Configuring sinks

Heapster can store data into different backends (sinks). These are specified on the command line via the --sink flag. The flag takes an argument of the form PREFIX:CONFIG[?OPTIONS]. Options (optional!) are specified as URL query parameters, separated by & as normal. This allows each source to have custom configuration passed to it without needing to continually add new flags to Heapster as new sinks are added. Heapster can store data into multiple sinks at once if multiple --sink flags are specified.

Current sinks

Log

This sink writes all data to the standard output which is particularly useful for debugging.

--sink=log

InfluxDB

This sink supports both monitoring metrics and events. This sink supports InfluxDB versions v0.9 and above. To use the InfluxDB sink add the following flag:

--sink=influxdb:<INFLUXDB_URL>[?<INFLUXDB_OPTIONS>]

If you're running Heapster in a Kubernetes cluster with the default InfluxDB + Grafana setup you can use the following flag:

--sink=influxdb:http://monitoring-influxdb:80/

The following options are available:

user - InfluxDB username (default: root)
pw - InfluxDB password (default: root)
db - InfluxDB Database name (default: k8s)
retention - Duration of the default InfluxDB retention policy, e.g. 4h or 7d (default: 0 meaning infinite)
secure - Connect securely to InfluxDB (default: false)
insecuressl - Ignore SSL certificate validity (default: false)
withfields - Use InfluxDB fields (default: false)
cluster_name - cluster name for different Kubernetes clusters. (default: default)

Google Cloud Monitoring

This sink supports monitoring metrics only. To use the GCM sink add the following flag:

--sink=gcm

Note: This sink works only on a Google Compute Engine VM as of now

GCM has one option - metrics that can be set to:

all - the sink exports all metrics
autoscaling - the sink exports only autoscaling-related metrics

Google Cloud Logging

This sink supports events only. To use the GCL sink add the following flag:

--sink=gcl

Notes:

This sink works only on a Google Compute Engine VM as of now
GCE instance must have “https://www.googleapis.com/auth/logging.write” auth scope
GCE instance must have Logging API enabled for the project in Google Developer Console
GCL Logs are accessible via:
- https://console.developers.google.com/project/<project_ID>/logs?service=custom.googleapis.com
- Where project_ID is the project ID of the Google Cloud Platform project.
- Select kubernetes.io/events from the All logs drop down menu.

Hawkular-Metrics

This sink supports monitoring metrics only. To use the Hawkular-Metrics sink add the following flag:

--sink=hawkular:<HAWKULAR_SERVER_URL>[?<OPTIONS>]

If HAWKULAR_SERVER_URL includes any path, the default hawkular/metrics is overridden. To use SSL, the HAWKULAR_SERVER_URL has to start with https

The following options are available:

tenant - Hawkular-Metrics tenantId (default: heapster)
labelToTenant - Hawkular-Metrics uses given label's value as tenant value when storing data
useServiceAccount - Sink will use the service account token to authorize to Hawkular-Metrics (requires OpenShift)
insecure - SSL connection will not verify the certificates
caCert - A path to the CA Certificate file that will be used in the connection
auth - Kubernetes authentication file that will be used for constructing the TLSConfig
user - Username to connect to the Hawkular-Metrics server
pass - Password to connect to the Hawkular-Metrics server
filter - Allows bypassing the store of matching metrics, any number of filter parameters can be given with a syntax of filter=operation(param). Supported operations and their params:
- label - The syntax is label(labelName:regexp) where labelName is 1:1 match and regexp to use for matching is given after : delimiter
- name - The syntax is name(regexp) where MetricName is matched (such as cpu/usage) with a regexp filter
batchSize- How many metrics are sent in each request to Hawkular-Metrics (default is 1000)
concurrencyLimit- How many concurrent requests are used to send data to the Hawkular-Metrics (default is 5)
labelTagPrefix - A prefix to be placed in front of each label when stored as a tag for the metric (default is labels.)

A combination of insecure / caCert / auth is not supported, only a single of these parameters is allowed at once. Also, combination of useServiceAccount and user + pass is not supported. To increase the performance of Hawkular sink in case of multiple instances of Hawkular-Metrics (such as scaled scenario in OpenShift) modify the parameters of batchSize and concurrencyLimit to balance the load on Hawkular-Metrics instances.

Wavefront

The Wavefront sink supports monitoring metrics only. To use the Wavefront sink add the following flag:

--sink=wavefront:<WAVEFRONT_PROXY_URL:PORT>[?<OPTIONS>]

The following options are available:

clusterName - The name of the Kubernetes cluster being monitored. This will be added as a tag called cluster to metrics in Wavefront (default: k8s-cluster)
prefix - The prefix to be added to all metrics that Heapster collects (default: heapster.)
includeLabels - If set to true, any K8s labels will be applied to metrics as tags (default: false)
includeContainers - If set to true, all container metrics will be sent to Wavefront. When set to false, container level metrics are skipped (pod level and above are still sent to Wavefront) (default: true)

OpenTSDB

This sink supports both monitoring metrics and events. To use the OpenTSDB sink add the following flag:

--sink=opentsdb:<OPENTSDB_SERVER_URL>[?<OPTIONS>]

Currently, accessing OpenTSDB via its rest apis doesn't need any authentication, so you can enable OpenTSDB sink like this:

--sink=opentsdb:http://192.168.1.8:4242?cluster=k8s-cluster

The following options are available:

cluster - The name of the Kubernetes cluster being monitored. This will be added as a tag called cluster to metrics in OpenTSDB (default: k8s-cluster)

Kafka

This sink supports monitoring metrics only. To use the kafka sink add the following flag:

--sink="kafka:<?<OPTIONS>>"

Normally, kafka server has multi brokers, so brokers' list need be configured for producer. So, we provide kafka brokers' list and topics about timeseries & topic in url's query string. Options can be set in query string, like this:

brokers - Kafka's brokers' list.
timeseriestopic - Kafka's topic for timeseries. Default value : heapster-metrics
eventstopic - Kafka's topic for events.Default value : heapster-events

For example,

--sink="kafka:?brokers=localhost:9092&brokers=localhost:9093&timeseriestopic=testseries&eventstopic=testtopic"

Riemann

This sink supports monitoring metrics and events. To use the Riemann sink add the following flag:

--sink="riemann:<RIEMANN_SERVER_URL>[?<OPTIONS>]"

The following options are available:

ttl - TTL for writing to Riemann. Default: 60 seconds
state - The event state. Default: ""
tags - Default. heapster
batchsize - The Riemann sink sends batch of events. The default size is 1000

For example,

--sink=riemann:http://localhost:5555?ttl=120&state=ok&tags=foobar&batchsize=150

Elasticsearch

This sink supports monitoring metrics and events. To use the Elasticsearch sink add the following flag:

    --sink=elasticsearch:<ES_SERVER_URL>[?<OPTIONS>]

Normally an Elasticsearch cluster has multiple nodes or a proxy, so these need to be configured for the Elasticsearch sink. To do this, you can set ES_SERVER_URL to a dummy value, and use the ?nodes= query value for each additional node in the cluster. For example:

  --sink=elasticsearch:?nodes=http://foo.com:9200&nodes=http://bar.com:9200

(*) Notice that using the ?nodes notation will override the ES_SERVER_URL

If you run your ElasticSearch cluster behind a loadbalancer (or otherwise do not want to specify multiple nodes) then you can do the following:

  --sink=elasticsearch:http://elasticsearch.example.com:9200?sniff=false

Besides this, the following options can be set in query string:

(*) Note that the keys are case sensitive

index - the index for metrics and events. The default is heapster
esUserName - the username if authentication is enabled
esUserSecret - the password if authentication is enabled
maxRetries - the number of retries that the Elastic client will perform for a single request after before giving up and return an error. It is 0 by default, so retry is disabled by default.
healthCheck - specifies if healthchecks are enabled by default. It is enabled by default. To disable, provide a negative boolean value like 0 or false.
sniff - specifies if the sniffer is enabled by default. It is enabled by default. To disable, provide a negative boolean value like 0 or false.
startupHealthcheckTimeout - the time in seconds the healthcheck waits for a response from Elasticsearch on startup, i.e. when creating a client. The default value is 1.
bulkWorkers - number of workers for bulk processing. Default value is 5.
cluster_name - cluster name for different Kubernetes clusters. Default value is default.

Like this:

--sink="elasticsearch:?nodes=http://127.0.0.1:9200&index=testMetric"

or

--sink="elasticsearch:?nodes=http://127.0.0.1:9200&index=testEvent"

AWS Integration

In order to use AWS Managed Elastic we need to use one of the following methods:

Making sure the public IPs of the Heapster are allowed on the Elasticsearch's Access Policy

-OR-

Configuring an Access Policy with IAM

Configure the Elasticsearch cluster policy with IAM User
Create a secret that stores the IAM credentials
Expose the credentials to the environment variables: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

env:
  - name: AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: aws-heapster
        key: aws.id
  - name: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
    valueFrom:
      secretKeyRef:
        name: aws-heapster
        key: aws.secret

Graphite/Carbon

This sink supports monitoring metrics only. To use the graphite sink add the following flag:

--sink="graphite:<PROTOCOL>://<HOST>[:<PORT>][<?<OPTIONS>>]"

PROTOCOL must be tcp or udp, PORT is 2003 by default.

These options are available:

prefix - Adds specified prefix to all metric paths

For example,

--sink="graphite:tcp://metrics.example.com:2003?prefix=kubernetes.example"

Metrics are sent to Graphite with this hierarchy:

PREFIX
- cluster
- namespaces
  - NAMESPACE
- nodes
  - NODE
    - pods
      - NAMESPACE
        
        POD
        
        containers
        
        CONTAINER
    - sys-containers
      - SYS-CONTAINER

Librato

This sink supports monitoring metrics only.

To use the librato sink add the following flag:

--sink="librato:<?<OPTIONS>>"

Options can be set in query string, like this:

username - Librato user email address (https://www.librato.com/docs/api/#authentication).
token - Librato API token
prefix - Prefix for all measurement names
tags - By default provided tags (comma separated list)
tag_{name} - Value for the tag name

For example,

--sink="librato:?username=xyz&token=secret&prefix=k8s&tags=cluster&tag_cluster=staging"

The librato sink currently only works with accounts, which support tagged metrics.

Using multiple sinks

Heapster can be configured to send k8s metrics and events to multiple sinks by specifying the--sink=... flag multiple times.

For example, to send data to both gcm and influxdb at the same time, you can use the following:

    --sink=gcm --sink=influxdb:http://monitoring-influxdb:80/

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sink-configuration.md

sink-configuration.md

Configuring sinks

Current sinks

Log

InfluxDB

Google Cloud Monitoring

Google Cloud Logging

Hawkular-Metrics

Wavefront

OpenTSDB

Kafka

Riemann

Elasticsearch

AWS Integration

Graphite/Carbon

Librato

Using multiple sinks

Files

sink-configuration.md

Latest commit

History

sink-configuration.md

File metadata and controls

Configuring sinks

Current sinks

Log

InfluxDB

Google Cloud Monitoring

Google Cloud Logging

Hawkular-Metrics

Wavefront

OpenTSDB

Kafka

Riemann

Elasticsearch

AWS Integration

Graphite/Carbon

Librato

Using multiple sinks