Grafana

Logging, really. Grafana just because it is a popular open source log monitoring tool.

> sudo apt install -y software-properties-common
> wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
> echo "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grafana.list
> sudo apt update
> sudo apt install grafana
> sudo systemctl daemon-reload
> sudo systemctl enable grafana-server
> sudo systemctl start grafana-server

Following this tutorial: https://grafana.com/tutorials/grafana-fundamentals/

• Eventually can take a look at this too: https://prometheus.io/docs/tutorials/getting_started/
• Very convenient Docker ps command: docker ps --format "table {{.Image}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}"
  • Or you can try dry: curl -sSf https://moncho.github.io/dry/dryup.sh | sudo sh && sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/dry
• Nice Grafana example from Reddit.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-prometheus-on-ubuntu-16-04

sudo useradd --no-create-home --shell /bin/false prometheus

sudo mkdir /etc/prometheus
sudo mkdir /var/lib/prometheus
sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus
sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /var/lib/prometheus

wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.34.0/prometheus-2.34.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
tar -xvf prometheus-2.34.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
cd prometheus-2.34.0.linux-amd64

sudo cp prometheus /usr/local/bin/
sudo cp promtool /usr/local/bin/
sudo cp -r consoles/ /etc/prometheus/
sudo cp -r console_libraries/ /etc/prometheus/
sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/prometheus
sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/promtool
sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/prometheus

# vim /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
global:
    scrape_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:

    - job_name: "prometheus"
      scrape_interval: 5s
      static_configs:
          - targets: ["localhost:9090"]

    - job_name: "node_exporter"
      scrape_interval: 5s
      static_configs:
          - targets: ["localhost:9100"]

# vim /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/prometheus \
    --config.file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml \
    --storage.tsdb.path /var/lib/prometheus/ \
    --web.console.templates=/etc/prometheus/consoles \
    --web.console.libraries=/etc/prometheus/console_libraries

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

# systemctl start prometheus
# systemctl enable prometheus

# # Download node_exporter from https://prometheus.io/download/#node_exporter
# chown prometheus:prometheus node_exporter

# # Note that collectors can be whitelisted with: --collectors.enabled meminfo,loadavg,filesystem
# vim /etc/systemd/system/node_exporter.service
[Unit]
Description=Node Exporter
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/node_exporter

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

$ # Proceed to do all the usual proxying etc.

Installation: https://grafana.com/docs/loki/latest/installation/local/

# Download promtail
> curl -O -L "https://github.com/grafana/loki/releases/download/v2.5.0/promtail-linux-amd64.zip"
> unzip promtail-linux-amd64.zip
> sudo mv promtail-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/promtail
> sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/promtail

# Download loki
> curl -O -L "https://github.com/grafana/loki/releases/download/v2.5.0/loki-linux-amd64.zip"
> unzip loki-linux-amd64.zip
> sudo mv loki-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/loki
> sudo chown prometheus:prometheus /usr/local/bin/loki

# Download loki configuration
> sudo mkdir -p /etc/loki/
> sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/master/cmd/loki/loki-local-config.yaml -O /etc/loki/loki.yml
> sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/loki
> sudo cat /etc/loki/loki.yml
auth_enabled: false

server:
  http_listen_port: 3101
  grpc_listen_port: 9096

common:
  path_prefix: /tmp/loki
  storage:
    filesystem:
      chunks_directory: /tmp/loki/chunks
      rules_directory: /tmp/loki/rules
  replication_factor: 1
  ring:
    instance_addr: 127.0.0.1
    kvstore:
      store: inmemory

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2020-10-24
      store: boltdb-shipper
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v11
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h

ruler:
  alertmanager_url: http://localhost:9093

# Download promtail configuration
> sudo mkdir -p /etc/promtail/
> sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/loki/main/clients/cmd/promtail/promtail-local-config.yaml -O /etc/promtail/promtail.yml
> sudo chown -R prometheus:prometheus /etc/promtail
> sudo cat /etc/promtail/promtail.yml

# Create systemd services, as usual
# Reader's exercise to do the same for promtail
> cat /etc/systemd/system/loki.service
[Unit]
Description=Loki
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/loki \
    --config.file=/etc/loki/loki.yml

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

• Concepts:
  • promtail is the agent that pulls data from log files whenever changes to the files are detected. Logs or metrics can be generated from this agent, which are then processed by Loki or Prometheus respectively.
  • Loki sends logs to Grafana, while Prometheus sends metrics to Grafana.
  • Logs
• Best practices when setting up promtail and Loki. Key points:
  1. Use labels only for bounded values (at most 10s of values). Each unique combination of labels are indexed as individual streams, which will kill Loki.
  2. Loki monitors logs exclusively, i.e. there is no functionality to monitor metrics/values over time. Use the metrics feature of promtail for this, and have Prometheus scrape from promtail instead.

The basic use of pipelines in promtail is as follows:

...
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: system 
    static_configs:
      - labels:
          job: tapo
          __path__: /var/log/tapo/energy.log
    pipeline_stages:
      - match:
          selector: '{job="tapo"}'
          stages:
            - regex:
                expression: '(?P<timestamp>[\dT\-+:]+)\t(?P<energy>\d+).*'
            - labels:
                energy:
            - timestamp:
                format: RFC3339
                source: timestamp

With ingested logs:

...
2022-04-25T12:10:01+08:00       29773   [29, 30, 5]
2022-04-25T12:11:02+08:00       29684   [29, 30, 5]
2022-04-25T12:12:02+08:00       29604   [29, 30, 6]
2022-04-25T12:13:01+08:00       29123   [29, 30, 6]

Quick reads:

• Logs vs metrics - log is the usual, metrics are aggregations (and hence more scalable): https://grafana.com/blog/2016/01/05/logs-and-metrics-and-graphs-oh-my/
• InfluxDB's time structured merge tree: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1.7/concepts/storage_engine/
• On using Grafana + Prometheus + AlertManager stack:
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23906977
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24924059
  • https://www.whizlabs.com/blog/prometheus-grafana-stack/

Sidenote, some quick reading on K8s:

• K8s vs EC2 Docker autoscaled instances: https://ably.com/blog/no-we-dont-use-kubernetes