(Legacy) Integrate Applications (Default App Checks)

The Sysdig agent supports application monitoring with application check scripts or “app checks”. These are a set of plugins that poll for custom metrics from the specific applications which export them via status or management pages. For example, NGINX, Redis, MongoDB, Memcached and more.

Many app checks are enabled by default in the agent and when a supported application is found, the correct app check script will be called and metrics polled automatically.

However, if default connection parameters are changed in your application, you will need to modify the app check connection parameters in the Sysdig Agent configuration file (dragent.yaml) to match your application.

In some cases, you may also need to enable the metrics reporting functionality in the application before the agent can poll them.

This page details how to make configuration changes in the agent’s configuration file, and provides an application integration example. Click the Supported Applications links for application-specific details.

Edit dragent.yaml to Integrate or Modify Application Checks

Out of the box, the Sysdig agent will gather and report on a wide variety of pre-defined metrics. It can also accommodate any number of custom parameters for additional metrics collection.

The agent relies on a pair of configuration files to define metrics collection parameters:

The “dragent.yaml” file can be accessed and edited in several ways, depending on how the agent was installed.

Review Understanding the Agent Config Files for details.

The examples in this section presume you are entering YAML code directly intodragent.yaml, under the app_checks section.

Find the default settings

To find the default app-checks for already supported applications, check the dragent.default.yaml file.

(Location: /opt/draios/etc/dragent.default.yaml.)

Sample format

app_checks:
  - name: APP_NAME
    check_module: APP_CHECK_SCRIPT
    pattern:
      comm: PROCESS_NAME
    conf:
      host: IP_ADDR
      port: PORT

Change the default settings

To override the defaults:

1. Copy relevant code blocks from dragent.default.yaml into dragent.yaml . (Or copy the code from the appropriate app check integration page in this documentation section.)

   Any entries copied into dragent.yaml file will override similar entries in dragent.default.yaml.

   Never modify dragent.default.yaml, as it will be overwritten whenever the agent is updated.

2. Modify the parameters as needed.

   Be sure to use proper YAML. Pay attention to consistent spacing for indents (as shown) and list all check entries under an app_checks: section title.

3. Save the changes and restart the agent.

   Use service restart agent or docker restart sysdig-agent.

Metrics for the relevant application should appear in the Sysdig Monitor interface under the appropriate name.

Example 1: Change Name and Add Password

Here is a sample app-check entry for Redis. The app_checks section was copied from the dragent.default.yaml file and modified for a specific instance.

customerid: 831f3-Your-Access-Key-9401
tags: local:sf,acct:dev,svc:db
app_checks:
  - name: redis-6380
    check_module: redisdb
    pattern:
      comm: redis-server
    conf:
      host: 127.0.0.1
      port: PORT
      password: PASSWORD

Edits made:

• The name to be displayed in the interface

• A required password.

Example 2: Increase Polling Interval

The default interval for an application check to be run by the agent is set to every second. You can increase the interval per application check by adding the interval: parameter (under the -name section) and the number of seconds to wait before each run of the script.

Example: Run the NTP check once per minute:

app_checks:
  - name: ntp
    interval: 60
    pattern:
      comm: systemd
    conf:
      host: us.pool.ntp.org

Disabling

Disable a Single Application Check

Sometimes the default configuration shipped with the Sysdig agent does not work for you or you may not be interested in checks for a single application. To turn a single check off, add an entry like this to disable it:

app_checks:
 - name: nginx
   enabled: false

This entry overrides the default configuration of the nginx check, disabling it.

If you are using the ADDITIONAL_CONF parameter to modify your container agent’s configuration, you would add an entry like this to your Docker run command (or Kubernetes manifest):

-e ADDITIONAL_CONF="app_checks:\n  - name: nginx\n    enabled: false\n"

Disable ALL Application Checks

If you do not need it or otherwise want to disable the application check functionality, you can add the following entry to the agent’s user settings configuration file /opt/draios/etc/dragent.yaml:

app_checks_enabled: false

Restart the agent as shown immediately above for either the native Linux agent installation or the container agent installation.

Optional: Configure a Custom App-Check

Sysdig allows custom application check-script configurations to be created for each individual container in the infrastructure, via the environment variable SYSDIG_AGENT_CONF. This avoids the need for multiple edits and entries to achieve the container-specific customization, by enabling application teams to configure their own checks.

The SYSDIG_AGENT_CONF variable stores a YAML-formatted configuration for the app check, and is used to match app-check configurations. It can be stored directly within the Docker file.

The example below defines a per container app-check for Redis in the Dockerfile, using the SYSDIG_AGENT_CONF environment variable:

FROM redis
# This config file adds a password for accessing redis instance
ADD redis.conf /

ENV SYSDIG_AGENT_CONF { "app_checks": [{ "name": "redis", "check_module": "redisdb", "pattern": {"comm": "redis-server"}, "conf": { "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": "6379", "password": "protected"} }] }
ENTRYPOINT ["redis-server"]
CMD [ "/redis.conf" ]

The example below shows how parameters can be added to a container started with docker run, by either using the -e/–envflag variable, or injecting the parameters using an orchestration system (for example, Kubernetes):

PER_CONTAINER_CONF='{ "app_checks": [{ "name": "redis", "check_module": "redisdb", "pattern": {"comm": "redis-server"}, "conf": { "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": "6379", "password": "protected"} }] }'

docker run --name redis -v /tmp/redis.conf:/etc/redis.conf -e SYSDIG_AGENT_CONF="${PER_CONTAINER_CONF}" -d redis /etc/redis.conf

Metrics Limit

Metric limits are defined by your payment plan. If more metrics are needed please contact your sales representative with your use case.

Note that a metric with the same name but different tag name will count as a unique metric by the agent. Example: a metric 'user.clicks' with the tag 'country=us' and another 'user.clicks' with the 'tag country=it'are considered two metrics which count towards the limit.

Supported Applications

Below is the supported list of applications the agent will automatically poll.

Some app-check scripts will need to be configured since no defaults exist, while some applications may need to be configured to output their metrics. Click a highlighted link to see application-specific notes.

• Active MQ
• Apache
• Apache CouchDB
• Apache HBase
• Apache Kafka
• Apache Zookeeper
• Consul
• Couchbase
• Elasticsearch
• etcd
• fluentd
• Go
• HAProxy
• HDFS
• HTTP
• Jenkins
• JVM
• Lighttpd
• Memcached
• Mesos/Marathon
• MongoDB
• MySQL
• NGINX and NGINX Plus
• NTP
• PGBouncer
• PHP-FPM
• Postfix
• PostgreSQL
• Prometheus
• RabbitMQ
• RedisDB
• Supervisord
• SNMP
• TCP

You can also

• Create a Custom App Check from scratch

• Create Per-Container Custom App Checks