Enabling and configuring the StatsD monitoring endpoint

The Monitoring Endpoint configuration type provides the StatsD endpoint type that you can use to transfer metrics data in the StatsD format.

About this task

You can configure the Monitoring Endpoint using the dsconfig command or the administrative console.

Steps

To create the StatsD monitoring Endpoint, use either of the following:
Choose from:
- To use the command-line, run dsconfig with the create-monitoring-endpoint option.
  
  This example configures a new StatsD Monitoring Endpoint to send UDP data to localhost port 8125 using dsconfig.
  
  dsconfig create-monitoring-endpoint \ --type statsd \ --endpoint-name StatsDEndpoint \ --set enabled:true \ --set hostname:localhost \ --set server-port:8125 \ --set connection-type:unencrypted-udp
- To use the Administrative Console:
  
  From the Administrative Console, click Show Advanced Configuration.
  
  In the Logging, Monitoring, and Notifications section, click Monitoring Endpoints.
  
  Click New Monitoring Endpoint.
When you configure Monitoring Endpoint include:
- The endpoint’s host name
- The endpoint’s port
- A toggle to use TCP or UDP
- A toggle to use SSL if you use TCP
You can configure a StatsD Monitoring Endpoint with custom tags using the additional-tags property. This adds the defined tags to each metric message sent to the endpoint. Each tag should be created in a "key=value" format. Additional tags are appended to the end of the StatsD message. Here is a sample StatsD message with custom tags:
example.metric:123|g|#tag1:value1,tag2:value2
You can send data to any number of monitoring endpoints.

Enabling and configuring the Stats Collector Plugin

The Stats Collector Plugin controls the metrics used by the StatsD monitoring endpoint.

About this task

This topic applies only to the PingDirectory server.

To send metrics with the StatsD monitoring endpoint, enable the Stats Collector Plugin and configure the plugin to indicate which metrics to send.

Examples of metrics you can send are:

Busy worker thread count
Garbage collection statistics
Host system metrics such as CPU and memory

For a list of available metrics, use the interactive dsconfig menu for the Stats Collector Plugin or in the Administrative Console, edit the Stats Collector plugin, as explained in the second example.

Steps

To enable and configure the Stats Collector Plugin, use either of the following:

Choose from:

To use the command-line, run dsconfig with the set-plugin-prop option.

This example enables the Stats Collector Plugin to send host CPU metric, memory metrics, and server status metrics using dsconfig.

dsconfig set-plugin-prop \
    --plugin-name "Stats Collector" \
    --set enabled:true \
    --set host-info:cpu \
    --set host-info:disk \
    --set status-summary-info:basic

If you are not using Data Metrics Server to monitor your server, you can disable the generation of some metrics files that are not necessary for the StatsD Monitoring Endpoint. To do this, set the generate-collector-files property on the Stats Collector Plugin to false.

To use the Administrative Console:
1. From the Administrative Console, click Show Advanced Configuration.
2. In the LDAP (Administration and Monitoring) section, click Plugin Root.
3. Edit the Stats Collector plugin and select the configuration options to indicate which metrics to send.

Next steps

After you enable the Stats Collector and create the StatsD monitoring endpoint, you can:

Use the data with Splunk, as explained in Sending Metrics to Splunk with StatsD.
Configure other tools that support StatsD, such as CloudWatch or a Prometheus StatsD exporter, to use the data. For more information about this configuration, see your tool’s StatsD documentation.

Sending Metrics to Splunk with StatsD

About this task

This topic applies only to the PingDirectoryProxy server.

Using the StatsD Endpoint type, you can send metric data to a Splunk installation. In Splunk, you can use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure ports that are open for StatsD. You can configure open UDP or TCP ports in Splunk to accept only connections from a certain hostname or IP address.

StatsD metrics are typically sent over UDP. Using UDP, the client sending metrics does not have to block as it would if using TCP. However, using TCP guarantees order and ensures no metrics are lost.

To securely send UDP or TCP data to Splunk:

Steps

Send the data to a Splunk Universal Forwarder.
Request that the forwarder use SSL to communicate with the Splunk Indexer.