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Installing collectd and graphite

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Peter Bratach
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Issue

Monitoring performance and utilization of switches running Cumulus Linux is imperative in an operational data center environment. graphite provides scalable real time graphing. collectd is a powerful tool for gathering metrics using its wide range of plugins, such as CPU, disk, load, memory, and interface statistics. collectd can be used to place statistics in a database and collectd-graphite is a plugin that runs inside the collectd process and sends collectd data to a graphite instance for graphing. 

The following document explains how to do the following tasks:

  • Install collectd on a Debian host
  • Install collectd on a Cumulus Linux switch
  • Install graphite on a Debian host

apt-get.png 

 

Solution

Installing collectd on a Debian Host

Before you install collectd, you need to have Debian installed on a server or virtual machine. You must install sudo before running through the installation steps.

1. Use apt-get to install collectd:

sudo apt-get –y install collectd

 

2. Update the /etc/collectd/collectd.conf file and replace <<<$HOSTNAME>>> with the hostname of the server where you are installing collectd:

Hostname <<<$HOSTNAME>>>
FQDNLookup true
#BaseDir "/var/lib/collectd"
#PluginDir "/usr/lib/collectd"
#TypesDB "/usr/share/collectd/types.db" "/etc/collectd/my_types.db"
Interval 10
Timeout 2
ReadThreads 5
Include "/etc/collectd/conf.d"

 

3. Create a file called /etc/collectd/conf.d/network.conf with the following contents:

vim /etc/collectd/conf.d/network.conf

LoadPlugin network
<Plugin network>
  <Listen "10.99.0.1" "25826">
    SecurityLevel None
    Interface eth1
  </Listen>
  Forward false
  ReportStats true
</Plugin>

 

4. Create a file called /etc/collectd/conf.d/syslog.conf with the following contents:

vim /etc/collectd/conf.d/syslog.conf


LoadPlugin syslog
<Plugin syslog>
  LogLevel info
</Plugin>

 

5. Restart collectd to incorporate all the modifications to the collectd modules:

service collectd restart

Installing collectd on a Cumulus Linux Switch

You will need a switch running Cumulus Linux. You must install sudo before running through the installation steps.

While these steps seem identical to installing collectd on a Debian server, the configuration is slightly different.

1. Use apt-get to install collectd-core:

sudo apt-get –y install collectd-core

 

2. Update the /etc/collectd/collectd.conf file and replace <<<$HOSTNAME>>> with the hostname of the server where you are installing collectd:

Hostname <<<$HOSTNAME>>>
FQDNLookup true
#BaseDir "/var/lib/collectd"
#PluginDir "/usr/lib/collectd"
#TypesDB "/usr/share/collectd/types.db" "/etc/collectd/my_types.db"
Interval 10
Timeout 2
ReadThreads 5
Include "/etc/collectd/conf.d"

 

3. Create a file called /etc/collectd/conf.d/network.conf with the following contents:

vim /etc/collectd/conf.d/network.conf


LoadPlugin network
<Plugin network>
  <Server "10.1.1.101" "25826">
    SecurityLevel None
    Interface eth0
  </Server>
  MaxPacketSize 1024
  Forward true
  ReportStats true
</Plugin>

 

4. Create a file called /etc/collectd/conf.d/syslog.conf with the following contents:

vim /etc/collectd/conf.d/syslog.conf


LoadPlugin syslog
<Plugin syslog>
  LogLevel info
</Plugin>

 

5. Restart collectd to incorporate all the modifications to the collectd modules:

service collectd restart

Installing and Configuring graphite on a Debian Host

Installing graphite requires the installation of a number of packages on the Debian host. Then you have to configure Apache and some runtime state directories it uses, followed by some security settings. Then you're ready to start up the collector. 

Before you install graphite, you need to have Debian installed on a server or virtual machine. You must install sudo before running through the installation steps.

1. Download the package lists from the repositories and "updates" them to get information on the newest versions of packages and their dependencies.  And then upgrade any previously installed packages and/or related dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

 

2. Install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install -y apache2 apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common python2.7 python-pip python-cairo python-django python-django-tagging libapache2-mod-wsgi python-twisted python-memcache python-pysqlite2 python-simplejson vim

 

3. Use Python's pip to install the latest versions of whisper, carbon, and graphite:

pip install whisper
pip install carbon
pip install graphite-web

 

4. Configure graphite.  Set up a vhost by copying the example provided by Graphite in their repo. In this file, provide the URL used to access to your graphite dashboard:

cd /opt/graphite/examples
sudo cp example-graphite-vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/graphite.conf
sudo cp /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi.example /opt/graphite/conf/graphite.wsgi

 

5. Replace the WSGISocketPrefix value in the Apache vhost section with the following:

sed -i 's/WSGISocketPrefix run\/wsgi/WSGISocketPrefix \/var\/run\/apache2\/wsgi/g' /etc/apache2/sites-available/graphite.conf

 

6. WSGIImportScript cannot occur within the <VirtualHost> section if this path does not exist. So, create the directory structure:

sudo mkdir /var/run/apache2
sudo mkdir /var/run/apache2/wsgi
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 reload

 

7. Enable the wsgi Apache module:

a2enmod wsgi

 

8. Create the graphite configuration files for graphite wsgi, carbon and storage-schemas by copying the example configuration files to their correct filenames:

cd /opt/graphite/conf/
cp graphite.wsgi.example graphite.wsgi
cp carbon.conf.example carbon.conf
cp storage-schemas.conf.example storage-schemas.conf

 

9. Edit storage-schemas.conf to include a custom tweak provided by stats.d:

vim /opt/graphite/conf/storage-schemas.conf

 

Then copy and paste the following parameters into storage-schemas.conf:

[stats]
pattern = ^stats.*
retentions = 10:2160,60:10080,600:262974
 
[carbon]
pattern = ^carbon\.
retentions = 60:90d
 
[default_1min_for_1day]
pattern = .*
retentions = 60s:1d

 

10. Create a file called /opt/graphite/conf/storage-aggregation.conf:

vim /opt/graphite/conf/storage-aggregation.conf

 

Then copy and paste the following parameters into /opt/graphite/conf/storage-aggregation.conf:

[min]
pattern = \.min$
xFilesFactor = 0.1
aggregationMethod = min
 
[max]
pattern = \.max$
xFilesFactor = 0.1
aggregationMethod = max
 
[sum]
pattern = \.count$
xFilesFactor = 0
aggregationMethod = sum
 
[default_average]
pattern = .*
xFilesFactor = 0.3
aggregationMethod = average

 

11. Set the ownership on the directory /opt/graphite/storage/:

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/graphite/storage/
cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
sudo cp local_settings.py.example local_settings.py

 

12. Add a secret key password to /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite/local_settings.py:

echo "SECRET_KEY = 'newpw'" >> /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite/local_settings.py

 

13. Configure Apache:

cd /opt/graphite/webapp/graphite
python manage.py syncdb

 

Now enter your username and password.  

user@debian3:/opt/graphite/webapp/graphite# python manage.py syncdb 
Creating tables ...
Creating table account_profile
Creating table account_variable
Creating table account_view
Creating table account_window
Creating table account_mygraph
Creating table dashboard_dashboard_owners
Creating table dashboard_dashboard
Creating table events_event
Creating table auth_permission
Creating table auth_group_permissions
Creating table auth_group
Creating table auth_user_user_permissions
Creating table auth_user_groups
Creating table auth_user
Creating table django_session
Creating table django_admin_log
Creating table django_content_type
Creating table tagging_tag
Creating table tagging_taggeditem

You just installed Django's auth system, which means you don't have any superusers defined.
Would you like to create one now? (yes/no): yes
Please enter either "yes" or "no": yes
Username (leave blank to use 'user'):
E-mail address: user@cumulusnetworks.com
Password:
Password (again):
Superuser created successfully.
Installing custom SQL ...
Installing indexes ...
Installed 0 object(s) from 0 fixture(s)

 

14. Enable the graphite host:

a2ensite graphite

 

15. Restart Apache to read the new configuration changes:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

 

16. Restart carbon-cache:

/opt/graphite/bin/carbon-cache.py stop
/opt/graphite/bin/carbon-cache.py start

 

17. Restart Apache to read the new configuration changes:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

 

18. Start graphite:

/opt/graphite/bin/run-graphite-devel-server.py /opt/graphite/

 

Related Links

Comments

  • Avatar
    Phil Huang

    Hi Team,

    I found some problem about `a2ensite graphite`

    It is work well below:

    ```
    sudo cp example-graphite-vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/graphite
    ```

    change to

    ```
    sudo cp example-graphite-vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/graphite.conf
    ```

    Edited by Phil Huang
  • Avatar
    Peter Bratach

    Thanks for letting us know, Phil. I updated the article.

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