BIG-IP exporter

Prometheus exporter for BIG-IP statistics. Uses iControl REST API.

Get it

The latest version is 1.0.0. All releases can be found under Releases and docker images are available at Docker Hub(Thanks to 0x46616c6b).

Usage

The bigip_exporter is easy to use. Example:

./bigip_exporter --bigip.host <bigip-host> --bigip.port 443 --bigip.username admin --bigip.password admin

Alternatively, passing a configuration file:

./bigip_exporter --bigip.host <bigip-host> --bigip.port 443 --exporter.config my_config_file.yml

Or, using environment variables to pass you parameters

export BE_BIGIP_HOST=<bigip-host>
export BE_BIGIP_PORT=443
export BE_EXPORTER_BIND_PORT=
./bigip_exporter

Docker

The bigip_exporter is also available as a docker image.

docker run -p 9142:9142 expressenab/bigip_exporter --bigip.host <bigip-host> --bigip.port 443 --bigip.username admin --bigip.password admin

Parameters

Parameters can be passed to the exporter in three different ways. They can be passed using flags, environment variables, a configuration file or a combination of the three. The precedence order is as follows with each item taking precedence over the item below it:

• flag
• env
• config

Flags

This application now uses pflag instead of the standard flag library. Therefore all flags now follow the POSIX standard and should be preceeded by --

Flag	Description	Default
bigip.basic_auth	Use HTTP Basic instead of Token for authentication	false
bigip.host	BIG-IP host	localhost
bigip.port	BIG-IP port	443
bigip.username	BIG-IP username	user
bigip.password	BIG-IP password	pass
exporter.bind_address	The address the exporter should bind to	All interfaces
exporter.bind_port	Which port the exporter should listen on	9142
exporter.partitions	A comma separated list containing the partitions that should be exported	All partitions
exporter.namespace	The namespace used in prometheus labels	bigip
exporter.config	A path to a yaml configuration file	none
exporter.debug	Print configuration on startup	False

Environment variables

All options available as flags can be passed as environment variables. Below is a table of flag->environment variable mappings

Flag	Environment variable
bigip.basic_auth	BE_BIGIP_BASIC_AUTH
bigip.host	BE_BIGIP_HOST
bigip.port	BE_BIGIP_PORT
bigip.username	BE_BIGIP_USERNAME
bigip.password	BE_BIGIP_PASSWORD
exporter.bind_address	BE_EXPORTER_BIND_ADDRESS
exporter.bind_port	BE_EXPORTER_BIND_PORT
exporter.partitions	BE_EXPORTER_PARTITIONS
exporter.namespace	BE_EXPORTER_NAMESPACE
exporter.debug	BE_EXPORTER_DEBUG

Configuration file

Take a look at this example configuration file

Implemented metrics

• Virtual Server
• Rule
• Pool
• Node

Prerequisites

• User with read access to iControl REST API

Tested versions of iControl REST API

Currently only version 12.0.0 and 12.1.1 are tested. If you experience any problems with other versions, create an issue explaining the problem and I'll look at it as soon as possible or if you'd like to contribute with a pull request that would be greatly appreciated.

Building

Building locally

This project uses govendor. If you do not already have that installed, take a detour and install that beforehand.

# This assumes that you already have go and govendor installed and $GOPATH configured
go get github.com/ExpressenAB/bigip_exporter
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/ExpressenAB/bigip_exporter
govendor build +p

Cross compilation

Go offers possibility to cross compile the application for different use on a different OS and architecture. This is achieved by setting the environment valiables GOOS and GOARCH. If you for example want to build for linux on an amd64 architecture the go build step can be replaced with the following:

GOOS=linux GOARCH=amd64 govendor build +p

A list of available options for GOOS and GOARCH is available in the documentation

Possible improvements

Gather data in the background

Currently the data is gathered when the /metrics endpoint is called. This causes the request to take about 4-6 seconds before completing. This could be fixed by having a go thread that gathers data at regular intervals and that is returned upon a call to the /metrics endpoint. This would however go against the guidelines.