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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: Not supported
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
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-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-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. In step 1 of the SLO wizard, select the service the SLO will be associated with.

  4. In step 2, select ThousandEyes as the data source for your SLO, then specify the Metric. For ThousandEyes you can use only a threshold metric, where a single time series is evaluated against a threshold, The ThousandEyes metric specification has two fields: testID and testType.

    • 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.

  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:

    • Create a composite SLO
    • Set notification on data, if this option is available for your data source.
      When activated, Nobl9 notifies you if your SLO hasn't received data or received incomplete data for more than 15 minutes.
    • Add alert policies, labels, and links, if required.
      You can add up to 20 links per SLO.

  3. Click Create SLO.

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

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 version 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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