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Nginx is a web server which can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The Nginx monitoring extension gets metrics from the nginx server and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser. This extension supports both Nginx and Nginx Plus.
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.
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. The extension needs to be able to connect to the Nginx 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.
Note: For the following steps to work, nginx should be running with "ngx_http_stub_status_module" or "ngx_http_api_module" enabled. Please make sure you have required changes in the nginx.conf.
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. In the AppDynamics Metric Browser, look for Application Infrastructure Performance|<Tier>|Custom Metrics|NginX Monitor and you should be able to see all the metrics.
Directory/File | Description |
---|---|
src/main/resources/conf | Contains the monitor.xml |
src/main/java | Contains source code of the Nginx monitoring extension |
target | Only obtained when using maven. Run 'mvn clean install' to get the distributable .zip file |
pom.xml | Maven build script to package the project (required only if changing Java code) |
Configure the extension by editing the config.yml file in <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/NginxMonitor/
.
Edit the file config.yml located at <MachineAgent_Dir>/monitors/NginxMonitor
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.
The extension supports reporting metrics from multiple Nginx instances. The monitor provides an option to add Nginx server/s for monitoring the metrics provided by the particular end-point. Have a look at config.yml for more details. For example:
metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<TIER_ID>|Custom Metrics|Nginx|"
servers:
- displayName: "Nginx Server" # mandatory
uri: "http://localhost/nginx_status" # append port if needed
username: ""
password: ""
encryptedPassword:
nginx_plus: "false" # true for nginx plus else false
encryptionKey: ""
connection:
sslCertCheckEnabled: false
socketTimeout: 10000
connectTimeout: 10000
# For each server you monitor, you will need a total of 8(by default) thread.
# By default we want to support 5 servers, so it is 5 * 8 = 40 threads.
numberOfThreads: 12
If you want to monitor nginx plus then put nginx_plus as true and make sure ngx_http_api_module is configured.
nginx_plus: "true" # true for nginx plus else false
Configure the numberOfThreads. For example, If number of servers that need to be monitored is 5, then number of threads required is 5 * 12 = 60
numberOfThreads: 60
You can add/remove metrics of your choice by modifying the provided metrics.xml file. This file consists of all the metrics that will be monitored and sent to the controller. Please look how the metrics have been defined and follow the same convention, when adding new metrics. You do have the ability to chosoe your Rollup types as well as set an alias that you would like to be displayed on the metric browser.
Stats Configuration Add the stats url
which has api version(1/2/3) information as shown below.
<stats url="/api/3">
Metric Stat Configuration Add the metric
to be monitored under the metric tag as shown below.
<stat suburl="processes" name="Processes-Status">
<metric attr="respawned" alias="Respawned" aggregationType = "AVERAGE" timeRollUpType = "AVERAGE" clusterRollUpType = "COLLECTIVE"/>
</stat>
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. |
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:1, OPEN:1 |
delta | false | true, false | If enabled, gives the delta values of metrics instead of actual values. |
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.
Nginx Monitoring Extension can collect metric by hitting the available Endpoints which are configured in the metrics.xml.
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
Active Connections | Number of all open active connections |
Server: Accepts | Number of accepted requests |
Server: Handled | Number of handled requests |
Server: Requests | Total number of requests |
Reading | Nginx reads request header |
Writing | Nginx reads request body, processes request, or writes response to a client |
Waiting | NginX keep-alive connections or currently active |
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
total | The total number of client requests |
current | The current number of client requests |
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
processing | The number of client requests that are currently being processed |
requests | The total number of client requests received from clients |
responses/total | The total number of responses sent to clients |
responses/ 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx | The number of responses with status codes 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx |
discarded | The total number of bytes discarded from clients |
received | The total number of bytes received from clients |
sent | The total number of bytes sent to clients |
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
active | The current number of active connections |
backup | A boolean value indicating whether the server is a backup server |
downtime | Total time the server was in the “unavail” and “unhealthy” states |
fails | The total number of unsuccessful attempts to communicate with the server |
received | The total number of bytes received from this server |
requests | The total number of client requests forwarded to this server |
sent | The total number of bytes sent to this server |
state | urrent state, which may be one of “up”, “down”, “unavail”, or “unhealthy”. |
unavail | Times the server became unavailable |
weight | Weight of the server |
responses/total | The total number of responses obtained from this server |
responses/ 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, 5xx | The number of responses with status codes 1xx, 2xx, 3xx, 4xx, and 5xx |
health_checks/checks | The total number of health check requests made |
health_checks/fails | The number of failed health checks |
health_checks/unhealthy | How many times the server became unhealthy (state “unhealthy”) |
health_checks/last_passed | Boolean indicating if the last health check request was successful and passed tests |
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
accepted | The total number of accepted client connections |
dropped | The total number of dropped client connections |
active | The current number of active client connections |
idle | The current number of idle client connections |
Metric Name | Description |
---|---|
size | The current size of the cache |
max_size | The limit on the maximum size of the cache specified in the configuration |
cold | A boolean value indicating whether the “cache loader” process is still loading data from disk into the cache |
hit, stale, updating, revalidated/responses | The total number of responses read from the cache |
hit, stale, updating, revalidated/bytes | The total number of bytes read from the cache |
miss, expired, bypass/responses | The total number of responses not taken from the cache |
miss, expired, bypass/bytes | The total number of bytes read from the proxied server |
miss, expired, bypass/responses_written | The total number of responses written to the cache |
miss, expired, bypass/bytes_written | The total number of bytes written to the cache |
Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.
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.
Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension. If these don't solve your issue, please follow the last step on the troubleshooting-document to contact the support team.
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.
Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly here on GitHub.
Name | Version |
---|---|
Extension Version | 2.0.0 |
Controller Compatibility | 3.7 or Later |
Product Tested On | 1.13.3 and later |
Last Update | 12/02/2019 |
Changes list | ChangeLog |