imagemagick

2. MariaDB

shell

sudo systemctl enable --now mariadb
sudo mysql_secure_installation

sudo mysql -u root -p <<'EOF'
CREATE DATABASE observium DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'observium'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'CHANGE_ME_STRONG_PW';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON observium.* TO 'observium'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EOF

Enable strict InnoDB settings Observium expects — edit /etc/mysql/mariadb.conf.d/50-server.cnf:

shell

[mysqld]
innodb_file_per_table=1
sql_mode=""

shell

sudo systemctl restart mariadb

3. Fetch Observium

shell

sudo mkdir -p /opt/observium
cd /opt
sudo git clone https://github.com/observium/observium.git

4. Directory perms

shell

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/observium/rrd /opt/observium/logs
sudo chmod -R 775 /opt/observium/rrd /opt/observium/logs

5. Configuration

shell

cd /opt/observium
sudo cp config.php.default config.php

Edit /opt/observium/config.php:

shell

$config['db_extension']    = 'mysqli';
$config['db_host']         = 'localhost';
$config['db_user']         = 'observium';
$config['db_pass']         = 'CHANGE_ME_STRONG_PW';
$config['db_name']         = 'observium';

$config['base_url']        = 'https://observium.example.com/';

$config['rrd_dir']         = '/opt/observium/rrd';
$config['rrdtool']         = '/usr/bin/rrdtool';
$config['mib_dir']         = '/opt/observium/mibs';

$config['snmp']['community'] = array('YOUR_RO_COMMUNITY');

6. Build the schema

shell

cd /opt/observium
sudo php discovery.php -u

This applies pending DB migrations (includes/update/*). Re-run after every git pull — it's idempotent and safe.

7. Apache vhost

shell

sudo a2enmod rewrite php8.3

/etc/apache2/sites-available/observium.conf:

shell

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName observium.example.com
    DocumentRoot /opt/observium/html/

    <Directory "/opt/observium/html/">
        AllowOverride All
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/observium_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/observium_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

shell

sudo a2ensite observium
sudo a2dissite 000-default
sudo systemctl reload apache2

TLS via certbot:

shell

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d observium.example.com

If you'd rather run Nginx (matching your LibreNMS/NetBox stack) instead of Apache, use a try_files/fastcgi_pass vhost pointed at /opt/observium/html with PHP-FPM the same way as the LibreNMS guide — Observium doesn't require Apache specifically, mod_rewrite-equivalent try_files handling is all it needs.

8. Create the first admin user

shell

cd /opt/observium
sudo ./adduser.php admin CHANGE_ME_STRONG_PW 10

The trailing 10 is the access level (10 = admin).

9. Add and discover devices

shell

cd /opt/observium
sudo ./add_device.php nlxsvz71.ramnode.com v2c YOUR_RO_COMMUNITY
sudo ./discovery.php -h all
sudo ./poller.php -h all

10. Cron

shell

sudo tee /etc/cron.d/observium >/dev/null <<'EOF'
33  */6 * * *   root    /opt/observium/discovery.php -h all >> /dev/null 2>&1
*/5 *   * * *   root    /opt/observium/poller-wrapper.py 4 >> /dev/null 2>&1
EOF

poller-wrapper.py fans out polling across N parallel workers (4 here — tune to core count). For larger fleets, bump the worker count and interval carefully; SNMP timeouts stack up fast on constrained VPS CPU.

11. Log rotation

shell

sudo tee /etc/logrotate.d/observium >/dev/null <<'EOF'
/opt/observium/logs/*.log {
    daily
    rotate 14
    compress
    delaycompress
    missingok
    notifempty
}
EOF

12. Firewall

shell

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 80,443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

13. Validate

Log in at https://observium.example.com/, confirm the device you added shows graphs after the first poller run completes (give it one full 5-minute cycle). Check /opt/observium/logs/ if graphs stay empty — usually an RRD permissions or SNMP timeout issue.

Notes on running LibreNMS + Observium + NetBox side-by-side

If these all land on one VPS rather than three separate instances:

Pick one of Apache or Nginx system-wide and run the other app's PHP over FPM behind it — don't run both web servers bound to :80/:443.
Give each app its own MySQL/MariaDB database and dedicated unprivileged DB user (done above) — never share credentials across apps.
Watch RAM: LibreNMS + Observium pollers running concurrently on a 4GB VPS can OOM under load; consider staggering poller intervals or sizing up to 8GB if fleet size grows past ~100 devices per tool.