AWS ELB Monitoring Extension

Use Case

Captures Classic ELB statistics from Amazon CloudWatch and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Prerequisites

1. Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
2. Please give the following permissions to the account being used to with the extension.
• cloudwatch:ListMetrics
• cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics

3. In order to use this extension, you do need a
   Standalone JAVA Machine Agent
   or SIM Agent.
   For more details on downloading these products, please visit here.

4. The extension needs to be able to connect to AWS CloudWatch in order to collect and send metrics.
   To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product,
   or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

1. Download and unzip AWSELBMonitor-<version>.zip into <machine_agent_dir>/monitors/
2. Edit the file config.yml located at <MachineAgent_Dir>/monitors/ The metricPrefix of the extension has to be configured as specified here. Please make sure that the right metricPrefix is chosen based on your machine agent deployment, otherwise this could lead to metrics not being visible in the controller.
3. Restart the Machine Agent.

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.
Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

config.yml

In order to use the extension, you need to update the config.yml file that is present in the extension folder.
The following is a step-by-step explanation of the configurable fields that are present in the config.yml file.

1. If SIM is enabled, then use the following metricPrefix -

   metricPrefix: "Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|"

   Else, configure the "COMPONENT_ID" under which the metrics need to be reported. This can be done by changing the value of <COMPONENT_ID> in
   metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|".

   For example,

   metricPrefix: "Server|Component:100|Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|"
   

2. Provide accessKey(required) and secretKey(required) of your account(s), also provide displayAccountName(any name that represents your account) and
   regions(required). If you are running this extension inside an EC2 instance which has IAM profile configured then you don’t have to configure accessKey and secretKey values, extension will use IAM profile to authenticate. You can provide multiple accounts and regions as below -

   accounts:
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX1"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX1"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_1"
       regions: ["us-east-1","us-west-1","us-west-2"]
   
     - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX2"
       awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX2"
       displayAccountName: "TestAccount_2"
       regions: ["eu-central-1","eu-west-1"]
   

3. If you want to encrypt the awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey then follow the “Credentials Encryption” section and provide the encrypted values in awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey. Configure enableDecryption of credentialsDecryptionConfig to true and provide the encryption key in encryptionKey.
   For example,

   #Encryption key for Encrypted password.
    credentialsDecryptionConfig:
      enableDecryption: "false"
      encryptionKey:
   

4. Provide all valid proxy information if you use it. If not, leave this section as is.

   proxyConfig:
     host:
     port:
     username:
     password:
   

5. To report metrics from specific dimension values, configure the dimesion section.
   Dimensions for AWS ELB are AvailabilityZone and LoadBalancerName.
   For example to report metrics only from only AvailabilityZone dimension with value Sample, configure dimensions as below -

    dimensions:
     - name: "AvailabilityZone"
       displayName: "AvailabilityZone"
       values: ["Sample"]
   

   If you would like to monitor more than one dimension, you can do the following :

   dimensions:
     - name: "LoadBalancerName"
       displayName: "LoadBalancer Name"
       values: ["Dev", "tools"]
     - name: "AvailabilityZone"
       displayName: "AvailabilityZone"
       values: ["Sample"]
   

   If these fields are left empty, none of your instances will be monitored.
   In order to monitor everything under a dimension, you can simply use “.*” to pull everything from your AWS Environment.

6. Configure the metrics section.

   For configuring the metrics, the following properties can be used:

   Property	Default value	Possible values	Description
   alias	metric name	Any string	The substitute name to be used in the metric browser instead of metric name.
   statType	“ave”	“AVERAGE”, “SUM”, “MIN”, “MAX”	AWS configured values as returned by API
   aggregationType	“AVERAGE”	“AVERAGE”, “SUM”, “OBSERVATION”	Aggregation qualifier
   timeRollUpType	“AVERAGE”	“AVERAGE”, “SUM”, “CURRENT”	Time roll-up qualifier
   clusterRollUpType	“INDIVIDUAL”	“INDIVIDUAL”, “COLLECTIVE”	Cluster roll-up qualifier
   multiplier	1	Any number	Value with which the metric needs to be multiplied.
   convert	null	Any key value map	Set of key value pairs that indicates the value to which the metrics need to be transformed. eg: UP:0, DOWN:1
   delta	false	true, false	If enabled, gives the delta values of metrics instead of actual values.

   For example,

   - name: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
     alias: "ConditionalCheckFailedRequests"
     statType: "ave"
     delta: false
     multiplier: 1
     aggregationType: "AVERAGE"
     timeRollUpType: "AVERAGE"
     clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
   

   All these metric properties are optional, and the default value shown in the table is applied to the metric(if a property has not been specified) by default.

7. For several services AWS CloudWatch does not instantly update the metrics but it goes back in time to update that information.
   This delay sometimes can take upto 5 minutes. The extension runs every minute(Detailed) or every 5 minutes (Basic) and gets the latest value at that time.
   There may be a case where the extension may miss the value before CloudWatch updates it. In order to make sure we don’t do that,
   the extension has the ability to look for metrics during a certain interval, where we already have set it to default at 5 minutes but you can
   change it as per your requirements.

   metricsTimeRange:
     startTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 10
     endTimeInMinsBeforeNow: 5
   

8. This field is set as per the defaults suggested by AWS. You can change this if your limit is different.

   getMetricStatisticsRateLimit: 400
   

9. The maximum number of retry attempts for failed requests that can be retried.

   maxErrorRetrySize: 3
   

10. CloudWatch can be used in two formats, Basic and Detailed. You can specify how you would like to run the extension by specifying the chosen format here.
    By default, the extension is set to Basic, which makes the extension run every 5 minutes.
    Refer https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/using-cloudwatch-new.html for more information.

    #Allowed values are Basic and Detailed. 
    # Basic will fire CloudWatch API calls every 5 minutes
    # Detailed will fire CloudWatch API calls every 1 minutes
    cloudWatchMonitoring: "Basic"
    

Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go to Yaml Validator . On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Go” button on the bottom left.
If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Metrics

Typical metric path: Application Infrastructure Performance|<Tier>|Custom Metrics|Amazon ELB|<Account Name>|<Region>|Table Name|<table name> followed by the metrics defined in the link below:

• ELB Metrics

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on accountAccessKey encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench

Troubleshooting

1. Please look at the troubleshooting document and make sure that everything is followed correctly.

Support Tickets

If after going through the Troubleshooting Document you have not been able to get your extension working, please file a ticket and add the following information.

Please provide the following in order for us to assist you better.

1. Stop the running machine agent.
2. Delete all existing logs under <MachineAgent>/logs.
3. Please enable debug logging by editing the file <MachineAgent>/conf/logging/log4j.xml. Change the level value of the following <logger> elements to debug.
   <logger name=“com.singularity”>
   <logger name=“com.appdynamics”>
4. Start the machine agent and please let it run for 10 mins. Then zip and upload all the logs in the directory <MachineAgent>/logs/*.
5. Attach the zipped <MachineAgent>/conf/* directory here.
6. Attach the zipped <MachineAgent>/monitors/ExtensionFolderYouAreHavingIssuesWith directory here.
   For any support related questions, you can also contact help@appdynamics.com.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.

Version

List of changes to this extension can be found here