Monitoring FluentD

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

Installing the fluentd plugin package

Install the fluentd plugin on Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install sd-agent-fluentd

Install the fluentd plugin on RHEL/CentOS:

sudo yum install sd-agent-fluentd

Read more about agent plugins.

Configuring the agent to monitor Fluentd

1. Add a monitor_agent source to fluentd configuration

  @type monitor_agent
  bind 0.0.0.0
  port 24220

2. Configure /etc/sd-agent/conf.d/fluentd.yaml

init_config:

instances:
 # Every instance requires a `monitor_agent_url`
 # Optional, set `plugin_ids` to monitor specific plugins
 - monitor_agent_url: http://example.com:24220/api/plugins.json
 plugin_ids:
     - plg1
     - plg2

1. 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:

fluentd
-----
  - 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 fluentd

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 fluentd metrics to display the graphs. The metrics will also be available to select when building dashboard graphs.

Monitored metrics

Metric	Values
fluentd.buffer_queue_length The length of the buffer queue for this plugin.	buffer / None Type: float
fluentd.buffer_total_queued_size The size of the buffer queue for this plugin.	byte / None Type: float
fluentd.retry_count The number of retries for this plugin.	time / None Type: float