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ThousandEyes

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ThousandEyes monitors the performance of both local and wide-area networks. ThousandEyes combines Internet and WAN visibility, browser synthetics, end-user monitoring, and Internet Insights to deliver a holistic view of your hybrid digital ecosystem – across cloud, SaaS, and the Internet. It's a SaaS-based tool that helps troubleshoot application delivery and maps Internet performance.

Scope of support​

ThousandEyes parameters and supported features in Nobl9
General support:
Release channel: Stable Beta
Connection method: Agent Direct
Replay and SLI Analyzer: Historical data limit 30 days
Event logs: Supported
Query checker: Not supported
Query parameters retrieval: Supported
Timestamp cache persistence: Supported
Query parameters:
Query interval: 1 min
Query delay: 1 min
Jitter: 15 sec
Timeout: 60 sec
Agent details and minimum required versions for supported features:
Plugin name: n9thousandeyes
Query delay environment variable: THOUSANDEYES_QUERY_DELAY
Replay and SLI Analyzer: 0.97.0-beta
Query parameters retrieval: 0.73.2
Timestamp cache persistence: 0.65.0

Nobl9 supports the following ThousandEyes tests:

LayerTest nameResponse property
Data type		Nobl9 YAML nameAggregationMin agent version
DNSDNSSECvalid
boolean		dns-dnssec-validLogical conjunction0.67.2
0.68.0-beta01
Server metricresolutionTime
number, unit: ms		dns-server-resolution-timeMean0.67.2
0.68.0-beta01
NetworkEnd-to-endavgLatency
number, unit: ms		net-latencyMean0.55.3
End-to-endLoss
number, unit: %		net-lossMean0.55.3
WebAPIapiTransactionTime
number, unit: ms		api-transaction-timeMean0.90.0
0.90.0-beta
HTTP serverresponseCode
status code		http-server-availabilityMax0.55.3
HTTP serverresponseTime
number, unit: ms		http-response-timeMean0.55.3
HTTP serverthroughput
number, unit: bps		http-server-throughputMean0.55.3
HTTP servertotalTime
number, unit: ms		http-server-total-timeMean0.67.2
0.68.0-beta01
Page loaddomLoadTime
number, unit: ms		web-dom-loadMean0.55.3
Page loadpageLoadTime
number, unit: ms		web-page-loadMean0.55.3
TransactionstransactionTime
number, unit: ms		web-transaction-timeMean0.90.0
0.90.0-beta

DNS layer
DNSSEC
Returns 1 if the keychain for a domain record is valid, 0 otherwise.
Server metrics
Measures the time it takes for the ThousandEyes agent to receive a response about your domain from the DNS server.
Network layer
End-to-end metrics—latency
Tracks the interval time from when a network packet is sent to when the test-assigned agent receives the response.
End-to-end metrics—loss
Represents the total loss of the network packet.
Web layer
API
Calculates the total duration of an API request transaction, from the initiation to the point where the server responds. This check includes both network transmission time and server processing time for the API request.
HTTP server—response code
Checks agent availability by examining HTTP status codes, such as 200, 201, 400, or 501.

Handling multiple ThousandEyes agents
When there are multiple ThousandEyes agents, Nobl9 can receive multiple HTTP response status codes in a single request. In this situation, Nobl9 ingests only the highest status code.
HTTP server—response time
Measures the interval between the start of the request and the web server successfully sending the first byte of the response to the client.
HTTP server—throughput
Determines the Wire Size divided by the Receive Time.
HTTP server—total time
Calculates the time it takes for the ThousandEyes agent to receive the last byte of your server's response.
Page load—DOM
Tracks the time interval required by the browser to build the website’s Document Object Model (DOM).
Page load—page
Records the time interval from the load event to the point when the website is fully loaded.
Web transactions
Represents the total time taken to complete a web transaction like page loading, interacting with page elements, or form submission. This metric provides insight into the time taken for an end user to complete a full interaction sequence on your web service.
Points to consider
  • Metrics are collected during each ThousandEyes test interval.
  • Aggregation is applied when a test returns multiple results within a single test round.
Data source and channel compatibility

Ensure your ThousandEyes SLOs use compatible data source versions and channels to guarantee seamless configuration delivery.

Creating SLOs with ThousandEyes​

Nobl9 Web​

Follow the instructions below to create your SLOs with ThousandEyes 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 ThousandEyes data source.
  5. Modify Period for Historical Data Retrieval, when necessary.
    • This value defines how far back in the past your data will be retrieved when replaying your SLO based on ThousandEyes.
    • A longer period can extend the data loading time for your SLO.
    • Must be a positive whole number up to the maximum period value you've set when adding the ThousandEyes data source.

  6. Specify Metric:

    • Test ID is an ID of the test configured in ThousandEyes. It is a mandatory field, and it must be a positive number.
    • Test type is your required ThousandEyes test. You can choose between the supported ThousandEyes tests.
  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: Composite SLOs 1.0 are deprecated.
      We recommend creating composite SLOs 2.0 instead.
    • Select No data anomaly alert to receive notifications when your SLO stops reporting data for a specified period:
      • Choose up to five supported Alert methods.
      • Specify the delay period before Nobl9 sends an alert about the missing data.
        From 5 minutes to 31 days. Default: 15 minutes
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      Limits per SLO: 20 alert policies or links, 30 labels.
  4. Click CREATE SLO.

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

sloctl​

Sample ThousandEyes net latency 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 ThousandEyes SLO
  indicator:
    metricSource:
      name: thousand-eyes
      project: default
      kind: Agent
  budgetingMethod: Occurrences
  objectives:
    - displayName: Good response (200)
      value: 200.0
      name: ok
      target: 0.95
      rawMetric:
        query:
          thousandEyes:
            testID: 2280492
            testType: net-latency
      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

Find more SLO examples in the Nobl9 SDK

Important notes:

The ThousandEyes metric specification expects two fields: testID and testType.

  • testID: an ID of your required test configured in ThousandEyes.
    Mandatory. Must be a positive number.

  • testType: your required ThousandEyes test.
    String, mandatory. One of the supported ThousandEyes tests.

When the testType field is missing in the ThousandEyes YAML configuration, net-latency value is taken by default.

API and Web transactions time tests
beta

To use the web-transaction-time and api-transaction-time tests, update your ThousandEyes agent to versions 0.90.0 / 0.90.0-beta or later.

Querying the ThousandEyes server​

Nobl9 queries the ThousandEyes instance once every minute. If the agent doesn’t collect any data in a given minute, the next query will be extended to the past two minutes.

ThousandEyes API rate limits​

The ThousandEyes API throttles API requests using a 240 request-per-minute (per organization) limit with each page having max 1000 elements included.

For a more in-depth look, consult additional resources:
Add ThousandEyes as a data sourceAdding data sourcesThousandEyes knowledge baseThousandEyes documentationThousandEyes testsThousandEyes documentationCreating SLOs with TerraformNobl9 Terraform provider documentation
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