Installing the Blueflood Statsd Backend

Steps to install the blueflood-statsd-backend

Clone the statsd repository

git clone https://github.com/etsy/statsd.git

In a separate directory clone the blueflood statsd backend

git clone https://github.com/rackerlabs/blueflood-statsd-backend.git

Install nodejs.

sudo apt-get install nodejs

If you are on Ubuntu, there may be another program called node. Make sure you purge it and then install nodejs

Install the node package manager program npm.

sudo apt-get install npm

Now navigate to the statsd directory

cd /path/to/statsd

Let's install the statsd backend using npm now.

npm install /path/to/blueflood-statsd-backend

If all goes well, you should see the module under node_modules

ls node_modules

Let us create a statsd config file called local.config and put the following into it. Assuming blueflood ingestion is running on 127.0.0.1 and port 19000 (Example config here: https://github.com/etsy/statsd/blob/master/exampleConfig.js) Also, please set the deleteIdleStats flag to true, since the way Statsd sends us the 0d out values, is unexpected in some cases.

{
    backends: ["statsd-blueflood-backend"],
    port: 8125,
    flushInterval: 10000,
    dumpMessages: true,
    deleteIdleStats: true,
    "blueflood": {
        "tenantId": "333333",
        "endpoint": "http://127.0.0.1:19000",
        "authModule": "./auth",
        "authClass": "RaxAuth",
        "authParams": {
                "raxusername": "my_cloud_user_name",
                "raxapikey": "my_rax_api_key"
        }
    }
}

Integrating with Rackspace Cloud Metrics - Just add your Rackspace Username and Api Key to the config as shown. If the keys are present, the metrics will be sent to the Cloud Metrics endpoint. If not, they will be sent to the endpoint in the configuration.

"blueflood": {
  "tenantId": "333333",
  "endpoint": "http://iad.metrics-ingest.api.rackspacecloud.com:80",
  "authModule": "./auth",
  "authClass": "RaxAuth",
  "authParams": {
    "raxusername": "my_cloud_user_name",
    "raxapikey": "my_rax_api_key"
  }
}

Now, let us run statsd with the given config.

nodejs stats.js local.config

Troubleshooting tip: If you see an error that the server cannot find the module "statsd-blueflood-backend", then do ls node_modules and see if that module

If all goes well, the nodejs statsd server should be up and running now.

12 Sep 15:25:40 - reading config file: local.config
12 Sep 15:25:41 - server is up

To test: Statsd keeps generating stats about iself. These stats should be sent to Blueflood if the configuration is right

{ counters: { 'statsd.bad_lines_seen': 0, 'statsd.packets_received': 0 },
  gauges: {},
  timers: {},
  timer_counters: {},
  sets: {},
  counter_rates: { 'statsd.bad_lines_seen': 0, 'statsd.packets_received': 0 },
  timer_data: {},
  pctThreshold: [ 90 ],
  histogram: undefined,
  statsd_metrics: { processing_time: 0 } }

You can also send statsd timers, counters, gauges as shown in the following link https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-statsd-to-collect-arbitrary-stats-for-graphite-on-ubuntu-14-04 All these will be sent to BF

echo "sample.gauge:10|g" | nc -u -w0 127.0.0.1 8125
echo "glork:320|ms" | nc -u -w0 127.0.0.1 8125