WizardVan: A Sensu Metrics Relay

NOTE: This is a copy of the original project no longer on github (github.com/opower/sensu-metrics-relay)

WizardVan uses a combination of a handler and a metric extension to open persistent TCP connections between the Sensu servers and back-end metric store for firehose relaying of metrics events from Sensu to metric stores.

Handler extensions are useful in firehose situations. You could easily write a handler plug-in to do this, but an extension would be significantly less resource intensive. Were a simple firehose implemented in a plug-in, every event would cause a fork of the parent ruby process and writing data over a TCP (more likely) or UDP connection.

An extension, on the other hand, could maintain persistent TCP connections to the firehose destination and simply write serialized event data over that connection. In high-volume metrics installations, 10-100k metrics per minute or more, this kind of optimization is a requirement.

It also includes some mutation functionality to mutate from Graphite to OpenTSDB as well as accepts a new metric format for submitting metrics in JSON and mutating from that to any number of configured metric backends. To implement a mutator you simply need to define the endpoint in the relay configuration and then define a mutator in metrics.rb.

NOTE: If you are pushing metrics in a format other than Graphite, you will have to to add "output_type": "opentsdb" or "json" to your check definitions.

Installation

As root:

1. cp -R lib/sensu/extensions/* /etc/sensu/extensions
2. cp config_relay.json /etc/sensu/conf.d
3. Edit the values in config_relay.json according to your environment.
4. Restart sensu-server

Relay currently supports "graphite" and "opentsdb" as metric back-ends.

Configuration

config_relay.json:

{
  "relay": {
    "graphite": {
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "port": 60000,
        "max_queue_size": 16384 # optional
    },
    "opentsdb": {
        "host": "127.0.0.1",
        "port": 4424
    }
  }
}

The metrics relay uses the plaintext protocol for Graphite and OpenTSDB's RPC protocol for transmitting metrics. Be sure to configure accordingly.

The behavior of the mutator and handler is heavily influenced by several configuration options. The mutator introduces the concept of "output_type". By default, the extension assumes an "output_type" of "graphite." If your metrics are outputting anything besides graphite-formatted metrics, you will need to specify an "output_type" in your metrics checks that corresponds to a configured relay endpoint.

In the example check below, you will also see the "auto_tag_host" configuration variable. Most metrics will be associated with a particular host, so this will default to yes.

You must also specify "relay" as your handler.

For example, if you have a metric check that outputs opentsdb:

"checks": {
    "my_check": {
        "name": "opentsdb_metric",
        "output_type": "opentsdb",
        "auto_tag_host": "yes",
        "type": "metric",
        "handlers": [ "relay" ],
        "command": "/path/to/opentsdb_metric.rb"
    }
}

You would then configure "opentsdb" as an endpoint in relay.

In the configuration example above, you will notice that we define graphite and opentsdb back-ends. The relay currently includes functionality to mutate between graphite and opentsdb. So, if you are submitting graphite metrics and define an opentsdb backend in config_relay.json, then it will automatically mutate from graphite to opentsdb and submit metrics to opentsdb.

JSON Metric format

The relay currently only supports graphite and opentsdb as endpoints for mutation from JSON. The JSON format for metrics is as follows:

{
    "name": "metric_name",
    "value": 1,
    # optional epoch time stamp, precision can be higher, but graphite will floor()
    # and does not aggregate metrics, currently.
    "timestamp": 1365624303
    "tags": {
      "service": "some_service", # optional
      "some_tag": "some_value" # optional
    }
}

Development

Running the test suite

To run tests continuously with guard, do:

bundle exec guard

Guard will start up a foreground process that runs the relevant specs every time you save a file and runs all the (non-slow) specs if you hit enter. For fancier interactions and configuration information, see the guard documentation and the guard-rspec documentation.

To run the full suite (this takes up to 10 minutes), do:

bundle exec rspec

For information on contributing, please see CONTRIBUTING.md