Varnish

Varnish HTTP Cache is a web application accelerator, also known as a “caching HTTP reverse proxy.” You install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP and configure it to cache the contents. If Varnish is installed on your environment, the Sysdig agent will automatically connect. See the Default Configuration section, below.

The Sysdig Agent automatically collects all metrics. You can also edit the configuration to emit service checks for the back end.

This page describes the default configuration settings, how to edit the configuration to collect additional information, the metrics available for integration, and a sample result in the Sysdig Monitor UI.

Varnish Setup

Varnish will automatically expose all metrics. You do not need to add anything to the Varnish instance.

Sysdig Agent Configuration

Review how to Edit dragent.yaml to Integrate or Modify Application Checks.

Default Configuration

By default, Sysdig’s dragent.default.yaml uses the following code to connect with Varnish and collect all but the VBE metrics. See Example 2 Enable Varnish VBE Metrics.

metrics_filter:
 - exclude: varnish.VBE.*
app_checks:
 - name: varnishapp_checks:
    interval: 15
    pattern:
      comm: varnishd
    conf:
      varnishstat: /usr/bin/varnishstat

Optionally, if you want to submit service checks for the health of each back end, you can configure varnishadm and edit dragent.yaml as in Example 1.

Example 1 Service Health Checks with varnishadm

When varnishadm is configured, the Sysdig agent requires privileges to execute the binary with root privileges. Add the following to your /etc/sudoers file:

sysdig-agent ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/varnishadm

Then edit dragent.yaml as follows. Note: If you have configured varnishadm and your secret file is NOT /etc/varnish/secret, you can comment out secretfile.

app_checks:
  - name: varnish
    interval: 15
    pattern:
      comm: varnishd
    conf:
      varnishstat: /usr/bin/varnishstat
      varnishadm: /usr/bin/varnishadm
      secretfile: /etc/varnish/secret

This example will enable following service check.

varnish.backend_healthy: The agent submits a service check for each Varnish backend, tagging each with backend:<backend_name>.

Example 2 Enable Varnish VBE Metrics

Varnish VBE metrics are dynamically generated (and therefore are not listed in the Metrics Dictionary). Because they generate unique metric names with timestamps, they can clutter metric handling and are filtered out by default. If you want to collect these metrics, use include in the metrics_filter in dragent.yaml:

metrics_filter:
 - include: varnish.VBE.*
app_checks:
 - name: varnishapp_checks:
    interval: 15
    pattern:
      comm: varnishd
    conf:
      varnishstat: /usr/bin/varnishstat

Metrics Available

See Varnish Metrics.

Result in the Monitor UI