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Amazon Redshift

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Amazon Redshift is a managed scalable database warehouse where Nobl9 users can store their metrics information. Nobl9 allows retrieving metrics data from Redshift, enabling customers to use standard SQL statements that require two specific return values—a value and a timestamp.

Amazon Redshift parameters and supported features in Nobl9
General support:
Release channel: Stable, Beta
Connection method: Agent, Direct
Replay and SLI Analyzer: Not supported
Event logs: Supported
Query checker: Not supported
Query parameters retrieval: Not supported
Timestamp cache persistence: Supported
Query parameters:
Query interval: 1 min
Query delay: 30 sec
Jitter: 15 sec
Timeout: 30 sec
Agent details and minimum required versions for supported features:
Plugin name: n9redshift
Query delay environment variable: REDSHIFT_QUERY_DELAY
Timestamp cache persistence: 0.65.0
Additional notes:
AWS Secrets Manager and Cross-Account IAM roles for authentication
No support for SQL connections and temporary credentials

Creating SLOs with Amazon Redshift​

Nobl9 Web​

Follow the instructions below to create your SLOs with Amazon Redshift in the UI:

  1. Navigate to Service Level Objectives.

  2. Click .
  3. Select a Service.
    It will be the location for your SLO in Nobl9.
  4. Select your Amazon Redshift data source.

  5. Enter a Region (mandatory).
    Use one of the regional endpoints that are listed here.

  6. Enter a Cluster ID (mandatory).
    It is an identifier of your Amazon Redshift cluster that is a part of your Redshift secret. For more details on Redshift, secrets go here. For example redshift-cluster-1.

  7. Enter a Database name (mandatory).
    It is the name of your Amazon Redshift database. For example dev.

  8. Select the Metric type:
    • Threshold metric: a single time series is evaluated against a threshold.
    • Ratio metric: two-time series for comparison for good events and total events.
      For ratio metrics, select the Data count method: incremental or non-incremental.

  9. Enter a Query or Good query and Total query:

    1. Query example for the Threshold metric (Raw metric):
      Query: SELECT value as n9_value, timestamp as n9_time FROM httpstatuscodes WHERE timestamp BETWEEN :n9date_from AND :n9date_to

    2. Query example for the Ratio metric (count metric):
      Good query:SELECT value as n9value, timestamp as n9date FROM httpstatuscodes WHERE timestamp BETWEEN :n9date_from AND :n9date_to
      Total query: SELECT value as n9value, timestamp as n9date FROM sinusoid WHERE timestamp BETWEEN :n9date_from AND :n9date_to

    SLI values for good and total
    When choosing the query for the ratio SLI (countMetrics), keep in mind that the values ​​resulting from that query for both good and total:
    • Must be positive.
    • While we recommend using integers, fractions are also acceptable.
      • If using fractions, we recommend them to be larger than 1e-4 = 0.0001.
    • Shouldn't be larger than 1e+20.
  1. Define the Time window for your SLO:
  2. Configure the Error budget calculation method and Objectives:
    • Occurrences method counts good attempts against the count of total attempts.
    • Time Slices method measures how many good minutes were achieved (when a system operates within defined boundaries) during a time window.
    • You can define up to 12 objectives for an SLO.

      • Similar threshold values for objectives
      To use similar threshold values for different objectives in your SLO, we recommend differentiating them by setting varying decimal points for each objective.
      For example, if you want to use threshold value 1 for two objectives, set it to 1.0000001 for the first objective and to 1.0000002 for the second one.
      Learn more about threshold value uniqueness.
  3. Add the Display name, Name, and other settings for your SLO:
    • Name identifies your SLO in Nobl9. After you save the SLO, its name becomes read-only.
      Use only lowercase letters, numbers, and dashes.
    • Create composite SLO: with this option selected, you create a composite SLO 1.0. Composite SLOs 1.0 are deprecated. They're fully operable; however, we encourage you to create new composite SLOs 2.0.
      You can create composite SLOs 2.0 with sloctl using the provided template. Alternatively, you can create a composite SLO 2.0 with Nobl9 Terraform provider.
    • Set Notifications on data. With it, Nobl9 will notify you in the cases when SLO won't be reporting data for more than 15 minutes.
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      Up to 20 items of each type per SLO is allowed.
  4. Click CREATE SLO.

    5. SLO configuration use case
    Check the SLO configuration use case for a real-life SLO example.

sloctl​

Sample Amazon Redshift threshold SLO
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: SLO
metadata:
  name: api-server-slo
  displayName: API Server SLO
  project: default
  labels:
    area:
      - latency
      - slow-check
    env:
      - prod
      - dev
    region:
      - us
      - eu
    team:
      - green
      - sales
  annotations:
    area: latency
    env: prod
    region: us
    team: sales
spec:
  description: Example Redshift SLO
  indicator:
    metricSource:
      name: redshift
      project: default
      kind: Agent
  budgetingMethod: Occurrences
  objectives:
    - displayName: Good response (200)
      value: 200
      name: ok
      target: 0.95
      rawMetric:
        query:
          redshift:
            region: eu-central-1
            clusterId: prod-cluster
            databaseName: db
            query: >-
              SELECT value as n9value, timestamp as n9date FROM sinusoid WHERE
              timestamp BETWEEN :n9date_from AND :n9date_to
      op: lte
      primary: true
  service: api-server
  timeWindows:
    - unit: Month
      count: 1
      isRolling: false
      calendar:
        startTime: 2022-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
        timeZone: UTC
  alertPolicies:
    - fast-burn-5x-for-last-10m
  attachments:
    - url: https://docs.nobl9.com
      displayName: Nobl9 Documentation
  anomalyConfig:
    noData:
      alertMethods:
        - name: slack-notification
          project: default

The Amazon Redshift SLO requires the following fields:

n9date and n9value:

Amazon Redshift SQL query needs to return two values - n9date and n9value:

  • n9date is the timestamp for the data.

  • n9value is a float containing the actual metric.

    Note that Amazon RedShift accepts these values in the following format:

    • :n9date_from

    • :n9date_to

    This allows users to enter virtually any query.

Querying the Amazon Redshift server​

To call the AWS Redshift Data API, Nobl9 runs the aws redshift-data execute-statement command that is executed once per minute. Nobl9 queries for data from the previous minute.

Amazon Redshift API rate limits​

The following rate limits apply to the Amazon Redshift API:

  • The maximum query result size is 100 MB. If a call returns more than 100 MB of response data, the call is ended.

  • The maximum retention time for query results is 24 hours.

  • The maximum query statement size is 100 KB.

  • The Data API is available to query single-node and multiple-node clusters of the following node types:

    • dc2.large
    • dc2.8xlarge
    • ds2.xlarge
    • ds2.8xlarge
    • ra3.xlplus
    • ra3.4xlarge
    • ra3.16xlarge

  • The cluster must be in a virtual private cloud (VPC) based on the Amazon VPC service.

For a more in-depth look, consult additional resources:
Data APIRedshift docsRegional EndpointsRedshift docsAgent metricsAgentCreating SLOs via TerraformTerraformCreating agents via TerraformTerraform
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