# Guest Agent

## Introduction

The `lambda-guest-agent` (Guest Agent) is a service you can install on both Lambda Cloud on-demand instances and 1-Click Cluster (1CC) nodes. For simplicity, this documentation refers to both types of systems as _virtual_ _machines_ (VMs). The Guest Agent collects system metrics, such as GPU and VRAM utilization, and sends them to Lambda's backend. You can then view these metrics in the the [Lambda Cloud console](https://cloud.lambda.ai/).

**Note**  
The metrics dashboard will be generally available in the Lambda Cloud console in Q2 of 2025. To request early access, submit a support ticket.

## Install the Guest Agent

To install the Guest Agent:

1. SSH into your VM. Replace `<IP-ADDRESS>` with the actual IP address of your VM:
   
   ```
   ssh ubuntu@<IP-ADDRESS>
   ```

2. Download and install the Guest Agent:
   
   ```
   curl -L https://lambdalabs-guest-agent.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/scripts/install.sh | sudo bash
   ```

3. Confirm that the Guest Agent is running:
   
   ```
   sudo systemctl --no-pager status lambda-guest-agent*
   ```

You should see output similar to:
   
   ```
   ● lambda-guest-agent.service - Lambda metrics and observability agent
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/lambda-guest-agent.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
          Active: active (running) since Mon 2024-10-28 20:58:44 UTC; 18s ago
   Main PID: 68284 (telegraf)
          Tasks: 18 (limit: 271525)
          Memory: 11.5M
          CPU: 572ms
          CGroup: /system.slice/lambda-guest-agent.service
              └─68284 /usr/local/bin/lambda/guest-agent/telegraf -config /etc/lambda/guest-agent/telegraf/telegraf.conf
   
   ● lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer - Lambda metrics and observability agent updater
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
          Active: active (waiting) since Mon 2024-10-28 20:58:44 UTC; 18s ago
   Trigger: Tue 2024-11-05 10:27:09 UTC; 1 week 0 days left
   Triggers: ● lambda-guest-agent-updater.service
   
   Oct 28 20:58:44 192-222-52-58 systemd[1]: Started Lambda metrics and observability agent updater.

● lambda-guest-agent-updater.service - Lambda metrics and observability agent updater
          Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/lambda-guest-agent-updater.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
          Active: active (exited) since Mon 2024-10-28 20:58:50 UTC; 12s ago
   TriggeredBy: ● lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer
   Process: 68290 ExecStart=/bin/bash /usr/local/bin/lambda/guest-agent/guest-agent-update.sh (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 68290 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
          CPU: 4.845s
   ```

Your metrics should appear in the Lambda Cloud console within a few minutes.

## Updating the Guest Agent

The Guest Agent automatically updates itself every two weeks. To disable automatic updates, stop and disable the `lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer` systemd unit:

```
sudo systemctl stop lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer
sudo systemctl disable lambda-guest-agent-updater.timer
```

## Uninstalling the Guest Agent

To uninstall the Guest Agent, run:

```
sudo apt remove lambda-guest-agent
```

## Security

The guest agent collects and measures attributes of your system. We store these metrics in our internal metrics infrastructure that we gate behind strict authorization schemes.

The source code for guest-agent is available in our [public Github mirror.](https://github.com/LambdaLabs/guest-agent)  
We publish checksums of the release artifacts in the [Releases](https://github.com/LambdaLabs/guest-agent/releases) page that you can use to verify the integrity of the downloaded artifacts.

### Data privacy

Lambda takes your data privacy seriously. When you install `lambda-guest-agent`, we forward your metrics to our internal metrics infrastructure. Lambda does not store any personally identifying information in our metrics backend. The only customer-specific identifier we store is a unique ID that will only be used to allow [lambda.ai](https://lambda.ai/) to gather your specific data once visualizations are available there. We do not store names, email addresses, street addresses, billing information, VM hostnames, or any other personally-identifying information on our metrics backend beyond what is necessary to serve your data to you.