MON Appliance

[BeckyHester]

This thread is dedicated to questions and comments related to the MON - Application monitoring appliance.
The MON datasheet can be found at:
AppLogic 2.4.x: http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic24/CatMonitoringMon.html
AppLogic 2.7.x: http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic27/CatMonitoringMon.html (page will be published concurrently with 2.7 release)

Please post any questions and/or comments here.

[jonesy]

I have a quick question about MON:

The documentation says that as of a certain version, there's a REST-like API for data collection. It then refers me to a document that presumably tells me all about it, but the link is broken. Can you point me at that document?

[PeterNic]

Yup, sorry, wrong link. Will be fixed. In the meantime, see the document for the new 2.3 beta -- the interface is the same: http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic23/MonDataCollectionInterface.html

The appliance that ships with 2.1.1 does not have this interface; the MON with a beta support of the web interface is available -- please request an installation if you want it in the system catalog (or I can arrange access for you to upload it to your grid's user or proto catalog). Beware, some customers have experienced memory leaks in prolonged use of the web interface; we're tracking those down in the beta version.

Regards,
-- Peter

[PeterNic]

We have a new and improved beta version of the MON appliance, with the web services interface for getting the counters... it is under testing over the weekend. As it passes, we'll post here again, with instructions on how to get it.

[prutser]

Is it possible to let the alarm thresholds trigger emails? Is such functionality available off-the-shelf, or would it involve writing a custom script that monitors the app's /var/log/messages and sends mails in response to them?

cheers,
Erik

[PeterNic]

Erik,

Yes and yes. To get the alarms as e-mails:

1. Ask your service provider to set up e-mail notifications for grid messages (at least for alerts) -- this means that all dashboard messages will also be sent to you as e-mails. Give them the e-mail address to which they should go. Once they confirm, you can test this by creating a test alert, using the "message create" command -- you should receive a notification in an e-mail.

2. In MON, configure a view that you want to use for background monitoring. Set the alert ranges for the parameters you want to monitor.

3. Set the alarm_view property of MON to the name of the view you created in step 2. It may or may not be the same as the one you use on regular basis to monitor the application visually. Restart the app, so that the value will take effect. MON will now monitor these parameters and send alerts whether you are watching the view with a browser or not.

Steps 1 and 2/3 can be done independently -- i.e., you can set up your monitoring ranges and verify they work by seeing the dashboard messages while waiting for the service provider to set up the e-mail notifications.

Regards,
-- Peter

[prutser]

Hi Peter, thanks for the feedback. I already had steps 2 and 3 covered and aside from a bit of fine-tuning, I'm getting the alerts I'm looking for. I'm not sure about who to contact for step 1 though. Our AppLogic grid is hosted by LayeredTech, so should I contact them for this?

cheers,
Erik

[PeterNic]

Yes, please open a ticket with The Gridlayer tech support, to make your grid send notifications to an e-mail address of your choice. Let me know again if any problems.

Regards,
-- Peter

[prutser]

Got it all running properly Peter, thanks.

[prutser]

Peter,

I was a happy camper until I did the same for one of our other apps. Configured a view, pointed alarm_view to this view, restarted the MON and triggered some alerts (in that order). However, in contrast to my other apps, this app's alerts do not reach the Dashboard, although it is configured the same way.

P.S.
We're on AppLogic 2.1.1

cheers,
Erik

[PeterNic]

Erik,

Property changes take effect after you restart the app, not just the individual component (like changing a line of code in a library - until you recompile and link, it doesn't take effect). Let me know if that helps -- and returns you to the happy camper state...

Best regards,
-- Peter

[prutser]

Hi Peter,

I thought about that, but I really think I merely restarted the MON appliance to get the alerts working in one of our other apps, but I suppose I'm mistaken if that's physically impossible. It also made sense to me as I am only changing a configuration property of a single appliance. Restarting the entire app to change just this value will require bringing down our entire production website. Is there no other, less-intrusive solution?

cheers,
Erik

[igord]

Hello,

we have a problem with monitoring NAS "boot" and "mnt" volumes, it always shows usage/free space 0.

You can take a look here:

http://support.dnseurope.net/NAS-monitoring.png

Rest of NAS monitoring is working fine (e.g. RAM, CPU..), but we are getting no info from those volumes. The NAS "mon" interface is properly connected to "mon" interface of MON, we have restarted application few times, but always the same.

Is there any trick about setting this?

Thanks!