/glowroot-collector

Glowroot Server

This project contains a Docker Compose file and friends to, using public images, create a standalone Glowroot collector server.

While Glowroot is not a full featured APM tool it is:

  • Simple to employ
  • Open source
  • Can provide a great deal of useful information within minutes

Starting This Server

To start up the server (for sake of the example gserver), on gserver, a machine with docker-compose and access to docker hub just:

export PASSWORD=admin
docker-compose -f docker-compose.yml up

Exposed Ports

The server setup will expose:

  • 4000 For the Glowroot UI
  • 8181 For the collector endpoint

If you need to change these tinker with the docker-compose.yml left hand ports listed under the glowroot service.

Accessing The Server

Once docker has brought up the server (glowroot and it's dependent Cassandra) you should be able to target http://gserver:4000 to get the the Growroot collector UI.

Collecting Data from an App

This collector server, as it name implies, needs data to be pushed into it from applications. To push data to gserver's collector you need to do the following:

  • Download the glowroot distribution and unpack it in a location accessible to the running app, for example /opt/glowroot.

  • You should now have /opt/glowroot/ containing the distribution, is /opt/glowroot/glowroot.jar present?

  • Ensure the application you will run can write to /opt/glowroot.

  • Create the file /opt/glowroot/glowroot.properties, the only required content is:

collector.address=http://gserver:8181
  • Now, when running your application add the following JVM arguments:
-javaagent:/opt/glowroot/glowroot.jar -Dglowroot.agent.id=some_app_identifying_name
  • Run the app. The app should detect the agent, find the properties, create some additional files in /opt/glowroot and begin pushing data to the collector.