Cloud computing passed the hype cycle long ago and firmly established itself as a future technology since then. However, to utilize the cloud optimally, and therefore, as cost-efficiently as possible, a continuous monitoring is key to prevent an over- or under-commissioning of resources. However, selecting a suitable monitoring solution is a challenging task. Monitoring agents that collect monitoring data are spread across the monitored IT environment. Therefore, the possibility of vendor lock-ins leads to a lack of flexibility when the cloud environment or the business needs change. To handle these challenges, we introduce \textit{generic agent templates} that are applicable to many monitoring systems and support a replacement of monitoring systems. Solution-specific technical details of monitoring agents are abstracted from and system administrators only need to model generic agents, which can be transformed into solution-specific monitoring agents. The transformation logic required for this process is provided by domain experts to not further burden system administrators. Furthermore, we introduce an agent lifecycle to support the system administrator with the management and deployment of generic agents.