Icinga 2: Apply rule for monitoring multiple Varnish instances and create a Grafana Varnish dashboard

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The last post (Monitoring Varnish with check_varnish and create graphs from multiple varnishstat fields), described how the monitoring plugin check_varnish can be used to query multiple fields from varnishstat and use them as performance data for a monitoring software.

With the basis of check_varnish, it's time to create service checks for Varnish instances and create a fancy dashboard in Grafana!

Basic implementation (single Varnish instance)

Let's start with a single service check to understand how to implement check_varnish. In this case NRPE is used as remote executor because the plugin runs on a remote host where Varnish is installed.

Note: You can of course use an alternative remote plugin execution solution if you don't fancy NRPE.

The NRPE command definitions on the Varnish server contain two entries:

command[check_varnish]=sudo /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_varnish.py -f $ARG1$
command[check_varnish_name]=sudo /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_varnish.py -f $ARG1$ -n $ARG2$

The first command, [check_varnish], is used in case there's only one Varnish instance running on this particular server. If there are multiple Varnish instances running, the second command, [check_varnish_name] can be used.

Nagios / Icinga 1 / Naemon / Shinken

If you use Nagios or a fork of it, the service definition would look like this:

define service{
  use generic-service
  host_name myvarnish
  service_description Varnish Stats
  check_command check_nrpe!check_varnish!"SMA.s0.g_bytes,MAIN.backend_fail,MAIN.backend_busy,MAIN.losthdr,MAIN.sess_dropped,MAIN.sess_conn,MAIN.client_req,MAIN.cache_hit,MAIN.cache_miss,MAIN.sess_queued,MAIN.esi_errors,MAIN.n_lru_nuked"
}

Icinga 2

In Icinga 2 the service object could look like this:

# check varnish stats
object Service "Varnish Stats" {
  import "generic-service"
  host_name = "myvarnish"
  check_command = "nrpe"
  vars.nrpe_command = "check_varnish"
  vars.nrpe_arguments = [ "SMA.s0.g_bytes,MAIN.backend_fail,MAIN.backend_busy,MAIN.losthdr,MAIN.sess_dropped,MAIN.sess_conn,MAIN.client_req,MAIN.cache_hit,MAIN.cache_miss,MAIN.sess_queued,MAIN.esi_errors,MAIN.n_lru_nuked" ]
}

Once correctly installed, the service should appear in Icingaweb2 and start saving performance data into the background database (whatever defined):

Varnish stats in Icingaweb2 monitoring

Multiple Varnish instances

Varnish supports to run multiple instances of Varnish, each with its own listening ports and own VCL's (if wanted). This can be achieved by using the "-n" parameter. According to the output of varnishd --help this parameter stands for "work dir" and refers to a dedicated sub-directory in /var/lib/varnish; however a better description would actually be "named instance" or "namespace".

Here's an example of multiple Varnish instances running alongside on the same server:

 $ ps aux|grep varnish
vcache    5237  0.0  0.0  58060  6316 ?        SLs  Feb18   0:10 /usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -n varnish-baum -F -a :7095 -T localhost:7096 -f /etc/varnish/baum.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,128m
vcache    5250  0.0  0.0  58060  6244 ?        SLs  Feb18   0:10 /usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -n varnish-delivery -F -a :7071 -T localhost:7072 -f /etc/varnish/delivery.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,4096m
vcache    5276  0.0  0.0  58060  6256 ?        SLs  Feb18   0:09 /usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -n varnish-elnino -F -a :7093 -T localhost:7094 -f /etc/varnish/elnino.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,4096m

In this case we've got three instances on this server: varnish-baum, varnish-delivery and varnish-elnino. 

To monitor these named instances, the prepared NRPE command [check_varnish_name] can be used. Here the service object example for Icinga 2:

object Service "Varnish Stats Elnino" {
  import "generic-service"
  host_name = "myvarnish"
  check_command = "nrpe"
  vars.nrpe_command = "check_varnish_name"
  vars.nrpe_arguments = [ "SMA.s0.g_bytes,MAIN.backend_fail,MAIN.backend_busy,MAIN.losthdr,MAIN.sess_dropped,MAIN.sess_conn,MAIN.client_req,MAIN.cache_hit,MAIN.cache_miss,MAIN.sess_queued,MAIN.esi_errors,MAIN.n_lru_nuked", "varnish-elnino" ]
}

Doing this with more style: Apply rules in Icinga 2!

Now that it is known, how to add a Varnish service check, the next step is to apply such services automatically to hosts running one or more Varnish instances! To do this, Icinga 2's killer feature "apply rules" can be used.

A couple of older but nevertheless informative articles about apply rules:

Custom variable in host object

In this example a custom variable "vars.varnish", in form of a dictionary, is set inside the host object:

object Host "myvarnish1" {
  import "generic-host"
  address = "192.168.44.41"

  # Varnish instances
  vars.varnish["Varnish"] = {  }
}


object Host "myvarnish2" {
  import "generic-host"
  address = "192.168.44.44"

  # Varnish instances
  vars.varnish["Elnino"] = { "name" = "varnish-elnino" }
  vars.varnish["Baum"] = { "name" = "varnish-baum" }
  vars.varnish["Delivery"] = { "name" = "varnish-delivery" }
}

Apply rule using the dictionary

The apply rule is pretty straightforward and handles both cases of a single or multiple Varnish instance running on a host:

apply Service "Varnish Stats " for (instance => config in host.vars.varnish) {
  import "service-60s-dontcare"
  display_name = "Varnish Stats"

  vars =+ config
  vars.stats = "SMA.s0.g_bytes,MAIN.backend_fail,MAIN.backend_busy,MAIN.losthdr,MAIN.sess_dropped,MAIN.sess_conn,MAIN.client_req,MAIN.cache_hit,MAIN.cache_miss,MAIN.sess_queued,MAIN.esi_errors,MAIN.n_lru_nuked"

  check_command = "nrpe"
  if (vars.name) {
    display_name = "Varnish Stats " + instance
    vars.nrpe_command = "check_varnish_name"
    vars.nrpe_arguments = [ vars.stats, vars.name ]
  } else {
    vars.nrpe_command = "check_varnish"
    vars.nrpe_arguments = [ vars.stats ]
  }
  vars.influx_append = "_check_varnish"

  assign where host.address && host.vars.varnish
}

vars.stats is a variable containing all the varnishstat fields which should be checked (this could of course also come from the dictionary).

The if condition (if (vars.name)) inside the apply rule checks whether or not the "name" variable was defined inside the dictionary. If it was set, this means that the Varnish instance needs to be checked using the -n parameter of the check_varnish plugin and uses the [check_varnish_name] NRPE command. If no "name" variable was defined, the apply rule assumes the host runs a single Varnish instance, therefore no -n parameter is necessary and [check_varnish] is used.

vars.influx_append refers to a hack (see article Create separate measurement tables in InfluxDB for Icinga 2 NRPE checks) to make sure a dedicated measurement table is used for all check_varnish checks.

Alternative using array instead of dictionaries

In the example above a dictionary is used to define the Varnish instances. This allows to add additional variables for each Varnish instance (for example listening port, specific stats to be checked, etc). If dictionaries are too complicated (but usually it's worth it!) an alternative could be to use a simple array in which all the instances are defined:

object Host "myvarnish2" {
  import "generic-host"
  address = "192.168.44.44"

  # Named Varnish instances
  vars.varnish = [ "Elnino", "Baum", "Delivery" ]
}

The corresponding apply rule could then look like this:

apply Service "Varnish Stats " for (instance in host.vars.varnish) {
  import "service-60s-dontcare"
  display_name = "Varnish Stats " + instance

  vars.stats = "SMA.s0.g_bytes,MAIN.backend_fail,MAIN.backend_busy,MAIN.losthdr,MAIN.sess_dropped,MAIN.sess_conn,MAIN.client_req,MAIN.cache_hit,MAIN.cache_miss,MAIN.sess_queued,MAIN.esi_errors,MAIN.n_lru_nuked"

  check_command = "nrpe"
  vars.nrpe_command = "check_varnish_name"
  vars.nrpe_arguments = [ vars.stats, vars.name ]
  vars.influx_append = "_check_varnish"

  assign where host.address && host.vars.varnish
}

But to keep the possibility open to add more service checks based on the additional variables in the dictionary, using dictionaries is recommended.

How does it look?

If all was correctly configured, Icinga 2 should apply the Varnish Stats service checks to the hosts which have "vars.varnish" defined in the host definition. In Icingaweb2 this then looks like this:

Creating a fancy Varnish stats graph with Grafana

Now that all Varnish stats from all instances are written into the same InfluxDB measurement table (in our case nrpe_check_varnish), a dashboard and graph can be built with Grafana. To make the graph as dynamic as possible, multiple variables are defined.

Defining the dashboard variables

$Host: This variable queries the hostname tag in the nrpe_check_varnish measurement. Only hosts which actually have Varnish statistics should be able to be selected in the dashboard:

SHOW TAG VALUES FROM "nrpe_check_varnish" WITH KEY = "hostname"

$Instance: Pretty much the same as $Host, but here the Varnish instance names from the chosen $Host should appear.

SHOW TAG VALUES FROM "nrpe_check_varnish" WITH KEY = "service" WHERE "hostname" =~ /^$Host$/

To display the instance name a little bit nicer (instead of "Varnish Stats Baum"), a regex can be added to only display the Varnish name:

Regex: /^Varnish Stats (.*)$/

Multi-value and include all option are enabled. This allows to use multiple graphs of multiple or even all Varnish instances.

$metric: Selects all the available metrics (the fields from check_varnish's performance data) from the selected $Host and the selected $Instance. Remember, there can be multiple instances selected. Also in this case several metrics will show up and they, too, should be able to be shown in the same graph. Therefore multi-value and include all option is selected here, too.

$aggregation: This variable is not required but as all the values from varnishstat are counters, they increase until Varnish was restarted. The Grafana default is to use "mean("value")" to continuously grow the graph. However if one wants to figure out if at a certain time there was a faster counter increase than normal, derivative should be used. This value is a custom value and allows the selection of either one of:

mean("value"),derivative(mean("value"))

Creating the stats graph

To build a dynamic graph using the variables, the query to create the stats graph must use the correct Influx query language to represent the selected variables. And also the aggregation must be considered at the beginning. The full query could look like this:

SELECT $aggregation FROM "nrpe_check_varnish" WHERE ("hostname" =~ /^$Host$/ AND "metric" =~ /^$metric$/ AND "service" =~ /$Instance$/) AND $timeFilter GROUP BY time($__interval), "metric", "service" fill(linear)

Note that "service" =~ /$Instance$/ is using the selected value(s) of dashboard variable "Instance" as a "light" regular expression, not as a fixed regex (see the missing ^).

The graph should also use "Alias By" and use "$tag_service $tag_metric" to quickly identify multiple selected variables.

Show me the graphics!

Time to see the results! Here a full graph with multiple Varnish instances selected using all metrics:

By selecting a metric (here MAIN.sess_conn), multiple Varnish instances can be easily compared:

By changing the aggregation type to derivative, spikes can be identified much quicker:

I want that dashboard, too!

You want. You may have. Here's the json which can be used to import a dashboard into Grafana:

{
  "annotations": {
    "list": [
      {
        "$$hashKey": "object:153",
        "builtIn": 1,
        "datasource": "-- Grafana --",
        "enable": true,
        "hide": true,
        "iconColor": "rgba(0, 211, 255, 1)",
        "name": "Annotations & Alerts",
        "type": "dashboard"
      }
    ]
  },
  "description": "Grafana dashboard to show Varnish statistics from check_varnish plugin by claudiokuenzler.com",
  "editable": true,
  "gnetId": null,
  "graphTooltip": 0,
  "id": 13,
  "iteration": 1582203003855,
  "links": [],
  "panels": [
    {
      "aliasColors": {},
      "bars": false,
      "dashLength": 10,
      "dashes": false,
      "datasource": null,
      "fill": 1,
      "gridPos": {
        "h": 12,
        "w": 24,
        "x": 0,
        "y": 0
      },
      "id": 2,
      "legend": {
        "alignAsTable": false,
        "avg": false,
        "current": false,
        "max": false,
        "min": false,
        "rightSide": false,
        "show": true,
        "total": false,
        "values": false
      },
      "lines": true,
      "linewidth": 1,
      "links": [],
      "minSpan": null,
      "nullPointMode": "null",
      "percentage": false,
      "pointradius": 5,
      "points": false,
      "renderer": "flot",
      "repeat": null,
      "repeatDirection": "v",
      "seriesOverrides": [],
      "spaceLength": 10,
      "stack": false,
      "steppedLine": false,
      "targets": [
        {
          "$$hashKey": "object:523",
          "alias": "$tag_service $tag_metric",
          "groupBy": [
            {
              "params": [
                "$__interval"
              ],
              "type": "time"
            },
            {
              "params": [
                "metric"
              ],
              "type": "tag"
            },
            {
              "params": [
                "$Instance"
              ],
              "type": "tag"
            },
            {
              "params": [
                "previous"
              ],
              "type": "fill"
            }
          ],
          "measurement": "nrpe_check_varnish",
          "orderByTime": "ASC",
          "policy": "default",
          "query": "SELECT $aggregation FROM \"nrpe_check_varnish\" WHERE (\"hostname\" =~ /^$Host$/ AND \"metric\" =~ /^$metric$/ AND \"service\" =~ /$Instance$/) AND $timeFilter GROUP BY time($__interval), \"metric\", \"service\" fill(linear)",
          "rawQuery": true,
          "refId": "A",
          "resultFormat": "time_series",
          "select": [
            [
              {
                "params": [
                  "value"
                ],
                "type": "field"
              },
              {
                "params": [],
                "type": "mean"
              }
            ]
          ],
          "tags": [
            {
              "key": "hostname",
              "operator": "=~",
              "value": "/^$Host$/"
            },
            {
              "condition": "AND",
              "key": "metric",
              "operator": "=~",
              "value": "/^$metric$/"
            },
            {
              "condition": "AND",
              "key": "service",
              "operator": "=~",
              "value": "/^$Instance$/"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "thresholds": [],
      "timeFrom": null,
      "timeShift": null,
      "title": "Varnish Statistics",
      "tooltip": {
        "shared": true,
        "sort": 0,
        "value_type": "individual"
      },
      "transparent": true,
      "type": "graph",
      "xaxis": {
        "buckets": null,
        "mode": "time",
        "name": null,
        "show": true,
        "values": []
      },
      "yaxes": [
        {
          "format": "short",
          "label": null,
          "logBase": 1,
          "max": null,
          "min": null,
          "show": true
        },
        {
          "format": "short",
          "label": null,
          "logBase": 1,
          "max": null,
          "min": null,
          "show": true
        }
      ],
      "yaxis": {
        "align": false,
        "alignLevel": null
      }
    }
  ],
  "schemaVersion": 16,
  "style": "dark",
  "tags": [],
  "templating": {
    "list": [
      {
        "allValue": null,
        "current": {
          "text": "onl-lb01-p",
          "value": "onl-lb01-p"
        },
        "datasource": "icinga",
        "hide": 0,
        "includeAll": false,
        "label": null,
        "multi": false,
        "name": "Host",
        "options": [],
        "query": "SHOW TAG VALUES FROM \"nrpe_check_varnish\" WITH KEY = \"hostname\"",
        "refresh": 1,
        "regex": "",
        "sort": 0,
        "tagValuesQuery": "",
        "tags": [],
        "tagsQuery": "",
        "type": "query",
        "useTags": false
      },
      {
        "allValue": null,
        "current": {
          "tags": [],
          "text": "All",
          "value": [
            "$__all"
          ]
        },
        "datasource": "icinga",
        "hide": 0,
        "includeAll": true,
        "label": "Varnish Instance",
        "multi": true,
        "name": "Instance",
        "options": [],
        "query": "SHOW TAG VALUES FROM \"nrpe_check_varnish\" WITH KEY = \"service\" WHERE \"hostname\" =~ /^$Host$/",
        "refresh": 1,
        "regex": "/^Varnish Stats (.*)$/",
        "sort": 0,
        "tagValuesQuery": "",
        "tags": [],
        "tagsQuery": "instance",
        "type": "query",
        "useTags": false
      },
      {
        "allValue": null,
        "current": {
          "tags": [],
          "text": "All",
          "value": [
            "$__all"
          ]
        },
        "datasource": "icinga",
        "hide": 0,
        "includeAll": true,
        "label": "Metric",
        "multi": true,
        "name": "metric",
        "options": [],
        "query": "SHOW TAG VALUES FROM \"nrpe_check_varnish\" WITH KEY = \"metric\" WHERE \"hostname\" =~ /^$Host$/",
        "refresh": 1,
        "regex": "",
        "sort": 0,
        "tagValuesQuery": "",
        "tags": [],
        "tagsQuery": "",
        "type": "query",
        "useTags": false
      },
      {
        "allValue": null,
        "current": {
          "tags": [],
          "text": "mean(\"value\")",
          "value": "mean(\"value\")"
        },
        "hide": 0,
        "includeAll": false,
        "label": "Aggregation",
        "multi": false,
        "name": "aggregation",
        "options": [
          {
            "$$hashKey": "object:632",
            "selected": true,
            "text": "mean(\"value\")",
            "value": "mean(\"value\")"
          },
          {
            "$$hashKey": "object:633",
            "selected": false,
            "text": "derivative(mean(\"value\"))",
            "value": "derivative(mean(\"value\"))"
          }
        ],
        "query": "mean(\"value\"),derivative(mean(\"value\"))",
        "type": "custom"
      }
    ]
  },
  "time": {
    "from": "now-1h",
    "to": "now"
  },
  "timepicker": {
    "refresh_intervals": [
      "5s",
      "10s",
      "30s",
      "1m",
      "5m",
      "15m",
      "30m",
      "1h",
      "2h",
      "1d"
    ],
    "time_options": [
      "5m",
      "15m",
      "1h",
      "6h",
      "12h",
      "24h",
      "2d",
      "7d",
      "30d"
    ]
  },
  "timezone": "",
  "title": "Varnish Stats",
  "uid": "rhxtA-QWz",
  "version": 16
}

You may have to adjust the datasource and measurement table to match your own InfluxDB data structure.


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