Integrate StatsD with Rackspace Metrics

This article describes how to configure StatsD to send metrics to Rackspace Metrics. If you haven't installed StatsD, follow the instructions on the StatsD Website.

You can view metrics submitted through StatsD by using the following methods:

• Use a client script by calling the Rackspace Metrics Query API directly.
• Use the Grafana® dashboard.

📘

Rackspace Intelligence does not allow visualization of any metrics submitted outside Rackspace Monitoring at this time.

To configure StatsD for the Rackspace Metrics service, complete the following steps:

1. Configure StatsD for Rackspace Metrics.
2. Integrate with your blueflood instance.
3. Restart StatsD.

Configure StatsD for Rackspace Metrics

1. Navigate to the StatsD directory:

   cd /path/to/statsd
   

2. Install the StatsD backend engine:

    npm install statsd-blueflood-backend
   

   If the installation is successful, you should see the module under node_modules.

3. Create a StatsD config file called local.config and add the following configuration information. Be sure to set the deleteIdleStats flag to true.

   {
    backends: ["statsd-blueflood-backend"],
    port: 8125,
    flushInterval: 10000,
    dumpMessages: true,
    deleteIdleStats: true,
    "blueflood": {
        "tenantId": "<tentant_id>",
        "endpoint": "https://global.metrics-ingest.api.rackspacecloud.com/v2.0",
        "authModule": "./auth",
        "authClass": "RaxAuth",
        "authParams": {
                "raxusername": "<username>",
                "raxapikey": "<api key>"
        }
      }
    }
   

4. Run StatsD with the configuration you provided:

   nodejs stats.js local.config

Integrate with your blueflood instance

To configure your StatsD to integrate with your own blueflood instance, you need to modify the endpoint URL. This configuration assumes that you are running the blueflood ingestion on IP address https://127.0.0.1 and port 19000.

    {
    backends: ["statsd-blueflood-backend"],
    port: 8125,
    flushInterval: 10000,
    dumpMessages: true,
    deleteIdleStats: true,
    "blueflood": {
        "tenantId": "<tenant_id>",
        "endpoint": "https://127.0.0.1:19000",
        "authModule": "./auth",
        "authClass": "RaxAuth",
        "authParams": {
                "raxusername": "<username>",
                "raxapikey": "<api_key>"
        }
      }
    }

Troubleshooting tip

If you encounter an error that the server cannot find the module statsd-blueflood-backend, then check that you installed that module:

ls node_modules

If you configgured everything correctly, the nodejs StatsD server should be up and running now, as shown in the following example:

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

Test the configuration

StatsD continuously generates a series of statistics and sends these stats to Rackspace Metrics on a regular basis if everything is configured correctly:

{ 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, and gauges.

StatsD sends all these items to Rackspace Metrics:

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

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