The monitoring infrastructure consists of several components, wrapped in docker containers:

metrics-server - collects and stores metrics
tessera - dashboard server (project page), connecting to graphite server inside metrics-server
riemann-dash - dashboard server (project page), connecting to riemann inside metrics-server

You can but don't have to start all dashboards, you can pick the one you prefer.

Metrics server

To start the container, run:

sudo docker run -d \
	-p 5556:5556 \
	-p 25826:25826/udp \
	-p 80:80 \
	-it scylladb/scylla-monitoring:metrics-server

The following ports are exposed:

port	service
5556/tcp	riemann
25826/udp	collectd
80/tcp	graphite web GUI

You can enable Scylla to write metrics to it using command line arguments like this:

scylla --collectd=1 --collectd-address=127.0.0.1:25826

The data flow between components is as follows:

   -> collectd -> riemann -> graphite

riemann is configured to aggregate Seastar and Scylla metrics. The naming convention for aggregated metrics is:

for sharded metrics: {plugin}-{instance}/{type}-{name} -> {plugin}/{type}-{name}
for aggregating metrics from all hosts: {plugin}/{type}-{name} -> {plugin}/{type}-total_{name}

Not all metrics are being aggregated yet. For the full list see metrics-server/riemann.config.

Examples of aggregated metrics:

reactor/gauge-load - average load for all shards
transport/total_requests-requests_served - requests_served summed up from all shards

Metrics are stored by graphite inside carbon and retained for 1 hour with 1 second precision.

Tessera dashboard

To start it, run:

sudo docker run -d \
    -p 8081:80 \
    -e GRAPHITE_URL=http://127.0.0.1:80 \
    -it scylladb/scylla-monitoring:tessera

The command above, when setting GRAPHITE_URL, assumes that the graphite web server from metrics-server is available on local port 80. Note that the host name must be reachable from your browser, not just the machine on which you run tessera.

After staring the container, you can navigate to http://localhost:8081/ in your browser.

The image is equipped with a pre-configured dashboard for monitoring Scylla: http://localhost:8081/dashboards/12/scylla.

For more info on using tessera check here.

Riemann dashboard

To start it, run:

sudo docker run -d -p 4567:4567 -it scylladb/scylla-monitoring:riemann-dash

Then navigate to http://localhost:4567/ in your browser. You will find several pre-configured dashboards there.

Note that the GUI by default tries to connect to riemann (from metrics-server) on 127.0.0.1:5556. This address must be reachable from your browser.

For more information on riemann-dashboard check here.

Which dashboard to choose

Each dashboard has some strong and weak points. Here are some hints on which one fits your purpose best.

Tessera connects to graphite to get data, so it's able to show historical data. Riemann dashboard works on current event stream, so it will show only data it received since the dashboard was switched on.

Tessera updates graphs every minute by default. The period can be lowered to 30 seconds, but not less. Riemann dashboard updates graphs every second, so it's more convenient for ad-hoc monitoring in real-time.

Tessera dashboards are interactive, you can hover over the graph and get precise metric values for given time point. You can't do that in riemann-dash.

Tessera graphs are adjusting units on the scale according to the range shown (eg. 1G instead of 1000000000), riemann-dash doesn't do that.

Starting all images at once

To start all containers locally, just run ./start-all.sh.

Building images

To build docker images run: