Monitoring CPU Metrics

This article will help you get the System_core plugin for sd-agent configured and returning metrics

Installing the system_core plugin package

Install the system_core plugin on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install sd-agent-system-core

Install the system_core plugin on RHEL/CentOS:

sudo yum install sd-agent-system-core

Read more about agent plugins.

Configuring the agent to collect CPU Core metrics

1. Configure /etc/sd-agent/conf.d/system_core.yaml

This check does not have any configuration options. However one item in a single instance must be present in the configuration file for the check to run. The content of the item doe not matter.

init_config:

instances:
  - foo: bar

2. Restart the agent

sudo /etc/init.d/sd-agent restart

or

sudo systemctl restart sd-agent

Verifying the configuration
Execute info to verify the configuration with the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/sd-agent info 

or

/usr/share/python/sd-agent/agent.py info

If the agent has been configured correctly you'll see an output such as:

system_core
-----
  - instance #0 [OK]
  - Collected * metrics

You can also view the metrics returned with the following command:

sudo -u sd-agent /usr/share/python/sd-agent/agent.py check system_core

Configuring graphs

Click the name of your server from the Devices list in your Server Density account then go to the Metrics tab. Click the + Graph button on the right then choose the system_core metrics to display the graphs. The metrics will also be available to select when building dashboard graphs.

Monitored metrics

Metric	Values
system.core.count The number of CPU cores on the host	core / None Type: float
system.core.idle A given core's idle CPU time	None / None Type: float
system.core.system A given core's system CPU time	None / None Type: float
system.core.user A given core's user-space CPU time	None / None Type: float