SysWatch

A guide to install the Syswatch tool - A web based tool to monitor system usage.

• Implemented a web based system monitor tool.
• Configured telegraf which is a data collector tool to collect usage data from system.
• Using the light weight MQTT protocol, telegraf stores data in to the influxdb.
• The time series database (influxdb) stores various kinds of data about RAM, CPU, Disk & Networking.
• InfluxDB performs aggregation queries down-sampling the data to create insights into system usage. It uses Holt-Winters prediction to gain insights into future usage.
• A light-weight web container based on Sinatra (Ruby) hosts a frontend developed using Rickshaw.js & d3.js to visualize the usage data.
• User can configure and receive alerts via email or text.
• Demo @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjyBzEOx4VY

Architecture of SysWatch

Steps to do.

Install InfluxDB

curl -sL https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdb.key | sudo apt-key add -
source /etc/lsb-release
echo "deb https://repos.influxdata.com/${DISTRIB_ID,,} ${DISTRIB_CODENAME} stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdb.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install influxdb

Alternatively, you can compile your own influxdb from binary for added flexibility

Follow guide at : 
https://anomaly.io/compile-influxdb/

Start influx Server.

sudo service influxdb start

Visit influx GUI at http://localhost:8083/

Start influx client

influx

You can play around with the influx db client.

Install telegraf - The super cool data collector.

sudo apt-get install telegraf
telegraf

By default, it will start collecting all the cpu metrics and will write that to influxdb in a database called telegraf. Below is the list of measurements you should see.

  measurements
    name
    cpu
    disk
    diskio
    kernel
    mem
    processes
    swap
    system

Generate telegraf config file

telegraf.conf file is already present in the `telegraf` dir of the repo

Run telegraf

telegraf -config telegraf.conf

Install rvm and ruby

\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash
rvm install 2.2.1

Install gems inside the project's rvm gemset

cd influx-time-series/Project
gem install sinatra
gem install twilio-ruby

Start sinatra server

First, make sure that telegraf is running!
cd influx-time-series/Project
ruby app.rb
Goto http://localhost:4567/

Install kapacitor

brew install kapacitor

For other systems, https://www.influxdata.com/downloads/#kapacitor

Generate kapacitor config file

kapacitor.conf file is already present in the `kapacitor` dir of the repo

Run kapacitor

cd influx-time-series/kapacitor
kapacitord -config kapacitor.conf

Set kapacitor alerts

Copy all .tick and .sh files in influx-time-series/kapacitor to /tmp dir

kapacitor define mem_alert -type stream -tick /tmp/mem_alert.tick -dbrp telegraf.autogen
kapacitor enable mem_alert

kapacitor define cpu_alert -type stream -tick /tmp/cpu_alert.tick -dbrp telegraf.autogen
kapacitor enable cpu_alert

Goto http://localhost:4567/alerts and set alert thresholds for mem and cpu

Alerts will start appearing on the /alerts page!

Disable kapacitor alerts

kapacitor disable mem_alert
kapacitor disable cpu_alert

For grafana based dashboards, where in users can enter their desired queries, follow the below process:

Install grafana

Refer http://docs.grafana.org/installation/debian/

wget https://grafanarel.s3.amazonaws.com/builds/grafana_3.1.1-1470047149_amd64.deb
sudo apt-get install -y adduser libfontconfig
sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite grafana_3.1.1-1470047149_amd64.deb

Start grafana

sudo service grafana-server start

Resources

https://www.influxdata.com/building-custom-interfaces-for-influxdb/