HCICollector

The HCI Ccollector is a container based metrics collection and graphing solution for NetApp HCI and SolidFire systems running Element OS 9+

Current Release

v .6 (beta)

Updates in .6

• Changed name of repository to hcicollector from sfcollector to more accurately reflect new functionality
• Changed file layout to be more consistent with container names and roles
• Retooled for Grafana 5.0.0
• Dashboards and datasources are now automatically added through the new provisioning functionality in Grafana 5
• Removed the external volume for the Grafana container, only Graphite uses an (optional) external iSCSI volume for persistent data
• Added the ability to poll for active alerts in the "SolidFire Cluster" dashboard.
• Added support for email alerting based on SolidFire events. Note: alerting queries do not support templating variables so if you have multiple clusters you will need to use "*" for the cluster instance instead of the "$Cluster" variable. The net effect of this is that the alert pane will show alerts from ALL clusters instead of an individually selected cluster.
• New detailed install document
• Added a very basic installation script

See the changelog for updates in previous versions

Description

The SFCollector is a fully packaged metrics collection and graphing solution for Element OS 9+ based on these containers:

• sfcollector -> runs a python script to scrape results from SolidFire clusters
• vmwcollector -> vSphere stats collector, written in Go
• graphite -> keeps all time series data from the HCICollector
• grafana -> Graphing engine

The collector stores metrics in graphite and presents those metrics through a set of pre-configured Grafana dashboards. Optionally, the Netapp Trident project can be used for persistent storage of metrics on a NetApp system.

Prerequisites

• Docker host running 17.03+
• Account information for vCenter (optional) and SolidFire components to collect against

Quick and Dirty Installation and Configuration

# install Docker CE, docker-compose and iSCSI client packages
# enable and start docker, dnsmasq and open-iscsi service
# clone the hcicollector repository
git clone https://github.com/jedimt/hcicollector
# execute the install_hcicollector.sh script and provide the requested input 
cd hcicollector; sudo ./install_hcicollector.sh
# w/o Trident storage, create local volume using the volume name chosen in install wizard
#   docker volume create --name=chosen-name
# start up the containers
sudo docker-compose up
# to run in detached mode: sudo docker-compose up -d

For more information please consult the following material included in this repository:

• Installation and configuration guide "TR-4694-0618-Visualizing-NetApp-HCI-Performance.pdf"
• Overview PowerPoint deck "HCICollector Overview.pptx"
• Installation demo and dashboard walkthrough "hcicollector-v.6-Install_and_Overview.mp4"

Author

Aaron Patten

GitHub - Jedimt

Blog - Jedimt.com

Twitter - @jedimt

Acknowledgments

This would not have been possible if not for the prior work of cblomart, cbiebers and jmreicha

• solidfire-graphite-collector Original Python collector script
• graphite-docker Graphite and Grafana containers
• vsphere-graphite vSphere collector for Graphite