1. Metrics and Monitoring in the cloud
David Lutz
@dlutzy

2. The objective of metrics is to
make pretty graphs…

3. The objective of metrics is to
make pretty graphs...
in order to understand the performance
and capacity
of your systems and how they vary over time.

4. The objective of monitoring is to…
make the Operations-guy-on-call’s life hell.

5. The objective of monitoring is to
check that the system is working as expected
and take action if some component isn't.

6. “Those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it” - George Santayana
So here’s a case study…

7. A long time ago in a data centre far,
far away….

9. Complete system includes humans to run it!
Human Factors Engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_factors
2 x Linux Engineers
1 x Network Engineer
1 x Do Anything Guy
1 x Developer

10. No Monitoring or Metrics.
Black Box. Completely blind.

11. MRTG
Net Saint

13. Large Development team
External Consultants
ITIL Process people
5 x Linux Engineers
1 x Network Engineer
2 x Database Administrators
and
Part of an Infrastructure team that included
Virtualization specialists
Storage specialists
Hardware specialists

14. WTF happened? It grew…
Virtualization / Cloud
Cloud / Virtualization

15. Approximately 400 servers
Still using Nagios and Cacti
15 minutes to add server manually.
1 hour or more to add a new check.

16. And Ganglia.
And External SAAS tools:
New Relic. Gomez. Omniture.

17. #monitoringsucks

18. Getting it right

19. Getting it wrong

20. What’s different about the cloud?
• Servers come and go
• Sometimes automatically with auto-scaling
• Topologies and Architectures change rapidly
• Driven from Configuration Management
Systems

21. The problems with Nagios
• Clunky UI.
• Monolithic design.
• Hard to scale.
• Hard to add nodes
dynamically.

22. #doingitright

23. #doingitwrong

24. Sensu… Is it the Nagios killer?

25. sensu-server
sensu-client
sensu-api
sensu-dashboard

26. • JSON everywhere
• Can re-use Nagios checks
• Messaging oriented architecture
• Designed to be driven from
Config Management tools
• Supports dynamic topologies

27. ?

28. ?

29. David Lutz
99designs
@dlutzy
meetup.com/Infrastructure-Coders/