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| -rw-r--r-- | backends/Makefile.am | 1 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | backends/Makefile.in | 1 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | backends/README.md | 1 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | backends/WALKTHROUGH.md | 292 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | backends/prometheus/README.md | 28 |
5 files changed, 310 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/backends/Makefile.am b/backends/Makefile.am index 268259ed..b8daefc5 100644 --- a/backends/Makefile.am +++ b/backends/Makefile.am @@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ SUBDIRS = \ dist_noinst_DATA = \ README.md \ + WALKTHROUGH.md \ $(NULL) dist_noinst_SCRIPTS = \ diff --git a/backends/Makefile.in b/backends/Makefile.in index c2484e96..02637784 100644 --- a/backends/Makefile.in +++ b/backends/Makefile.in @@ -341,6 +341,7 @@ SUBDIRS = \ dist_noinst_DATA = \ README.md \ + WALKTHROUGH.md \ $(NULL) dist_noinst_SCRIPTS = \ diff --git a/backends/README.md b/backends/README.md index b449f060..cc943d4d 100644 --- a/backends/README.md +++ b/backends/README.md @@ -1,4 +1,3 @@ - # Metrics Long Term Archiving netdata supports backends for archiving the metrics, or providing long term dashboards, diff --git a/backends/WALKTHROUGH.md b/backends/WALKTHROUGH.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..b899556a --- /dev/null +++ b/backends/WALKTHROUGH.md @@ -0,0 +1,292 @@ +# Netdata, Prometheus, Grafana stack + +## Intro +In this article I will walk you through the basics of getting Netdata, +Prometheus and Grafana all working together and monitoring your application +servers. This article will be using docker on your local workstation. We will be +working with docker in an ad-hoc way, launching containers that run ‘/bin/bash’ +and attaching a TTY to them. I use docker here in a purely academic fashion and +do not condone running Netdata in a container. I pick this method so individuals +without cloud accounts or access to VMs can try this out and for it’s speed of +deployment. + +## Why Netdata, Prometheus, and Grafana +Some time ago I was introduced to Netdata by a coworker. We were attempting to +troubleshoot python code which seemed to be bottlenecked. I was instantly +impressed by the amount of metrics Netdata exposes to you. I quickly added +Netdata to my set of go-to tools when troubleshooting systems performance. + +Some time ago, even later, I was introduced to Prometheus. Prometheus is a +monitoring application which flips the normal architecture around and polls +rest endpoints for its metrics. This architectural change greatly simplifies +and decreases the time necessary to begin monitoring your applications. +Compared to current monitoring solutions the time spent on designing the +infrastructure is greatly reduced. Running a single Prometheus server per +application becomes feasible with the help of Grafana. + +Grafana has been the go to graphing tool for… some time now. It’s awesome, +anyone that has used it knows it’s awesome. We can point Grafana at Prometheus +and use Prometheus as a data source. This allows a pretty simple overall +monitoring architecture: Install Netdata on your application servers, point +Prometheus at Netdata, and then point Grafana at Prometheus. + +I’m omitting an important ingredient in this stack in order to keep this tutorial +simple and that is service discovery. My personal preference is to use Consul. +Prometheus can plug into consul and automatically begin to scrape new hosts that +register a Netdata client with Consul. + +At the end of this tutorial you will understand how each technology fits +together to create a modern monitoring stack. This stack will offer you +visibility into your application and systems performance. + +## Getting Started - Netdata +To begin let’s create our container which we will install Netdata on. We need +to run a container, forward the necessary port that netdata listens on, and +attach a tty so we can interact with the bash shell on the container. But +before we do this we want name resolution between the two containers to work. +In order to accomplish this we will create a user-defined network and attach +both containers to this network. The first command we should run is: + +``` +docker network create --driver bridge netdata-tutorial +``` + +With this user-defined network created we can now launch our container we will +install Netdata on and point it to this network. + +``` +docker run -it --name netdata --hostname netdata --network=netdata-tutorial -p 19999:19999 centos:latest '/bin/bash' +``` + +This command creates an interactive tty session (-it), gives the container both +a name in relation to the docker daemon and a hostname (this is so you know what +container is which when working in the shells and docker maps hostname +resolution to this container), forwards the local port 19999 to the container’s +port 19999 (-p 19999:19999), sets the command to run (/bin/bash) and then +chooses the base container images (centos:latest). After running this you should +be sitting inside the shell of the container. + +After we have entered the shell we can install Netdata. This process could not +be easier. If you take a look at [this link](../installer/#installation), the Netdata devs give us +several one-liners to install netdata. I have not had any issues with these one +liners and their bootstrapping scripts so far (If you guys run into anything do +share). Run the following command in your container. + +``` +bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh) --dont-wait +``` + +After the install completes you should be able to hit the Netdata dashboard at +http://localhost:19999/ (replace localhost if you’re doing this on a VM or have +the docker container hosted on a machine not on your local system). If this is +your first time using Netdata I suggest you take a look around. The amount of +time I’ve spent digging through /proc and calculating my own metrics has been +greatly reduced by this tool. Take it all in. + +Next I want to draw your attention to a particular endpoint. Navigate to +http://localhost:19999/api/v1/allmetrics?format=prometheus&help=yes In your +browser. This is the endpoint which publishes all the metrics in a format which +Prometheus understands. Let’s take a look at one of these metrics. +`netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average{chart="system.cpu",family="cpu",dimension="system"} +0.0831255 1501271696000` This metric is representing several things which I will +go in more details in the section on prometheus. For now understand that this +metric: `netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average` has several labels: [chart, +family, dimension]. This corresponds with the first cpu chart you see on the +Netdata dashboard. + + + +This CHART is called ‘system.cpu’, The FAMILY is cpu, and the DIMENSION we are +observing is “system”. You can begin to draw links between the charts in netdata +to the prometheus metrics format in this manner. + +## Prometheus +We will be installing prometheus in a container for purpose of demonstration. +While prometheus does have an official container I would like to walk through +the install process and setup on a fresh container. This will allow anyone +reading to migrate this tutorial to a VM or Server of any sort. + +Let’s start another container in the same fashion as we did the Netdata +container. `docker run -it --name prometheus --hostname prometheus +--network=netdata-tutorial -p 9090:9090 centos:latest '/bin/bash'` This should +drop you into a shell once again. Once there quickly install your favorite +editor as we will be editing files later in this tutorial. `yum install vim -y` + +Prometheus provides a tarball of their latest stable versions here: +https://prometheus.io/download/. Let’s download the latest version and install +into your container. + +``` +curl -L 'https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v1.7.1/prometheus-1.7.1.linux-amd64.tar.gz' -o /tmp/prometheus.tar.gz + +mkdir /opt/prometheus + +tar -xf /tmp/prometheus.tar.gz -C /opt/prometheus/ --strip-components 1 +``` + +This should get prometheus installed into the container. Let’s test that we can run +prometheus and connect to it’s web interface. This will look similar to what +follows: + +``` +[root@prometheus prometheus]# /opt/prometheus/prometheus +INFO[0000] Starting prometheus (version=1.7.1, branch=master, revision=3afb3fffa3a29c3de865e1172fb740442e9d0133) + source="main.go:88" +INFO[0000] Build context (go=go1.8.3, user=root@0aa1b7fc430d, date=20170612-11:44:05) source="main.go:89" +INFO[0000] Host details (Linux 4.9.36-moby #1 SMP Wed Jul 12 15:29:07 UTC 2017 x86_64 prometheus (none)) source="main.go:90" +INFO[0000] Loading configuration file prometheus.yml source="main.go:252" +INFO[0000] Loading series map and head chunks... source="storage.go:428" +INFO[0000] 0 series loaded. source="storage.go:439" +INFO[0000] Starting target manager... source="targetmanager.go:63" +INFO[0000] Listening on :9090 source="web.go:259" +``` + +Now attempt to go to http://localhost:9090/. You should be presented with the +prometheus homepage. This is a good point to talk about Prometheus’s data model +which can be viewed here: https://prometheus.io/docs/concepts/data_model/ As +explained we have two key elements in Prometheus metrics. We have the ‘metric’ +and its ‘labels’. Labels allow for granularity between metrics. Let’s use our +previous example to further explain. + +``` +netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average{chart="system.cpu",family="cpu",dimension="system"} 0.0831255 1501271696000 +``` + +Here our metric is +‘netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average’ and our labels are ‘chart’, ‘family’, +and ‘dimension. The last two values constitute the actual metric value for the +metric type (gauge, counter, etc…). We can begin graphing system metrics with +this information, but first we need to hook up Prometheus to poll Netdata stats. + +Let’s move our attention to Prometheus’s configuration. Prometheus gets it +config from the file located (in our example) at +`/opt/prometheus/prometheus.yml`. I won’t spend an extensive amount of time +going over the configuration values documented here: +https://prometheus.io/docs/operating/configuration/. We will be adding a new +“job” under the “scrape_configs”. Let’s make the “scrape_configs” section look +like this (we can use the dns name Netdata due to the custom user-defined +network we created in docker beforehand). + +```yml +scrape_configs: + # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>` to any timeseries scraped from this config. + - job_name: 'prometheus' + + # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics' + # scheme defaults to 'http'. + + static_configs: + - targets: ['localhost:9090'] + + - job_name: 'netdata' + + metrics_path: /api/v1/allmetrics + params: + format: [ prometheus ] + + static_configs: + - targets: ['netdata:19999'] +``` + +Let’s start prometheus once again by running `/opt/prometheus/prometheus`. If we +now navigate to prometheus at ‘http://localhost:9090/targets’ we should see our +target being successfully scraped. If we now go back to the Prometheus’s +homepage and begin to type ‘netdata_’ Prometheus should auto complete metrics +it is now scraping. + + + +Let’s now start exploring how we can graph some metrics. Back in our NetData +container lets get the CPU spinning with a pointless busy loop. On the shell do +the following: + +``` +[root@netdata /]# while true; do echo "HOT HOT HOT CPU"; done +``` + +Our NetData cpu graph should be showing some activity. Let’s represent this in +Prometheus. In order to do this let’s keep our metrics page open for reference: +http://localhost:19999/api/v1/allmetrics?format=prometheus&help=yes We are +setting out to graph the data in the CPU chart so let’s search for “system.cpu” +in the metrics page above. We come across a section of metrics with the first +comments `# COMMENT homogeneus chart "system.cpu", context "system.cpu", family +"cpu", units "percentage"` Followed by the metrics. This is a good start now let +us drill down to the specific metric we would like to graph. + +``` +# COMMENT +netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average: dimension "system", value is percentage, gauge, dt 1501275951 to 1501275951 inclusive +netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average{chart="system.cpu",family="cpu",dimension="system"} 0.0000000 1501275951000 +``` + +Here we learn that the metric name we care about is +‘netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average’ so throw this into Prometheus and see +what we get. We should see something similar to this (I shut off my busy loop) + + + +This is a good step toward what we want. Also make note that Prometheus will tag +on an ‘instance’ label for us which corresponds to our statically defined job in +the configuration file. This allows us to tailor our queries to specific +instances. Now we need to isolate the dimension we want in our query. To do this +let us refine the query slightly. Let’s query the dimension also. Place this +into our query text box. +`netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average{dimension="system"}` We now wind up with +the following graph. + + + +Awesome, this is exactly what we wanted. If you haven’t caught on yet we can +emulate entire charts from NetData by using the `chart` dimension. If you’d like +you can combine the ‘chart’ and ‘instance’ dimension to create per-instance +charts. Let’s give this a try: +`netdata_system_cpu_percentage_average{chart="system.cpu", instance="netdata:19999"}` + +This is the basics of using Prometheus to query NetData. I’d advise everyone at +this point to read [this page](../backends/prometheus/#using-netdata-with-prometheus). +The key point here is that NetData can export metrics from its internal DB or +can send metrics “as-collected” by specifying the ‘source=as-collected’ url +parameter like so. +http://localhost:19999/api/v1/allmetrics?format=prometheus&help=yes&types=yes&source=as-collected +If you choose to use this method you will need to use Prometheus's set of +functions here: https://prometheus.io/docs/querying/functions/ to obtain useful +metrics as you are now dealing with raw counters from the system. For example +you will have to use the `irate()` function over a counter to get that metric’s +rate per second. If your graphing needs are met by using the metrics returned by +NetData’s internal database (not specifying any source= url parameter) then use +that. If you find limitations then consider re-writing your queries using the +raw data and using Prometheus functions to get the desired chart. + +## Grafana +Finally we make it to grafana. This is the easiest part in my opinion. This time +we will actually run the official grafana docker container as all configuration +we need to do is done via the GUI. Let’s run the following command: + +``` +docker run -i -p 3000:3000 --network=netdata-tutorial grafana/grafana +``` + +This will get grafana running at ‘http://localhost:3000/’ Let’s go there and +login using the credentials Admin:Admin. + +The first thing we want to do is click ‘Add data source’. Let’s make it look +like the following screenshot + + + +With this completed let’s graph! Create a new Dashboard by clicking on the top +left Grafana Icon and create a new graph in that dashboard. Fill in the query +like we did above and save. + + + +## Conclusion + +There you have it, a complete systems monitoring stack which is very easy to +deploy. From here I would begin to understand how Prometheus and a service +discovery mechanism such as Consul can play together nicely. My current prod +deployments automatically register Netdata services into Consul and Prometheus +automatically begins to scrape them. Once achieved you do not have to think +about the monitoring system until Prometheus cannot keep up with your scale. +Once this happens there are options presented in the Prometheus documentation +for solving this. Hope this was helpful, happy monitoring. diff --git a/backends/prometheus/README.md b/backends/prometheus/README.md index 826cf051..99a11f94 100644 --- a/backends/prometheus/README.md +++ b/backends/prometheus/README.md @@ -1,18 +1,21 @@ -> IMPORTANT: the format netdata sends metrics to prometheus has changed since netdata v1.7. The new prometheus backend for netdata supports a lot more features and is aligned to the development of the rest of the netdata backends. - # Using netdata with Prometheus +> IMPORTANT: the format netdata sends metrics to prometheus has changed since netdata v1.7. The new prometheus backend for netdata supports a lot more features and is aligned to the development of the rest of the netdata backends. + Prometheus is a distributed monitoring system which offers a very simple setup along with a robust data model. Recently netdata added support for Prometheus. I'm going to quickly show you how to install both netdata and prometheus on the same server. We can then use grafana pointed at Prometheus to obtain long term metrics netdata offers. I'm assuming we are starting at a fresh ubuntu shell (whether you'd like to follow along in a VM or a cloud instance is up to you). + ## Installing netdata and prometheus ### Installing netdata -There are number of ways to install netdata according to [Installation](https://github.com/netdata/netdata/wiki/Installation) + +There are number of ways to install netdata according to [Installation](../../installer/#installation) The suggested way of installing the latest netdata and keep it upgrade automatically. Using one line installation: ``` bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh) ``` + At this point we should have netdata listening on port 19999. Attempt to take your browser here: ``` @@ -22,15 +25,16 @@ http://your.netdata.ip:19999 *(replace `your.netdata.ip` with the IP or hostname of the server running netdata)* ### Installing Prometheus + In order to install prometheus we are going to introduce our own systemd startup script along with an example of prometheus.yaml configuration. Prometheus needs to be pointed to your server at a specific target url for it to scrape netdata's api. Prometheus is always a pull model meaning netdata is the passive client within this architecture. Prometheus always initiates the connection with netdata. -##### Download Prometheus +#### Download Prometheus ```sh wget -O /tmp/prometheus-2.3.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.3.2/prometheus-2.3.2.linux-amd64.tar.gz ``` -##### Create prometheus system user +#### Create prometheus system user ```sh sudo useradd -r prometheus @@ -104,6 +108,7 @@ scrape_configs: static_configs: - targets: ['{your.netdata.ip}:19999'] ``` + #### Install nodes.yml The following is completely optional, it will enable Prometheus to generate alerts from some NetData sources. Tweak the values to your own needs. We will use the following `nodes.yml` file below. Save it at `/opt/prometheus/nodes.yml`, and add a *- "nodes.yml"* entry under the *rule_files:* section in the example prometheus.yml file above. @@ -166,7 +171,6 @@ ExecStop=/bin/kill -SIGINT $MAINPID [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target ``` - ##### Start Prometheus ``` @@ -180,7 +184,7 @@ If everything is working correctly when you fetch `http://your.prometheus.ip:909 --- -## netdata support for prometheus +## Netdata support for prometheus > IMPORTANT: the format netdata sends metrics to prometheus has changed since netdata v1.6. The new format allows easier queries for metrics and supports both `as collected` and normalized metrics. @@ -208,7 +212,7 @@ Then each netdata chart contains metrics called `dimensions`. All the dimensions ### netdata data source -netdata can send metrics to prometheus from 3 data sources: +Netdata can send metrics to prometheus from 3 data sources: - `as collected` or `raw` - this data source sends the metrics to prometheus as they are collected. No conversion is done by netdata. The latest value for each metric is just given to prometheus. This is the most preferred method by prometheus, but it is also the harder to work with. To work with this data source, you will need to understand how to get meaningful values out of them. @@ -231,7 +235,6 @@ netdata can send metrics to prometheus from 3 data sources: Keep in mind that early versions of netdata were sending the metrics as: `CHART_DIMENSION{}`. - ### Querying Metrics Fetch with your web browser this URL: @@ -298,6 +301,7 @@ netdata_system_cpu_total{chart="system.cpu",family="cpu",dimension="iowait"} 233 # COMMENT netdata_system_cpu_total: chart "system.cpu", context "system.cpu", family "cpu", dimension "idle", value * 1 / 1 delta gives percentage (counter) netdata_system_cpu_total{chart="system.cpu",family="cpu",dimension="idle"} 918470 1500066716438 ``` + *(netdata response for `system.cpu` with source=`as-collected`)* For more information check prometheus documentation. @@ -315,11 +319,11 @@ The `format=prometheus` parameter only exports the host's netdata metrics. If y This will report all upstream host data, and `honor_labels` will make Prometheus take note of the instance names provided. -### timestamps +### Timestamps To pass the metrics through prometheus pushgateway, netdata supports the option `×tamps=no` to send the metrics without timestamps. -## netdata host variables +## Netdata host variables netdata collects various system configuration metrics, like the max number of TCP sockets supported, the max number of files allowed system-wide, various IPC sizes, etc. These metrics are not exposed to prometheus by default. @@ -369,7 +373,7 @@ netdata sends all metrics prefixed with `netdata_`. You can change this in `netd It can also be changed from the URL, by appending `&prefix=netdata`. -### accuracy of `average` and `sum` data sources +### Accuracy of `average` and `sum` data sources When the data source is set to `average` or `sum`, netdata remembers the last access of each client accessing prometheus metrics and uses this last access time to respond with the `average` or `sum` of all the entries in the database since that. This means that prometheus servers are not losing data when they access netdata with data source = `average` or `sum`. |