What is Alerta?

The alerta monitoring system is a tool used to consolidate and de-duplicate alerts from multiple sources for quick ‘at-a-glance’ visualisation. With just one system you can monitor alerts from many other monitoring tools on a single screen.

How to use this image

To use this image run a mongo container first:

$ docker run --name alerta-db -d mongo

Then link to the mongo container when running the alerta-web container:

$ export MONGO_URI=mongodb://db:27017/monitoring
$ docker run --name alerta-web -e MONGO_URI=$MONGO_URI --link alerta-db:db \
-d -p <port>:80 alerta/alerta-web

The API endpoint is at:

http://<docker>:<port>/api

Browse to the alerta console at:

http://<docker>:<port>/

Environment Variables

The following environment variables are supported for configuring the alerta-web container:

DEBUG - debug mode. Set to True for increased logging.

BASE_URL - used to fix relative links. (default: /api)

SECRET_KEY - a unique, randomly generated sequence of ASCII characters.

MONGO_URI - MongoDB connection URI string.

AUTH_REQUIRED - require users to authenticate when using web UI or alerta CLI.

ADMIN_USERS - list of logins that should be granted "admin" role.

ADMIN_KEY - set an "admin" API key for use by the alerta CLI

CUSTOMER_VIEWS - enable alert views partitioned by customer. (default:False)

OAUTH2_CLIENT_ID - client ID required by OAuth2 provider

OAUTH2_CLIENT_SECRET - client secret required by OAuth2 provider

ALLOWED_EMAIL_DOMAINS - list of authorised email domains when using Google

GITHUB_URL - GitHub Enteprise URL for privately run GitHub server

ALLOWED_GITHUB_ORGS - list of authorised GitHub organisations when using GitHub

GITLAB_URL - GitLab website URL for public or privately run GitLab server

ALLOWED_GITLAB_GROUPS - list of authorised GitLab groups when using GitLab

CORS_ORIGINS - list of URL origins that can access the API

MAIL_FROM - valid email address from which verification emails are sent

SMTP_PASSWORD - password for MAIL_FROM email account

PLUGINS - list of plugins to enable.

INSTALL_PLUGINS - list of plugins to automatically install.

Configuration Files

To set configuration settings not supported by environment variable use configuration files instead. For example:

$ docker run -v $PWD/config/alertad.conf:/etc/alertad.conf \
  -v $PWD/config/config.js:/app/config.js \
  -p 80 alerta/alerta-web

Installing Plugins

Plugins listed in the PLUGINS environment variable or in the PLUGINS server configuration file setting will be installed automatically at container start time.

Alternatively, install all wanted plugins as an additional image layer.

Authentication

To make it easy to get going with Alerta on docker quickly, the default image will use Basic Auth for user logins and login will be optional.

To allow users to login using Google OAuth, go to the Google Developer Console and create a new client ID for a web application. Then set the CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET environment variables on the command line as follows:

$ export CLIENT_ID=379647311730-6tfdcopl5fodke08el52nnoj3x8mpl3.apps.googleusercontent.com
$ export CLIENT_SECRET=UpJxs02c_bx9GlI3X8MPL3-p

Now pass in the defined environment variables to the docker run command:

$ docker run --name alerta-web  -e PROVIDER=google -e CLIENT_ID=$CLIENT_ID \
-e CLIENT_SECRET=$CLIENT_SECRET -d -p <port>:80 alerta/alerta-web

This will allow users to login but will only make it optional. To enforce users to login you must also set the AUTH_REQUIRED environment variable to True when starting the docker image:

$ docker run --name alerta-web -e AUTH_REQUIRED=True -e ...

To restrict logins to a certain email domain set the ALLOWED_EMAIL_DOMAIN environment variable as follows:

$ docker run --name alerta-web -e ALLOWED_EMAIL_DOMAIN=example.com ...

GitHub and GitLab can also be used as the OAuth2 providers by setting the PROVIDER environment variable to github and gitlab respectively. For more information on using GitHub, GitHub Enterprise or GitLab as th OAuth2 provider see http://docs.alerta.io

Docker Compose

Use docker-compose to create and start Alerta and MongoDB with one command:

$ docker-compose up

Example Docker Compose File

version: '2.1'
services:
  alerta-web:
    image: alerta/alerta-web
    ports:
      - "8181:80"
    depends_on:
      - alerta-db
    environment:
      - MONGO_URI=mongodb://alerta-db:27017/monitoring
    restart: always
  alerta-db:
    image: mongo
    volumes:
      - ./mongodb:/data/db
    restart: always

Command-line Tool

A command-line tool for alerta is available. To install it run:

$ pip install alerta

Configuration file $HOME/.alerta.conf:

[DEFAULT]
endpoint = http://<docker>:<port>/api

If authentication is enabled (ie. AUTH_REQUIRED is True), then create a new API key in the Alerta console and add the key to the configuration file. For example:

[DEFAULT]
endpoint = ...
key = 4nHAAslsGjLQ9P0QxmAlKIapLTSDfEfMDSy8BT+0

cruscio/docker-alerta