Monitor-Dev

I find Grafana very useful to visualize metrics stored in InfluxDB or Elasticsearch. I recently found a library called Kamon that lets you track some metrics of the machine where you're executing your applications and lets you create your own metrics. I hope this testdrive gives you good ideas for your applications too.

In this Scala project I'm using a library named Kamon to get system metrics. These metrics are sent and stored in InfluxDB and visualized using Grafana.

InfluxDB and Grafana are run in a Docker container while the main application runs in local mode (using IntelliJ). The final dashboard looks like this:

In this project you will find the following artifacts in the project/resources folder:

docker-compose.yml
KamonMetrics-Dashboard.json
.png Images

HowTo

1. Start InfluxDB and Grafana

Create a folder named monitor-dev and put the file docker-compose.yml in it
Open the console there and start the docker containers with the command docker-compose up
(You can stop the containers with docker-compose stop)

2. Create the Database in InfluxDB

Access to the InfluxDB container and create a database named mydb. To do so, you must:

// Get access to the container
docker exec -it monitordev_influxdb_1 /bin/bash

// Get access the InfluxDB's console with
influx

// Create the database
create database mydb

// Exit InfluxDB and container
exit
CTRL + P
CTRL + Q

If your getting an error with the docker exec.. command you can check the Container_ID assigned for the influxDb container with the command: docker ps and use that Container_ID instead of monitordev_influxdb_1

3. Connect Grafana to InfluxDB

http://localhost:3000/login
user: admin
password: admin

Create a new Datasource

Connect it to the InfluxDB container using port 8086

4. Import Grafana's Dashboard

Go to Dashboards-import and load the file KamonMetrics-Dashboard.json

Now you can explore the Histograms I've created and you can create yours based on all the metrics sent by Kamon.

5. Run the Application

I'm using IntelliJ to do so. After it starts running you can also see the metrics printed in the console.

Details

MainApp

It's built in Scala 2.11.8. Basically it runs until you press ENTER in the console and while active it sends system metrics to InfluxDB to a data base called "mydb"

object MainApp {
  def main(args: Array[String]) {
    Kamon.start()
    StdIn.readLine()
    Kamon.shutdown()
  }
}

Kamon

It's properties are configured in the file application.conf

kamon {
  log-reporter {
    requires-aspectj = no
    auto-start = yes
  }

  system-metrics {
    requires-aspectj = no
    auto-start = yes
  }

  influxdb {
    hostname = "localhost"
    port = "8086"
    authentication.user = "admin"
    authentication.password = "admin"
    database = "mydb"

    max-packet-size = 1024
    application-name = "kamon"
  }
}

Docker Compose

I'm using docker-compose to start Grafana and InfluxDB's containers. Here's the content of the file docker-compose.yml.

version: '2'

services:

  grafana:
    image: grafana/grafana
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    networks:
      mynet:
        ipv4_address: 172.25.0.101

  influxdb:
    image: influxdb
    ports:
      - 8086:8086
    networks:
      mynet:
        ipv4_address: 172.25.0.102

networks:
  mynet:
    driver: bridge
    ipam:
      config:
      - subnet: 172.25.0.0/24

References

Kamon System Metrics Module: http://kamon.io/documentation/kamon-system-metrics/0.6.6/overview/
Grafana additional plugins: https://grafana.com/plugins

Thank you

Kmellzie / monitor-dev