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Graphite

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Graphite is a monitoring tool used to track the performance of websites, applications, business services, and networked servers.

Graphite parameters and supported features in Nobl9
General support:
Release channel: Stable, Beta
Connection method: Agent
Replay and SLI Analyzer: Historical data limit 30 days
Event logs: Not supported
Query checker: Not supported
Query parameters retrieval: Not supported
Timestamp cache persistence: Not supported
Query parameters:
Query interval: 1 min
Query delay: 1 min
Jitter: 15 sec
Timeout: 30 sec
Agent details and minimum required versions for supported features:
Plugin name: n9graphite
Query delay environment variable: GRAPHITE_QUERY_DELAY
Replay and SLI Analyzer: 0.65.0

Creating SLOs with Graphite​

Nobl9 Web​

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

  1. Navigate to Service Level Objectives.

  2. Click .

  3. In step 2, select Graphite as the Data Source for your SLO, then specify the Metric. You can choose either a Threshold Metric, where a single time series is evaluated against a threshold, or a Ratio Metric, which allows you to enter two time series to compare (for example, a count of good requests and total requests).

    1. Choose the Data Count Method for your ratio metric:
    • Non-incremental: counts incoming metric values one-by-one. So the resulting SLO graph is pike-shaped.
    • Incremental: counts the incoming metric values incrementally, adding every next value to previous values. It results in a constantly increasing SLO graph.

  4. Enter a Query or Good query, and Total query for the metric you selected. The following are query examples:

    • Threshold metric for Graphite:
      Query: carbon.agents.9b365cce.cpuUsage

    • Ratio metric for Graphite:
      Good query: stats_counts.response.200
      Total query: astats_counts.response.all

      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.

  5. In step 3, define a Time Window for the SLO.

  • Rolling time windows are better for tracking the recent user experience of a service.

  • Calendar-aligned windows are best suited for SLOs that are intended to map to business metrics measured on a calendar-aligned basis, such as every calendar month or every quarter.

  1. In step 4, specify the Error Budget Calculation Method and your Objective(s).

    • Occurrences method counts good attempts against the count of total attempts.
    • Time Slicesmethod 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.

    See the use case example and the SLO calculations guide for more information on the error budget calculation methods.

  2. In step 5, add the Display name, Name, and other settings for your SLO:

    • Set no data anomaly detection.
      When activated, Nobl9 notifies you if your SLO hasn't received data for the period you set.
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      You can add up to 20 links per SLO.

  3. Click Create SLO.

YAML​

Sample Graphite 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 Graphite SLO
  indicator:
    metricSource:
      name: graphite
      project: default
      kind: Agent
  budgetingMethod: Occurrences
  objectives:
    - displayName: Good response (200)
      value: 200
      name: ok
      target: 0.95
      rawMetric:
        query:
          graphite:
            metricPath: carbon.agents.9b365cce.cpuUsage
      op: lte
      primary: true
  service: api-server
  timeWindows:
    - unit: Month
      count: 1
      isRolling: false
      calendar:
        startTime: '2022-12-01 00:00:00'
        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
      alertAfter: 1h

Metric specification for Graphite has only one mandatory field:

  • metricPath - it is a string field that specifies Graphite’s metric path, such as servers.cpu.total

Visit the following link to understand Paths and Wildcards.

caution

The Graphite documentation suggests using *, [,], {, or }, but Nobl9 does not support this functionality. When you use *, [,], {, or }, a validation error occurs.

Querying the Graphite server​

Metrics are retrieved using the from and until parameters once per minute. The API returns a half-open interval (from, until], which includes the end date but not the start date.

Check out these related guides and references:
Add Graphite as a data sourceAdding data sourcesPaths and wildcardsGraphite documentationCreating SLOs via TerraformTerraform
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