AppDynamics Extension for Redis Monitoring

Use Case

Redis is an in-memory key-value data store used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs and geospatial indexes with radius queries.

The Redis monitoring extension can monitor multiple Redis servers and display the statistics in 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. This extension works only with the standalone Java machine agent. The extension requires the machine agent to be up and running.
3. This extension creates a java client to the Redis server that needs to be monitored. So the Redis server that has to be monitored, should be available for access from the machine that has the machine agent.

Installing the extension

1. Download and unzip the RedisMonitor-version.zip file into <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/ directory.
2. Configure the extension by referring to the below section.
3. Restart the machine agent.

Configuring the extension using config.yml

Configure the Redis monitoring extension by editing the config.yml file in <MACHINE_AGENT_HOME>/monitors/RedisMonitor/

1. 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.

2. Configure the Redis instances by specifying the name(required), host(required), port(required) of the Redis instance, password (only if authentication enabled), encryptedPassword(only if password encryption required).

   For example,

   #Add your list of Redis servers here.
         servers:
           - name: "Server1"
             host: "localhost"
             port: "6379"
             password: ""
             encryptedPassword: ""
           - name: "Server2"
             host: "localhost"
             port: "6380"
             password: ""
             encryptedPassword: ""
   

3. Configure the encyptionKey for encryptionPasswords(only if password encryption required).

   For example,

   #Encryption key for Encrypted password.
   encryptionKey: "axcdde43535hdhdgfiniyy576"
   

4. Configure the numberOfThreads(only if the number of Redis servers need to be monitored is greater than 7).

   For example, If number Redis servers that need to be monitored is 10, then number of threads required is 10 * 3 = 30

   numberOfThreads: 30
   

5. 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.
   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,

   - total_connections_received:  #Total number of connections accepted by the server
       alias: "connectionsReceived"
       multiplier: 1
       aggregationType: "SUM"
       timeRollUpType: "CURRENT"
       clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
       delta: true
   - role:  #Role of Redis server(master or slave)
       convert:
           master: 1
           slave: 0
   

   **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.**

Password encryption:

To avoid setting the clear text password in the config.yml, please follow the steps below to encrypt the password and set the encrypted password and the key in the config.yml:

1. Download the util jar to encrypt the password from here.
2. Encrypt password from the command line using the following command :

   java -cp "redis-monitoring-extension.jar" com.appdynamics.extensions.crypto.Encryptor myKey myPassword
   

   where "myKey" is any random key, "myPassword" is the actual password that needs to be encrypted
3. Add the values for "encryptionKey", "encryptedPassword" in the config.yml. The value for "encryptionKey" is the value substituted for "myKey" in the above command. The value for "encryptedPassword" is the result of the above command.

Recommendations

It is recommended that a single Redis monitoring extension be used to monitor multiple Redis servers belonging to a single cluster.

Metrics

This extension uses INFO command to fetch metrics from Redis server. Some of the metrics are listed below:

Clients: connected_clients, blocked_clients
Memory: used_memory, used_memory_rss, used_memory_peak, used_memory_lua, mem_fragmentation_ratio
Stats: total_connections_received, total_commands_processed, keyspace_hits, keyspace_misses, keyspace_hit_ratio
Persistence: rdb_changes_since_last_save, aof_last_rewrite_time_sec
Replication: role (MASTER:1, SLAVE:0), connected_slaves
CPU: used_cpu_sys, used_cpu_user, used_cpu_sys_children, used_cpu_user_children

This extension also uses SLOWLOG to fetch metrics from Redis server:

no_of_new_slow_logs:  This metric represents the number of new logs that were 
recorded as slowlogs(log queries that exceeded a specified execution time) 
since the extension has recorded in its previous run.

To use this metric, the "slowlog-log-slower-than" config parameter has to be 
set for the Redis server.

In addition to the above metrics, there is a metric called "connectionStatus" with a value 0 when the connection to Redis server failed and 1 when the connection to the Redis server is successful.

WorkBench

Workbench is a feature by which you can preview the metrics before registering it with the controller. This is useful if you want to fine tune the configurations. Workbench is embedded into the extension jar. To use the workbench, follow all the steps in installation and configuration.

1. Start the workbench with the following command if you are in

   java -jar /monitors/RedisMonitor/redis-monitoring-extension.jar 
   

   This starts an http server at http://localhost:9090/. This can be accessed from the browser.

2. If the server is not accessible from outside/browser, you can use the following end points to see the list of registered metrics and errors.

   Get the stats
   curl http://localhost:9090/api/stats
   Get the registered metrics
   curl http://localhost:9090/api/metric-paths
   

3. Once the configuration is complete, you can kill the workbench and start the Machine Agent.

Version

1.0.0 - Release version

1.0.1 - Code Optimization. 

1.0.2 - Support for role metrics

1.0.3 - Revamped and Added more metrics. 

1.0.4 - JDK 1.6 compatible

1.0.5 - Added commandstats and keyspace_hit_ratio

1.0.6 - Added code fixes

1.0.7 - Fix for includePatterns

2.0.0 - Revamped the extension to support new extensions framework(2.0.0), Added new metrics like "no_of_new_slow_logs", "connectionStatus

2.0.1 - Updated Licenses

2.0.2 - Fixed documenation bug in config.yml

3.0.1 - Updated to commons 2.2.4 and fixed issue for global encryptionKey and heartbeat metric

Troubleshooting

Contributing

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

Support

For any questions or feature request, please contact AppDynamics Support.

Release Notes

v3.0.1 - Updated to work with MachineAgent 21.x