SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
OpenStack Operator's Guide #
Publication Date: 09/08/2022
This manual describes how system operators can monitor their OpenStack
platforms with
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring.
The manual is structured as follows:
This manual is intended for OpenStack operators who use SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring for monitoring their OpenStack platform.
The manual assumes that you have expert knowledge of OpenStack.
2 Notational Conventions #
This manual uses the following notational conventions:
This manual uses the following abbreviations:
IaaS.
Infrastructure as a Service
ICMP.
Internet Control Message Protocol
OS.
Operating System
OSS.
Open Source Software
PaaS.
Platform as a Service
SaaS.
Software as a Service
4 Available Documentation #
The following documentation on SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring is available:
-
Overview: A manual introducing SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring. It is written for everybody interested in
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring.
-
OpenStack Operator's Guide: A manual for SUSE
OpenStack Cloud operators describing how to prepare their OpenStack
platform for SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring. The manual
also describes how the operators use SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring for monitoring their OpenStack services.
-
Monitoring Service Operator's Guide: A manual for
system operators describing how to operate SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring in single mode. The manual also describes how the
operators use SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring for
monitoring their environment.
5 Related Web References #
The following Web references provide information on open source offerings
integrated with SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring:
More detailed Web references provided in this manual are subject to change
without notice.
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Copyright © 2022
SUSE LLC and contributors. All rights reserved.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not
use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of
the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
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All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Trademark symbols (®, ™ etc.) denote trademarks of SUSE and its
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The OpenStack® Word Mark and OpenStack logo are registered
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OpenStack Foundation's permission.
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Exportation/release of this document may require necessary procedures in
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control laws.
1 Introduction to SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring #
As more and more applications are deployed on cloud systems and cloud systems
are growing in complexity, managing the cloud infrastructure is becoming
increasingly difficult. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
helps mastering this challenge by providing a sophisticated Monitoring as a
Service solution that is operated on top of OpenStack-based cloud computing
platforms.
The component architecture of OpenStack provides for high flexibility, yet it
increases the burden of system operation because multiple services must be
handled. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring offers an
integrated view of all services and assembles and presents related metrics
and log data in one convenient access point. While being flexible and
scalable to instantly reflect changes in the OpenStack platform, SUSE
OpenStack Cloud Monitoring provides the ways and means required to
ensure multi-tenancy, high availability, and data security.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring covers all aspects of a
Monitoring as a Service solution:
-
Central management of monitoring and log data from medium and large-size
OpenStack deployments.
-
Storage of metrics and log data in a resilient way.
-
Multi-tenancy architecture to ensure the secure isolation of metrics and
log data.
-
Horizontal and vertical scalability to support constantly evolving cloud
infrastructures. When physical and virtual servers are scaled up or down to
varying loads, the monitoring and log management solution can be adapted
accordingly.
1.1 Basic Usage Scenario #
The basic usage scenario of setting up and using the monitoring features of
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring looks as follows:
An application operator acts as a service
provider in the OpenStack environment. He books virtual machines to provide
services to end users or to host services
that he needs for his own development activities. SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring helps application operators ensure that their
services and the servers on which they are provided are configured and
working as required.
As an OpenStack operator, you are a special
application operator who is responsible for administrating and maintaining
the underlying OpenStack platform. The monitoring and log management services
of SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring enable you to ensure the
availability and quality of your platform. You use SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring for:
-
Monitoring physical and virtual servers, hypervisors, and OpenStack
services.
-
Monitoring middleware components, for example, database services.
-
Retrieving and analyzing the log data of the OpenStack services and
servers, the middleware components, and the operating system.
The Monitoring Service operator is
responsible for providing the monitoring and log management features to the
application operators and the OpenStack operator. This enables them to focus
on operation and the quality of their services and servers without having to
carry out the tedious tasks implied by setting up and administrating their
own monitoring software. The Monitoring Service operator uses the monitoring
services himself for ensuring the quality of SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring.
1.2 The OpenStack Operator's Tasks #
In order to use SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring for
monitoring your OpenStack services and servers, so-called agents must be
installed and configured:
The Metrics agent is responsible for querying metrics and sending them to the
Monitoring Service for further processing.
Metrics are self-describing data structures that are uniquely identified by a
name and a set of dimensions. Each dimension consists of a key/value pair
that allows for a flexible and concise description of the data to be
monitored, for example, region, availability zone, service tier, or resource
ID.
The Metrics Agent supports various types of metrics including the following:
-
System metrics, for example, CPU usage, consumed disk space, or network
traffic.
-
Host alive checks. The agent can perform active checks on a host to
determine whether it is alive using ping (ICMP) or SSH.
-
Process checks. The agent can check and monitor a process, for example, the
number of instances, memory size, or number of threads.
-
HTTP endpoint checks. The agent can perform up/down checks on HTTP
endpoints by sending an HTTP request and reporting success or failure to
the Monitoring Service.
-
Service checks. The agent can check middleware services, for example,
MySQL, Kafka, or RabbitMQ.
-
OpenStack services. The agent can perform specific checks on each process
that is part of an OpenStack service.
-
Log metrics. The agent can check and monitor the number of critical log
entries in the log data retrieved from the cloud resources.
Your individual agent configuration determines which metrics are available
for monitoring your services and servers. For details on installing and
configuring a Metrics Agent, refer to
https://documentation.suse.com/soc/8/html/suse-openstack-cloud-crowbar-all/cha-depl-ostack.html#sec-depl-ostack-monasca.
As soon as an agent is available, you have access to the SUSE
OpenStack Cloud Monitoring monitoring features. You work with a
graphical user interface that is seamlessly integrated into your cloud
infrastructure. Based on OpenStack Horizon, the user interface enables access
to all monitoring functionality and the resulting large-scale monitoring
data. A comfortable dashboard visualizes the health and status of your cloud
resources.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring provides functions for alarm
and notification management. Template-based alarm definitions allow
for monitoring a dynamically changing set of resources without the need for
reconfiguration. While the number of underlying virtual machines is changing,
for example, this ensures the efficient monitoring of scalable cloud
services. Alarm definitions allow you to specify expressions that are
evaluated based on the metrics data that is received. Alarm definitions can
be combined to form compound alarms. Compound alarms allow you to track and
process even more complex events. Notifications can be configured in order to
inform SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring users when an alarm
is triggered.
For details on the monitoring functions, refer to
Chapter 3, Monitoring.
The Log Agent collects the log data from the services and servers and sends
them to the Monitoring Service for further processing. For details on
installing and configuring a Log Agent, refer to
https://documentation.suse.com/soc/8/html/suse-openstack-cloud-crowbar-all/cha-depl-ostack.html#sec-depl-ostack-monasca.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring stores the log data in a
central database. This forms the basis for visualizing the log data for the
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring users. Advanced data
analysis and visualization of the log data is supported in a variety of
charts, tables, and maps. Visualizations can easily be combined in dynamic
dashboards that display changes to search queries in real time.
Based on OpenStack Horizon, the customizable dashboards are seamlessly
integrated into your cloud infrastructure. They enable user access to all log
management functionality.
GUI-based alarm and notification management is also supported for log data.
Based on a template mechanism, you can configure alarms and notifications to
monitor the number of critical log events over time. Compound alarms can be
created to analyze more complex log events. This automation of log handling
guarantees that you can identify problems in your their infrastructure early
and find the root cause quickly.
For details on the log management functions, refer to
Chapter 4, Log Management.
The following illustration provides an overview of the main components of
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring:
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring relies on OpenStack as
technology for building cloud computing platforms for public and private
clouds. OpenStack consists of a series of interrelated projects delivering
various components for a cloud infrastructure solution and allowing for the
deployment and management of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platforms.
The Monitoring Service is the central SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring component. It is responsible for receiving, persisting,
and processing metrics and log data, as well as providing the data to the
users.
The Monitoring Service relies on Monasca. It uses Monasca for high-speed
metrics querying and integrates the streaming alarm engine and the
notification engine of Monasca. For details, refer to the
Monasca Wiki (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Monasca).
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring comes with a plugin for the
OpenStack Horizon dashboard. The plugin extends the main dashboard in
OpenStack with a view for monitoring. This enables SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring users to access the monitoring functions from a
central Web-based graphical user interface. For details, refer to the
OpenStack Horizon
documentation (http://docs.openstack.org/developer/horizon/).
Based on OpenStack Horizon, the monitoring data is visualized on a
comfortable and easy-to-use dashboard which fully integrates with the
following applications:
-
Grafana (for metrics data). An open source application for visualizing
large-scale measurement data.
-
Kibana (for log data). An open source analytics and visualization platform
designed to work with Elasticsearch.
A Metrics Agent is required for retrieving metrics data from the host on
which it runs and sending the metrics data to the Monitoring Service. The
agent supports metrics from a variety of sources as well as a number of
built-in system and service checks.
A Metrics Agent can be installed on each virtual or physical server to be
monitored.
The agent functionality is fully integrated into the source code base of the
Monasca project. For details, refer to the
Monasca Wiki (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Monasca).
A Log Agent is needed for collecting log data from the host on which it runs
and forwarding the log data to the Monitoring Service for further processing.
It can be installed on each virtual or physical server from which log data is
to be retrieved.
The agent functionality is fully integrated into the source code base of the
Monasca project. For details, refer to the
Monasca Wiki (https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Monasca).
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring is fully integrated with
Keystone, the identity service which serves as the common authentication and
authorization system in OpenStack.
The SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring integration with
Keystone requires any SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring user
to be registered as an OpenStack user. All authentication and authorization
in SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring is done through Keystone.
If a user requests monitoring data, for example, SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring verifies that the user is a valid user in OpenStack and
allowed to access the requested metrics.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring users are created and
administrated in OpenStack:
-
Each user assumes a role in OpenStack to perform a specific set of
operations. The OpenStack role specifies a set of rights and privileges.
-
Each user is assigned to at least one project in OpenStack. A project is an
organizational unit that defines a set of resources which can be accessed
by the assigned users.
Application operators in SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
can monitor the set of resources that is defined for the projects to which
they are assigned.
For details on user management, refer to the
OpenStack documentation (http://docs.openstack.org/newton/).
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring offers various
features which support you in proactively managing your cloud resources. A
large number of metrics in combination with early warnings about problems and
outages assists you in analyzing and troubleshooting any issue you encounter
in your environment.
The monitoring features include:
-
A monitoring overview which allows you to access all monitoring
information.
-
Metrics dashboards for visualizing your monitoring data.
-
Alerting features for monitoring.
In the following sections, you will find information on the monitoring
overview and the metrics dashboards as well as details on how to define and
handle alarms and notifications.
Accessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
#
For accessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring and performing
monitoring tasks, you must have access to the OpenStack platform as a user with
the or
role in the tenant.
Log in to OpenStack Horizon with your user name and password. The functions
you can use in OpenStack Horizon depend on your access permissions. To access
logs and metrics, switch to the tenant in
Horizon. This allows you to access all monitoring data for SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring provides one convenient
access point to your monitoring data. Use Monitoring >
Overview to keep track of your services and servers and quickly
check their status. The overview also indicates any irregularities in the log
data of the system components you are monitoring.
On the Overview page, you can:
-
View the status of your services, servers, and log data at a glance. As
soon as you have defined an alarm for a service, a server, or log data and
metrics data has been received, there is status information displayed on
the Overview page. Different colors are used for the
different statuses.
For details on the status information, refer to Section 3.5, “Status of Services, Servers, and Log Data”. For
details on defining alarms, refer to Section 3.3, “Defining Alarms”.
-
Access a preconfigured dashboard that visualizes your metrics data.
Starting from this dashboard, you can create your own dashboards for
visualizing your metrics data as required. For details, refer to
Section 3.2, “Working with Data Visualizations”.
-
Access the SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring log management
functionality. For details, refer to
Chapter 4, Log Management.
3.2 Working with Data Visualizations #
The user interface for monitoring your services, servers, and log data
integrates with Grafana, an open source application for visualizing
large-scale monitoring data. Use the options at the top border of the
Overview page to access Grafana.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring ships with preconfigured
metrics dashboards. You can instantly use them for monitoring your
environment. You can also use them as a starting point for building your own
dashboards.
Preconfigured Metrics Dashboard for OpenStack#
As an OpenStack operator, you use the Dashboard option
on the Overview page to view the metrics data on the
OpenStack services. The Monitoring Service operator uses the
Dashboard option to view the metrics data on the
Monitoring Service.
To monitor OpenStack, the preconfigured dashboard shows the following:
-
Status of the main OpenStack Services (UP
or
DOWN
). Information on Nova, Neutron, Glance, Cinder,
Swift, and Keystone is displayed.
-
Information on system resources.
The dashboard shows metrics data on CPU usage: the percentage of time the
CPU is used in total (cpu.percent
), at user level
(cpu.user_perc
), and at system level
(cpu.system_perc
), as well as the percentage of time the
CPU is idle when no I/O requests are in progress
(cpu.wait_perc
).
The dashboard shows metrics data on memory usage: the number of megabytes
of total memory (mem.total_mb
), used memory
(mem.used_mb
), total swap memory
(mem.swap_total_mb
), and used swap memory
(mem.swap_used_mb
), as well as the number of megabytes
used for the page cache (mem.used_cache
).
The dashboard shows metrics data on the percentage of disk space that is
being used on a device (disk.space_used_perc
).
The dashboard shows metrics data on the SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring system load over different periods
(load.avg_1_min
, load.avg_5_min
, and
load.avg_15_min
).
-
The network usage of SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring.
The dashboard shows the number of network bytes received and sent per
second (net.in_bytes_sec
and
net.out_bytes_sec
).
Each metrics dashboard is composed of one or more panels that are arranged in
one or more rows. A row serves as a logical divider within a dashboard. It
organizes your panels in groups. The panel is the basic building block for
visualizing your metrics data.
For building dashboards, you have two options:
The following sections provide introductory information on dashboards, rows,
and panels, and make you familiar with the first steps involved in building a
dashboard. For additional information, you can also refer to the
Grafana documentation (http://docs.grafana.org/).
To create a new dashboard, use Open icon in the
top right corner of your dashboard window. The option provides access to
various features for administrating dashboards. Click New
to create an empty dashboard that serves as a starting point for adding rows
and panels.
On the left side of an empty dashboard, there is a green rectangle displayed.
Hover over this rectangle to access a Row menu. To
insert your first panel, you can use the options in the Add
Panel submenu. See below for details on the available panel types.
As soon as you have inserted an empty panel, you can add additional rows. For
this purpose, use the Add Row option on the right side
of the dashboard.
Features for editing rows can be accessed via the green rectangle that is
displayed to the left of each row.
In addition to adding panels to a row, you can collapse or remove a row, move
the position of the row within your dashboard, or set the row height. Row
settings allows you, for example, to insert a row title or to hide the
Row menu so that the row can no longer be edited.
Grafana distinguishes between three panel types:
Panels of type Graph are used to visualize metrics data.
A query editor is provided to define the data to be visualized. The editor
allows you to combine multiple queries. This means that any number of metrics
and data series can be visualized in one panel.
Panels of type Singlestat are also used to visualize
metrics data, yet they reduce a single query to a single number. The single
number can be, for example, the minimum, maximum, average, or sum of values
of the data series. The single number can be translated into a text value, if
required.
Panels of type Text are used to insert static text. The
text may, for example, provide information for the dashboard users. Text
panels are not connected to any metrics data.
As soon as you have added a panel to your dashboard, you can access the
options for editing the panel content. For this purpose, click the panel
title and use Edit:
-
For panels of type Text, a simple text editor is
displayed for entering text. Plain text, HTML, and markdown format are
supported.
-
For panels of type Graph and
Singlestat, a query editor is displayed to define
which data it to be shown. You can add multiple metrics, and apply
functions to the metrics. The query results will be visualized in your
panel in real time.
A large number of display and formatting features are provided to customize
how the content is presented in a panel. Click the panel title to access the
corresponding options. The menu that is displayed also allows you to
duplicate or remove a panel. To change the size of a panel, click the
+ and - icons.
You can move panels on your dashboard by simply dragging and dropping them
within and between rows.
By default, the time range for panels is controlled by dashboard settings.
Use the time picker in the top right corner of your dashboard window to
define relative or absolute time ranges. You can also set an auto-refresh
interval, or manually refresh the data that is displayed.
Saving and Sharing Dashboards#
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring allows you to save a metrics
dashboard and export it to a JSON file. The JSON file can be edited, it can
be shared with other users, and it can be imported to SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring again.
To save a dashboard, use Save in the top right corner of
your dashboard window. You can enter a name for the dashboard and simply save
it to your browser's local storage. Use Dashboard JSON
to directly view the corresponding JSON syntax, or use Export
dashboard to download the JSON file. The JSON file can be
forwarded to other users, if required. To import a JSON file, use
Open dashboard in the top left corner of the dashboard
window.
You have to define alarms to monitor your cloud resources. An alarm
definition specifies the metrics to be collected and the threshold at which
an alarm is to be triggered for a cloud resource. If the specified threshold
is reached or exceeded, the alarm is triggered and notifications can be sent
to inform users. By default, an alarm definition is evaluated every minute.
To handle a large variety of monitoring requirements, you can create either
simple alarm definitions that refer to one metrics only, or compound alarm
definitions that combine multiple metrics and allow you to track and process
more complex events.
Example for a simple alarm definition that checks whether the system-level
load of the CPU exceeds a threshold of 90 percent:
cpu.system_perc{hostname=monasca} > 90
Example for a simple alarm definition that checks the average time of the
system-level load of the CPU over a period of 480 seconds. The alarm is
triggered only if this average is greater than 95 percent:
avg(cpu.system_perc{hostname=monasca}, 120) > 95 times 4
Example for a compound alarm definition that evaluates two metrics. The alarm
is triggered if either the system-level load of the CPU exceeds a threshold
of 90 percent, or if the disk space that is used by the specified service
exceeds a threshold of 90 percent:
avg(cpu.system_perc{hostname=monasca}) > 90 OR
max(disk.space_used_perc{service=monitoring}) > 90
To create, edit, and delete alarms, use Monitoring > Alarm
Definitions.
The elements that define an alarm are grouped into
Details, Expression, and
Notifications. They are described in the following
sections.
For an alarm definition, you specify the following details:
-
Name. Mandatory identifier of the alarm. The name must
be unique within the project for which you define the alarm.
-
Description. Optional. A short description that
depicts the purpose of the alarm.
-
Severity. The following severities for an alarm are
supported: Low (default), Medium,
High, or Critical.
The severity affects the status information on the
Overview page. If an alarm that is defined as
Critical is triggered, the corresponding resource is
displayed in a red box. If an alarm that is defined as
Low, Medium, or
High is triggered, the corresponding resource is
displayed in a yellow box only.
The severity level is subjective. Choose a level that is appropriate for
prioritizing the alarms in your environment.
The expression defines how to evaluate a metrics. The expression syntax is
based on a simple expressive grammar. For details, refer to the
Monasca API documentation (https://github.com/openstack/monasca-api/blob/stable/ocata/docs/monasca-api-spec.md).
To define an alarm expression, proceed as follows:
-
Select the metrics to be evaluated.
-
Select a statistical function for the metrics: min
to
monitor the minimum values, max
to monitor the maximum
values, sum
to monitor the sum of the values,
count
for the monitored number, or
avg
for the arithmetic average.
-
Enter one or multiple dimensions in the Add a
dimension field to further qualify the metrics.
Dimensions filter the data to be monitored. They narrow down the evaluation
to specific entities. Each dimension consists of a key/value pair that
allows for a flexible and concise description of the data to be monitored,
for example, region, availability zone, service tier, or resource ID.
The dimensions available for the selected metrics are displayed in the
Matching Metrics section. Type the name of the key you
want to associate with the metrics in the Add a
dimension field. You are offered a select list for adding the
required key/value pair.
-
Enter the threshold value at which an alarm is to be triggered, and combine
it with a relational operator <
,
>
, <=
, or
>=
.
The unit of the threshold value is related to the metrics for which you
define the threshold, for example, the unit is percentage for
cpu.idle_perc
or MB for
disk.total_used_space_mb
.
-
Switch on the Deterministic option if you evaluate a
metrics for which data is received only sporadically. The option should be
switched on, for example, for all log metrics. This ensures that the alarm
status is OK
and displayed as a green box on the
Overview page although metrics data has not yet been
received.
Do not switch on the option if you evaluate a metrics for which data is
received regularly. This ensures that you instantly notice, for example,
that a host machine is offline and that there is no metrics data for the
agent to collect. On the Overview page, the alarm
status therefore changes from OK
to
UNDETERMINED
and is displayed as a gray box.
-
Enter one or multiple dimensions in the Match by field
if you want these dimensions to be taken into account for triggering
alarms.
Example: If you enter hostname
as dimension, individual
alarms will be created for each host machine on which metrics data is
collected. The expression you have defined is not evaluated as a whole but
individually for each host machine in your environment.
If Match by is set to a dimension, the number of
alarms depends on the number of dimension values on which metrics data is
received. An empty Match by field results in exactly
one alarm.
To enter a dimension, you can simply type the name of the dimension in the
Match by field. The dimensions you enter cannot be
changed once the alarm definition is saved.
-
Build a compound alarm definition to combine multiple metrics in one
expression. Using the logical operators AND
or
OR
, any number of sub-expressions can be combined.
Use the Add button to create a second expression, and
choose either AND
or OR
as
Operator to connect it to the one you have already
defined. Proceed with the second expression as described in Step 1 to Step
6 above.
The following options are provided for creating and organizing compound
alarm definitions:
-
Create additional sub-expressions using the Add
button.
-
Finish editing a sub-expression using the Submit
button.
-
Delete a sub-expression using the Remove button.
-
Change the position of a sub-expression using the Up
or Down button.
You can enable notifications for an alarm definition. As soon as an alarm is
triggered, the enabled notifications will be sent.
The Notifications tab allows you to select the
notifications from the ones that are predefined in your environment. For a
selected notification, you specify whether you want to send it for a status
transition to Alarm, OK, and/or
Undetermined.
For details on defining notifications, refer to
Section 3.4, “Defining Notifications”. For
details on alarm statuses, refer to
Section 3.5, “Status of Services, Servers, and Log Data”.
3.4 Defining Notifications #
Notifications define how users are informed when a threshold value defined
for an alarm is reached or exceeded. In the alarm definition, you can assign
one or multiple notifications.
For a notification, you specify the following elements:
-
Name. A unique identifier of the notification. The
name is offered for selection when defining an alarm.
-
Type. Email
is the notification
method supported by SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring. If
you want to use WebHook
or PagerDuty
,
contact your SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring support for
further information.
-
Address. The email address to be notified when an
alarm is triggered.

Note
Generic top-level domains such as business domain names are not supported
in email addresses (for example, user@xyz.company
).
To create, edit, and delete notifications, use Monitoring >
Notifications.
3.5 Status of Services, Servers, and Log Data #
An alarm definition for a service, server, or log data is evaluated over the
interval specified in the alarm expression. The alarm definition is
re-evaluated in each subsequent interval. The following alarm statuses are
distinguished:
-
Alarm
. The alarm expression has evaluated to
true
. An alarm has been triggered for the cloud
resource.
-
OK
. The alarm expression has evaluated to
false
. There is no need to trigger an alarm.
-
Undetermined
. No metrics data has been received within
the defined interval.
As soon as you have defined an alarm for a cloud resource, there is status
information displayed for it on the Overview page:
The color of the boxes in the three sections indicates the status:
-
A green box for a service or server indicates that it is up and running. A
green box for a log path indicates that a defined threshold for errors or
warnings, for example, has not yet been reached or exceeded. There are
alarms defined for the services, servers, or log paths, but no alarms have
been triggered.
-
A red box for a service, server, or log path indicates that there is a
severe problem that needs to be checked. One or multiple alarms defined for
a service, a server, or log data have been triggered.
-
A yellow box indicates a problem. One or multiple alarms have already been
triggered, yet, the severity of these alarms is low.
-
A gray box indicates that alarms have been defined. Yet, metrics data has
not been received.
The status information on the Overview page results from
one or multiple alarms that have been defined for the corresponding resource.
If multiple alarms are defined, the severity of the individual alarms
controls the status color.
You can click a resource on the Overview page to display
details on the related alarms. The details include the status of each alarm
and the expression that is evaluated. For each alarm, you can drill down on
the alarm history. To narrow down the problem, the history presents detailed
information on the status transitions.
For managing the log data of your services and the virtual and physical
servers on which they are provisioned, SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring integrates with Kibana, an open source analytics and
visualization platform. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring uses
Kibana as a front-end application to the log data held in the Elasticsearch
database.
Kibana allows you to easily understand large data volumes. Based on the data
that is stored in Elasticsearch indices, you can perform advanced data
analysis and visualize your log data in a variety of charts, tables, or maps.
Changes to the Elasticsearch indices are displayed in SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring in real time.
The log management features of SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring include:
-
Features for searching, visualizing, and analyzing the log data.
-
Alerting features for monitoring.
In the following sections, you will find information on the Log Management
Window where you search, visualize, and analyze your log data, as well as
details on how to use the alerting features.
Accessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
#
For accessing SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring and performing
log management tasks, the following prerequisites must be fulfilled:
Log in to OpenStack Horizon with your user name and password. The functions
you can use in OpenStack Horizon depend on your access permissions. To access
logs and metrics, switch to the monasca tenant in
Horizon.
The SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring functionality is
available on the Monitoring tab. It provides access to
the log data of all projects to which you are assigned. The Log
Management option at the top border of the
Overview page displays the log management window where
you can work on the log data.
4.1 Working with the Log Management Window #
Index patterns determine which data from the underlying Elasticsearch
database can be viewed and analyzed in SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring's log management window. Index patterns are used to
identify the Elasticsearch indices to run search and analytics against.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring ships with a preconfigured
index pattern which allows you to instantly view and analyze your log data
when accessing the log management window for the first time. You can
configure additional index patterns to view and analyze different data from
different indices. For details, refer to
Section 4.2, “Configuring Index Patterns”.
Search queries allow you to search the Elasticsearch indices for data that
match your information requirements. The query results can be graphically
represented in visualizations, and visualizations can be organized in
dashboards.
The log management window provides features for:
-
Querying log data.
-
Visualizing query results.
-
Combining visualizations in dashboards.
-
Filtering query results in dashboards.
-
Sharing dashboards.
The following sections provide an introduction to queries, visualizations,
and dashboards. For additional details, refer to the
Kibana
documentation (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/kibana/4.5/index.html).
For querying log data, you use the Discover page in the
log management window. It is instantly displayed when you access the window.
It shows the most recently collected log data:
The Discover page allows you to access the log data in
every index that matches the current index pattern. In addition to submitting
queries, you can view, filter, and analyze the log data that is returned by
your queries.
On the Discover page the following elements assist you
in analyzing your log data:
-
Below the main navigation bar at the top of the window, there is a
search box for querying your log data. By
submitting a query, you search all indices that match the current index
pattern. The name of the current index pattern is displayed directly below
the search box on the left side. You can select a different index pattern,
if required. For details on configuring and selecting index patterns, refer
to Section 4.2, “Configuring Index Patterns”.
For entering strings in the search box, use the Lucene query syntax. Kibana
also supports the Elasticsearch Query DSL. For details, refer to the
Elasticsearch Reference documentation (https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/2.3/query-dsl.html).
-
Use the clock icon at the top right border
of the log management window to define a time range for filtering the log
data. By default, SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring displays
the log data collected during the last 15 minutes. You can deviate from
this default. Multiple options are provided for defining relative or
absolute time ranges. The time range you define is instantly applied to all
log data.
-
In the bottom right part of the Discover page, you can
view the log data returned by your search
queries. Depending on whether you have filtered the data by index fields,
the log data is either restricted to these fields or entire records are
displayed.
-
On the left side of the Discover page below the search
box, you see the index fields from the
indices that match the current index pattern. You can select individual
fields to modify which log data is displayed on the right side.
Select a field from the Available Fields section for
this purpose and use Add. To remove a field, select it
in the Selected Fields section and use
Remove.
From the field list, you can expand a field by simply clicking it. This
shows the most common values for the field. You can also set field values
as filter, or you can exclude log data with specific field values.
-
If a time field is configured for the current index pattern, the
distribution of log entries over time is displayed in a
histogram in the top right part of the
Discover page.
By default, the histogram shows the number of logs entries versus time,
matched by the underlying query and time filter. You can click the bars in
the histogram to narrow down the time filter.
Queries can be saved and re-used. They can also be shared with other users.
For this purpose, use the options to the right of the search box at the top
border of the log management window:
-
To save a query, use Save Search. Saving a query means
saving both the query syntax and the current index pattern.
-
To load a query, use Load Saved Search. A saved query
can be loaded and used by any OpenStack or Monitoring Service operator.
-
To share a query with other users, use Share Search.
The option displays a direct link to the query that you can forward. As a
prerequisite for using a direct link, a user must have SUSE
OpenStack Cloud Monitoring access.
Visualizing Query Results#
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring supports you in building
graphical representations of your query results. You can choose from
different visualization types, for example, pie charts, data tables, line
charts, or vertical bar charts. For visualizing your results, you use the
Visualize page in the log management window:
To create a visualization, use New Visualization to the
right of the search box at the top border of the window. You have to select a
visualization type and the query to be used. You can either create a new
query or load a query you have already saved.
Based on the visualization type and the query, you can proceed with designing
the graphical representation in a visualization editor. Multiple design
options and a preview function are provided for creating, modifying, and
viewing the graphical representation.
You can save and re-use visualizations. You can also share them with other
users. For this purpose, use the options to the right of the search box at
the top border of the log management window:
-
To save a visualization, use Save Visualization.
-
To load a visualization, use Load Saved Visualization.
A saved visualization can be loaded and used by any OpenStack or Monitoring
Service operator.
-
To share a visualization with other users, use Share
Visualization. The option displays an HTML snippet that can be
used to embed the visualization in a Web page. It also displays a direct
link to the visualization that you can forward. As a prerequisite for using
an embedded visualization or a direct link, a user must have SUSE
OpenStack Cloud Monitoring access.
Combining Visualizations in Dashboards#
For correlating related information or providing an overview, you can combine
visualizations in dashboards. Use the Dashboard page in
the log management window for this purpose:
To create a dashboard from scratch, you use New
Dashboard to the right of the search box at the top border of the
window. To add a visualization from a list of existing visualizations, use
Add Visualization. You need at least one saved
visualization to create a dashboard. In addition to adding visualizations,
you can also place the tabular output of query results on your dashboards.
Switch to the Searches tab when adding a visualization,
and select a saved query. This adds the query result to your dashboard.
A visualization or query result is displayed in a container on your
dashboard. Various options are provided for arranging containers:
-
Move a container by clicking and dragging its title bar.
-
Resize a container by dragging its bottom right corner.
-
Remove a container using Delete in the top right
corner of the container.
Using Edit in the top right corner of a container, you
can switch to the Visualize or
Discover page. This allows you to design the graphical
representation or edit the query. To view the raw data behind a
visualization, you can click the bar at the bottom of the container. This
replaces your visualization by the underlying raw data. You can export the
raw data, if required.
For each dashboard, you can configure a refresh interval to automatically
refresh its content with the latest data. The current interval is displayed
in the top right border of the log management window. Click the interval if
you want to change it. You can define the interval in absolute or relative
terms. Use Auto-Refresh next to the interval in the
border of the log management window to instantly submit the underlying
queries and refresh the dashboard content.
By default, dashboards are displayed with a light background. Using
Options in the top right border of the log management
window, you can switch to a dark color scheme.
Filtering Query Results in Dashboards#
By submitting a query on the data displayed in a dashboard, you can filter
out specific sets of data that you want to aggregate while not changing the
logic of the individual visualizations.
Use the search box below the main navigation bar at the top of the log
management window for entering a query on the whole dashboard. If a
visualization is already based on a saved query, both queries apply.
Dashboards can be saved and re-used. They can also be shared with other
users. For this purpose, use the options to the right of the search box at
the top border of the log management window:
-
To save a dashboard, use Save Dashboard. By default,
saving a dashboard also saves the time filter that is defined at the time
of saving. You can disable this default by clearing the Store
time with dashboard option. Disabling the default means that the
time filter is set to the currently selected time each time the dashboard
is loaded.
-
To load a dashboard, use Load Saved Dashboard. A saved
dashboard can be loaded and used by any OpenStack or Monitoring Service
operator.
-
To share a dashboard with other users, use Share
Dashboard. The option displays an HTML snippet that can be used
to embed the dashboard in a Web page. It also displays a direct link to the
dashboard that you can forward. As a prerequisite for using an embedded
dashboard or a direct link, a user must have SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring access.
4.2 Configuring Index Patterns #
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring enables the dynamic mapping
of fields. After configuring an index pattern, the indices that match the
pattern are automatically scanned to display the list of index fields. This
guarantees that the fields are correctly visualized in the dashboard.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring ships with a preconfigured
index pattern that allows you to instantly explore your Elasticsearch indices
when accessing the dashboard for the first time. You can create additional
patterns to view and analyze specific sets of data. One or multiple patterns
can be created per project. When you create additional patterns, you have to
set one of them as the default.
To configure an additional index pattern, use Settings >
Indices. Click the index pattern that is displayed in the
Index Patterns field on the left, and use the
Add New option.
Indices that match the pattern you define must exist in the Elasticsearch
database, and they must contain data. For an index pattern, you specify the
following elements:
-
Index contains time-based events. It is recommended
that this option is selected. This improves search performance by enabling
searches only on those indices that contain data on time-based events.
-
Use event times to create index names. It is
recommended that this option is selected. This improves search performance
by enabling searches only on those indices that contain data in the time
range you specify.
-
Index pattern interval. Select
Daily
as index pattern interval. Daily intervals are
supported by the Monitoring Service.
-
Index name or pattern. The pattern allows you to
define dynamic index names. Static text in a pattern is denoted using
brackets. Replace the predefined pattern ([logstash-]*
or [logstash-]YYYY.MM.DD
) as follows:
Replace logstash-
by the project ID of the OpenStack
project whose log data is to be visualized in the dashboard.
Replace *
or YYYY.MM.DD
by
YYYY-MM-DD
as naming pattern. This naming pattern is
supported by the Monitoring Service.
Example: [557aff4bf007473d84069aca202a1633-]YYYY-MM-DD
-
Time-field name. Select @timestamp
as time-field name. @timestamp
matches the
YYYY-MM-DD
naming pattern.
The default index pattern is automatically loaded when you access the log
management window. It is marked with an asterisk in front of the pattern name
in the Index Patterns field at the top left corner of
the Settings page. Select the pattern you want to set as
the default from the Index Patterns field. The
content of the log management window is instantly updated.
4.3 Monitoring Log Data #
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring provides alerting features
for monitoring your log data. Specific log metrics support you in checking
the severity of the entries in your log files. Log metrics are handled like
any other metrics in SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring. They
complete the log management features and support you in analyzing and
troubleshooting any issue that you encounter in your log data.
Using the log metrics for monitoring corresponds to using any other metrics:
-
Use Monitoring > Alarm Definitions to create, edit,
and delete alarms for log data.
-
Use Monitoring > Notifications to create, edit, and
delete notifications for alarms.
-
Use Monitoring > Overview to check whether there
are any irregularities in your log data. As soon as you have defined an
alarm for your log data and metrics data has been received, there is status
information displayed on the Overview page.
For details on using the log metrics, refer to
Chapter 3, Monitoring.
Here are some common errors, and how to resolve them.
This problem may occur the first time the Log Management Window is opened. It occurs because the Elasticsearch index for the Monasca project does not yet exist. A browser reload should fix the problem in most cases.
Oops! Looks like something went wrong#
This problem happens when you were previously logged into Horizon and the session expired, leaving a stale session state that confuses Kibana. In this case, re-login to Horizon and then reload Kibana to fix the problem.
This may be due to an overly narrow time window (that is, no logs were sent in the last 15 minutes, which is the default time window). Try increasing the time window with the drop-down box in the screen's top right corner. If the problem persists verify that log agents are running properly; make sure the openstack-monasca-log-agent
service is running and check /var/log/monasca-log-agent/agent.log
for errors on the agent nodes.
The sections below describe the metrics supported by SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring:
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring supports the following
standard metrics for monitoring servers and networks. These metrics usually
do not require specific settings. The metrics are grouped by metrics types.
Each metrics type references a set of related metrics.
Metrics on CPU usage, e.g. the percentage of time the CPU is idle when no I/O
requests are in progress, or the percentage of time the CPU is used at system
level or user level.
Metrics on disk space, e.g. the percentage of disk space that is used on a
device, or the total amount of disk space aggregated across all the disks on
a particular node.
Metrics on the average system load over different periods (e.g. 1 minute, 5
minutes, or 15 minutes).
Metrics on memory usage, e.g. the number of megabytes of total memory or free
memory, or the percentage of free swap memory.
Metrics on the network, e.g. the number of network bytes received or sent per
second, or the number of network errors on incoming or outgoing network
traffic per second.
These metrics are configured automatically on all machines and nodes that have
the monasca-agent
role assigned. This applies not only to
network.yaml
but also to all metrics covered in this chapter.
In addition to the standard metrics, SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring automatically adds the following
additional metrics to the monasca agent configuration on the OpenStack
Controller.
HTTP endpoint checks perform up/down checks on HTTP endpoints. Based on a
list of URLs, the agent sends an HTTP request and reports success or failure
to the Monitoring Service.
The following barclamps will automatically create an HTTP check for the API
services they deploy if the Monasca
barclamp is active:
-
Barbican
-
Cinder
-
Glance
-
Heat
-
Keystone
-
Magnum
-
Manila
-
Neutron
-
Nova
-
Sahara
-
Swift
By default, the monitoring dashboard is configured to display the service status for the following services:
-
Cinder
-
Glance
-
Keystone
-
Neutron
-
Nova
-
Swift
The status visualization for additional services can be added manually.
Postgres checks gather various CRUD and system statistics for a database
hosted by a PostgreSQL DBMS.
The following barclamps will automatically create Postgres checks for their
service database if the Monasca
barclamp is active:
-
Barbican
-
Cinder
-
Glance
-
Heat
-
Keystone
-
Magnum
-
Manila
-
Neutron
-
Nova
-
Sahara
A person with limited access to cloud resources in OpenStack. An application
operator provides services to end users or hosts services for his own
development activities.
A key/value pair that allows for a flexible and concise description of the
data to be monitored, for example, region, availability zone, service tier,
or resource ID. Each dimension describes a specific characteristic of the
metrics to be monitored.
In SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring, metrics are uniquely
identified by a name and a set of dimensions. Dimensions can serve as a
filter for the monitoring data.
An open source application that provides a highly scalable full-text search
and analytics engine. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring uses
Elasticsearch as the underlying technology for storing, searching, and
analyzing large volumes of log data.
An open source application for visualizing large-scale measurement data.
SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring integrates with Grafana for
visualizing the monitoring data.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)#
The delivery of computer infrastructure (typically a platform virtualization
environment) as a service.
An open source time-series database that supports high write loads and large
data set storage. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring uses
InfluxDB as the underlying technology for storing metrics and the alarm
history.
An open source analytics and visualization platform designed to work with
Elasticsearch. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring integrates
with Kibana for visualizing the log data.
An open source application that provides a data collection engine with
pipelining capabilities. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring
integrates with Logstash for collecting, processing, and outputting logs.
An open source relational database that provides an SQL-compliant interface
for accessing data. SUSE OpenStack Cloud Monitoring uses
MariaDB as the underlying technology for storing configuration information,
alarm definitions, and notification methods.
Self-describing data structures that allow for a flexible and concise
description of the data to be monitored. Metrics values represent the actual
monitoring data that is collected and presented in SUSE OpenStack
Cloud Monitoring.
An open source Monitoring as a Service solution that integrates with
OpenStack. It forms the core of SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring.
Monitoring Service Operator#
A person responsible for maintaining and administrating SUSE
OpenStack Cloud Monitoring.
A person responsible for maintaining and administrating OpenStack, the
underlying platform technology of SUSE OpenStack Cloud
Monitoring.
Platform as a Service (PaaS)#
The delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service.
Software as a Service (SaaS)#
A model of software deployment where a provider licenses an application to
customers for use as a service on demand.