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Version: Cloud

Monitor Nginx in Kubernetes

Overview​

Nginx monitoring involves monitoring of the following elements:

  • Nginx Access Logs

  • Nginx Error Logs

  • Nginx Server Health

Pre-reading​

Refer to the links below for generic approach to monitoring application metrics and logs in Kubernetes environment

Refer to Nginx monitoring on instances for sfAgent configurations

Configuration​

Configure Nginx server to enable monitoring​

  1. Configure format of access logs so that it can be parsed by SnappyFlow
  2. Enable Nginx status module to monitor Nginx server health

These configurations can be achieved with the below ConfigMap:

apiVersion: v1 
kind: ConfigMap 
metadata: 
  name: nginx-configmap 
  labels: 
    snappyflow/appname: <app_name> 
    snappyflow/projectname: <project_name> 
data: 
  nginx.conf: | 
    worker_processes  5; 
    events { 
        worker_connections  4096; 
    } 
    http { 
        default_type application/octet-stream; 
        log_format upstream_time  '$remote_addr:$remote_port $remote_user [$time_local] ' 
                       '"$request" $status $body_bytes_sent ' 
                       '"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" "$http_referer" ' 
                       'rt=$request_time uct=$upstream_connect_time uht=$upstream_header_time urt=$upstream_response_time'; 
        server { 
            listen          80; 
            error_log /var/log/nginx/error1.log; 
            access_log /var/log/nginx/access1.log upstream_time; 
            location /nginx_status { 
                stub_status; 
            } 
        } 
    }

sfKubeAgent​

sfKubeAgent is deployed as sidecar container in the NGINX pod and can be used to monitor Nginx server health as well as Access Logs & Error Logs. Below YAML files provide example for setting up NGINX monitoring with sfKubeAgent.

sfKubeAgent ConfigMap (sfAgent-config.yaml)

apiVersion: v1 
kind: ConfigMap 
metadata: 
  name: sfagent-configmap 
  labels: 
    snappyflow/appname: <app_name> 
    snappyflow/projectname: <project_name> 
data: 
    config.yaml: |+ 
      --- 
      key: "<profile_key>" 
      metrics: 
        plugins: 
        - name: kube-sfagent-nginx 
          enabled: true 
          interval: 300 
          config: 
            location: nginx_status 
            port: 80 
            secure: false 
      logging: 
        plugins: 
        - name: nginx-access 
          enabled: true 
          config: 
            log_path: "/var/log/nginx/access1.log" 
        - name: nginx-error 
          enabled: true 
          config: 
            log_path: "/var/log/nginx/error1.log"

Pod description YAML running NGINX and sfKubeAgent 

apiVersion: v1 
metadata: 
 name: my-first-pod 
 labels: 
  snappyflow/appname: <app_name> 
  snappyflow/projectname: <project_name> 
spec: 
 containers: 
 - name: nginx-container 
   image: nginx:latest 
   imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent 
   ports: 
   - name: http 
     containerPort: 80 
     protocol: TCP 
   volumeMounts: 
   - name: varlog 
     mountPath: /var/log/nginx 
   - name: nginx-config 
     mountPath: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf 
     subPath: nginx.conf 
   # Snappyflow's sfkubeagent container 
 - name: nginx-sfagent 
   image: snappyflowml/sfagent:latest 
   imagePullPolicy: Always 
   command: 
     - /app/sfagent 
     - -enable-console-log 
   env: 
     - name: APP_NAME 
       value: <app_name> 
     - name: PROJECT_NAME 
       value: <project_name> 
   volumeMounts: 
     - name: nginx-sfagent-config 
       mountPath: /opt/sfagent/config.yaml 
       subPath: config.yaml 
     - name: varlog 
       mountPath: /var/log/nginx 
 volumes: 
 - name: nginx-sfagent-config 
   configMap: 
     name: sfagent-configmap 
 - name: nginx-config 
   configMap: 
     name: nginx-configmap 
 - name: varlog 
   emptyDir: {}

Centralized logging​

Log monitoring (both access and error logs) can be implemented through Centralized Logging approach as well which does not require sfKubeAgent. Centralized logging however requires running a busybox container as a sidecar container to stream logs to container’s stdout.

Add the label - snappyflow/component: nginx, which signals to apply Nginx to container’s stdout.

Viewing data and dashboards​

  • Data generated by plugin can be viewed in browse data page inside the respective application under plugin=jvm and documentType=jvm
  • Dashboard for this data can be instantiated by Importing dashboard template JVM to the application dashboard.