Skip to main content

Circonus Cloud Agent

The Circonus Cloud Agent can be used to monitor AWS, GCP, and Azure. Instructions for each platform are outlined below.

AWS CloudWatch

Supported AWS Services

  • ApplicationELB
  • CloudFront
  • DynamoDB
  • DX
  • EBS
  • EC2
  • EC2AutoScaling
  • EC2Spot
  • ECS
  • EFS
  • ElastiCache
  • ElasticBeanstalk
  • ElasticInterface
  • ElasticMapReduce
  • ElasticTranscoder
  • ELB
  • ES
  • KMS
  • Lambda
  • NATGateway
  • NetworkELB
  • RDS
  • Route53
  • Route53Resolver
  • S3
  • SNS
  • SQS
  • TransitGateway

Installation

  1. Create a directory for the install. Suggested: mkdir -p /opt/circonus/cloud-agent
  2. Download the latest release
  3. Unpack the release in the directory created in first step
  4. In this directory, create a config folder. Suggested: mkdir /opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/aws.d
  5. Auto-create a service specific configuration template in the desired format (yaml, toml, or json). Suggested: sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd --enable-aws --aws-example-conf=yaml > /opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/aws.d/aws-config.yaml
    • Note, the id in the template is defaulted to the filename. This should be changed to a name that will be unique across all cloud-agents used in Circonus
    • Add the Circonus api key
    • Add the AWS credentials
    • Update settings for the desired AWS services to be monitored
  6. Setup as a system service or run in foreground ensuring that --enable-aws is specified

Options

$  sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd -h
The Circonus Cloud Agent collects metrics from cloud infrastructures and fowards them to Circonus.

Usage:
circonus-cloud-agent [flags]

Flags:
--aws-conf-dir string AWS configuration directory (default "/opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/aws.d")
--aws-example-conf string Show AWS config (json|toml|yaml) and exit
-c, --config string config file (default: circonus-cloud-agent.yaml|.json|.toml)
-d, --debug [ENV: CCA_DEBUG] Enable debug messages
--enable-aws Enable AWS metric collection client
-h, --help help for circonus-cloud-agent
--log-level string [ENV: CCA_LOG_LEVEL] Log level [(panic|fatal|error|warn|info|debug|disabled)] (default "info")
--log-pretty [ENV: CCA_LOG_PRETTY] Output formatted/colored log lines [ignored on windows]
-V, --version Show version and exit

Configuration

AWS

NOTE: the agent can run in a shared mode with multiple sets of credentials or a local mode where the credentials are kept in an external location and roles are used to identify which credentials to use.

  1. Create an IAM group e.g. circonus-cloud-agent (if one does not already exist) with the following permissions:
    1. Required: CloudWatchReadOnlyAccess - to retrieve metrics
    2. Optional: AmazonEC2ReadOnlyAccess - to get list of instances, if EC2 metrics are desired
    3. Optional: AmazonElastiCacheReadOnlyAccess - to get list of cache clusters, if ElastiCache metrics are desired
  2. Create an IAM user e.g. circonus-cloud-agent (ensure it is a member of the aforementioned group), make a note of the Access Key Credentials (access key id and secret access key or role and save credentials file locally where circonus-cloud-agent will run, ensure it is accessible by whatever user the circonus-cloud-agent is configured to run as.)

Circonus

  1. Use Circonus UI to create or identify an API Token to use
  2. Add the key to the config file under the circonus section

AWS Settings

For per-configuration file credentials (shared):

  • access_key_id
  • secret_access_key

or, for credentials in a local file:

  • role
  • credentials_file

Example Configuration

Minimum configuration (for EC2 service):

Credentials in configuration file:

---

id: ...
aws:
access_key_id: ...
secret_access_key: ...
circonus:
key: ...
period: basic
regions:
- name: us-east-1
services:
- namespace: aws/EC2
disabled: false

Shared credentials using roles:

---

id: ...
aws:
role: ...
credentials_file: ...
circonus:
key: ...
period: basic
regions:
- name: us-east-1
services:
- namespace: aws/EC2
disabled: false

GCP

Installation

  1. Create a directory for the install. Suggested: mkdir -p /opt/circonus/cloud-agent
  2. Download the latest release
  3. Unpack the release in the directory created in first step
  4. In this directory, create a config folder. Suggested: mkdir /opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/gcp.d
  5. Auto-create a service specific configuration template in the desired format (yaml, toml, or json). Suggested: sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd --enable-gcp --gcp-example-conf=yaml > etc/gcp.d/gcp-config.yaml
    • Note, the id in the template is defaulted to the filename. This should be changed to a name that will be unique across all cloud-agents used in Circonus
    • Follow configuration instructions to finish config settings.
  6. Setup as a system service or run in foreground ensuring that --enable-gcp is specified

Options

$  sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd -h
The Circonus Cloud Agent collects metrics from cloud infrastructures and fowards them to Circonus.

Usage:
circonus-cloud-agent [flags]

Flags:
--gcp-conf-dir string GCP configuration directory (default "/opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/gcp.d")
--gcp-example-conf string Show GCP config (json|toml|yaml) and exit
-c, --config string config file (default: circonus-cloud-agent.yaml|.json|.toml)
-d, --debug [ENV: CCA_DEBUG] Enable debug messages
--enable-gcp Enable GCP metric collection client
-h, --help help for circonus-cloud-agent
--log-level string [ENV: CCA_LOG_LEVEL] Log level [(panic|fatal|error|warn|info|debug|disabled)] (default "info")
--log-pretty [ENV: CCA_LOG_PRETTY] Output formatted/colored log lines [ignored on windows]
-V, --version Show version and exit

Configuration

Google

  1. Find project to monitor in GCP UI
  2. Add service account to project
    • Set service account name, e.g. 'circonus-cloud-agent'
    • Add description
    • Click create
    • Add roles: project>viewer, monitoring>monitoring viewer, compute engine>compute viewer
    • Create key, type JSON (note where the key is downloaded)
      • Place the JSON file downloaded in GCP setup somewhere and ensure that the user running circonus-cloud-agentd will be able to read the file (e.g. nobody on linux when run as a systemd service).
      • Ensure that the configuration file setting gcp.credentials_file is set to the full filespec of where the service account JSON file was placed.
  3. The following APIs must be enabled for the project
    • Cloud Resource Manager API - role project>viewer is used to obtain the project meta data: ensure it is an active project, project name is used to create check bundle, project labels are added as a base set of stream tags along with project id
    • Stackdriver Monitoring API - role monitoring>monitoring viewer is used to retrieve available metrics and metric data
    • Compute Engine API - role compute engine>compute viewer is used to obtain a list of instances, obtain state/status of an instance, name, labels (for stream tags), etc.
  4. Add these to the gcp section of the configuration file.

Circonus

  1. Use Circonus UI to create or identify an API Token to use
  2. Add the key to the config file under the circonus section

Example Configuration

Minimum configuration:

---
id: ...
gcp:
credentials_file: ...
circonus:
key: ...

Azure

Installation

  1. Create a directory for the install. Suggested:: mkdir -p /opt/circonus/cloud-agent
  2. Download the latest release
  3. Unpack the release in the directory created in first step
  4. In this directory, create a config folder. Suggested: mkdir /opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/azure.d
  5. Auto-create a service specific configuration template in the desired format (yaml, toml, or json). Suggested: sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd --enable-azure --azure-example-conf=yaml > etc/azure.d/azure-config.yaml.
    • Note, the id in the template is defaulted to the filename. This should be changed to a name that will be unique across all cloud-agents used in Circonus
    • Follow configuration instructions to finish config settings
  6. Setup as a system service or run in foreground ensuring that --enable-azure is specified

Options

$  sbin/circonus-cloud-agentd -h
The Circonus Cloud Agent collects metrics from cloud infrastructures and fowards them to Circonus.

Usage:
circonus-cloud-agent [flags]

Flags:
--azure-conf-dir string Azure configuration directory (default "/opt/circonus/cloud-agent/etc/azure.d")
--azure-example-conf string Show Azure config (json|toml|yaml) and exit
-c, --config string config file (default: circonus-cloud-agent.yaml|.json|.toml)
-d, --debug [ENV: CCA_DEBUG] Enable debug messages
--enable-azure Enable Azure metric collection client
-h, --help help for circonus-cloud-agent
--log-level string [ENV: CCA_LOG_LEVEL] Log level [(panic|fatal|error|warn|info|debug|disabled)] (default "info")
--log-pretty [ENV: CCA_LOG_PRETTY] Output formatted/colored log lines [ignored on windows]
-V, --version Show version and exit

Configuration

Setting Up Application in Azure

  1. Login to the Azure portal
  2. Create application
    1. Name the application (e.g. circonus-cloud-agent)
    2. Add reader role to subscription for the application
  3. Collect application configuration information
    1. Directory ID
    2. Application ID
    3. Application secret
    4. Subscription ID
  4. Add these to the azure section of the config file.

Circonus

  1. Use Circonus UI to create or identify an API Token to use
  2. Add the key to the config file under the circonus section

Azure Configuration File Settings

  • directory_id
  • application_id
  • application_secret
  • subscription_id
  • resource_filter - Use the resourceFilter setting to limit the resources from which metrics are collected. Otherwise, ALL metrics from ALL resources will be collected. The suggested method would be to add a tag to each resource from which to collect metrics and use a filter expression such as tagname eq 'circonus' and tagValue eq 'enabled'
  • cloud_name - default AzurePublicCloud
  • user_agent - default circonus-cloud-agent
  • interval - collection interval in minutes [>=default], default 5

Example Configuration

Minimum configuration:

---
id: ...
azure:
directory_id: ...
application_id: ...
application_secret: ...
subscription_id: ...
circonus:
key: ...