LAB GCP: Monitoring a Compute Engine by using Ops Agent

Overview

Objectives

• Create a Compute Engine VM instance.
• Install an Apache Web Server.
• Install and configure the Ops Agent for the Apache Web Server.
• Generate traffic and view metrics on the predefined Apache dashboard.
• Create an alerting policy.

Create a Compute Engine VM instance

1. In Google Cloud console, go to Compute and then select Compute Engine.
2. To create a VM instance, click Create instance.
3. Fill in the fields for your instance as follows:

• In the Name field, enter quickstart-vm
• In the Machine type field, select e2-small.
• Ensure the Boot disk is configured for Debian GNU/Linux.
• In the Firewall field, select both Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic.

4. Click Create. When your VM is ready, it appears in the list of instances in the Instances tab.

Install an Apache Web Server

3. To install an Apache2 HTTP Server, run the following command:

4. Open your browser and connect to your Apache2 HTTP server by using the URL http://EXTERNAL_IP, where EXTERNAL_IP is the external IP address of your VM. You can find this address in the External IP column of your VM instance.

Install and configure the Ops Agent

1. To open a terminal to your VM instance, in the Connect column, click SSH.
2. To install the Ops Agent, run the following command:

curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh
sudo bash add-google-cloud-ops-agent-repo.sh --also-install

3. Copy the following command, then paste it into the terminal:

# Configures Ops Agent to collect telemetry from the app and restart Ops Agent.
set -e
# Create a back up of the existing file so existing configurations are not lost.
sudo cp /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml.bak
# Configure the Ops Agent.
sudo tee /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml > /dev/null << EOF
metrics:
receivers:
apache:
type: apache
service:
pipelines:
apache:
receivers:
- apache
logging:
receivers:
apache_access:
type: apache_access
apache_error:
type: apache_error
service:
pipelines:
apache:
receivers:
- apache_access
- apache_error
EOF
sudo service google-cloud-ops-agent restart
sleep 60

Generate traffic and view metrics

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to Compute Engine.
2. In the Connect column, click SSH to open a terminal to your VM instance.
3. To generate traffic on your Apache Web Server, run the following command:

timeout 120 bash -c -- 'while true; do curl localhost; sleep $((RANDOM % 4)) ; done'

1. In the Google Cloud console, search for Monitoring in the top search bar and navigate to the Monitoring service.
2. In the navigation pane, select Dashboards.
3. In All Dashboards, select the Apache GCE Overview dashboard. The dashboard opens.

Create an alerting policy

1. To set up an email notification channel, do the following:

• In the Google Cloud console > Monitoring select Alerting and then click Edit notification channels.
• In the Email section, click Add new and enter your desired Email Address.
• Name the Email Channel: An email address you have access to

2. In the Google Cloud console > Monitoring select Alerting and then click Create policy.
3. Select the time series to be monitored:

• Click Select a metric and enter VM instance into the filter bar.
• In the Active metric categories list, select Apache.
• In the Active metrics list, select workload/apache.traffic.

4. In the Transform data section, select the following values:

• Rolling window: 1 min
• Rolling window function: rate

5. In the Configure alert trigger section, select the following values and click Next:

• Alert trigger: Any time series violations
• Threshold position: Above threshold
• Threshold value: 4000

6. In the Configure notifications and finalize alert section, select the following values:

• Notification channels: An email address you have access to
• Incident autoclose duration: 30 min
• Name the alert policy: Apache traffic above threshold

7. Click Create policy. Your alerting policy is now active.

Test the alerting policy

1. Navigate to Cloud Console > Compute Engine.
2. In the Connect column, click SSH to open a terminal to your VM instance.
3. In the terminal, enter the following command: