...
There are numerous opensource monitoring solutions available, with varying approaches and architectures. In this study, we compare only the 'agent' component of the monitoring solution, and will not consider the server-side component(s). Because, there can be multiple implementation options of the 'server' - for example, with collectd it could be simple collectd-web or a timeseries database such as Influxdb, etc - and considering all the options would be extremely difficult. Typically the server side components could include some or all of the following following (a) Metric collection infrastructure - raw-metric receiver, message-queues, etc. (b) Metric Modifier - Add add contexts, perform-aggregation, filter, etc. (c) Storage Solutionsolution (d) Alarm/Alerting System (e) Visualization/Graphing. (f) Publishing
Terminology Definition
...
Parameters\Tools | Collectd | Ceilometer Polling agent. | Monasca | SNAP | node-exporter and other exporters | sensu | munin | telegraf | nagios | diamond | centreon | icinga | OpenNMS | NSClient++ | Elastic Beats | Reimann | Note: 1. For some parameters the answer could be just YES/NO, 2. Whereas, for some we may have to provide a description/details 3. For some we may have to choose from the list [], whereas for some we may append a value to the list. 4. For some parameters, please provide the number of 'actual metrics' provided under that category. For example, collectd would provide 12 metrics for Processes-category Use NA - If Not applicable. Use NK - If it is Not Known | |
Lowest Sampling Interval - (for transmitting over network) | can go down to a nano second resolution (1-sec) | |||||||||||||||||
| CPU metrics | idle, system, wait, stolen, user (% & time), util, vcpus | idle, system, wait, stolen, user (% & time), util, vcpus | idle, system, wait, stolen, user (% & time) | idle, system, wait, stolen, user (% & time), util, vcpus | Same as ceilometer or monasca | idle, system, wait, user, nice | ||||||||||||
| Disk IO metrics | Read and write (bytes, rate, time, sectors) | read and write (bytes, rate, req) | read and write (bytes, rate, req) | read and write (bytes, rate, req) | Same as ceilometer or monasca | read and write (bytes, rate, req) | ||||||||||||
| Memory metrics | usage, bandwidth | free, swap, total, used | free, swap, total, used | Same as ceilometer or monasca | free, total, swap, active, dirty, inactive, buffers. | |||||||||||||
| Process metrics | I/O, Schec, Stats. | btime, ctxt, processes, blocked, running | ||||||||||||||||
| Network Interface Metrics | Interface plugin: Standard 4 fields of rx/tx (octets, packets, errors, dropped). Netlink plugin: uses netlink sockets and covers others | Standard 4 fields of rx/tx (octets, packets, errors, dropped). | Standard 4 fields of rx/tx (octets, packets, errors, dropped). | Standard 4 fields of rx/tx (octets, packets, errors, dropped). | Same as ceilometer or monasca | Rx and Tx. MBs | ||||||||||||
| Libvirt Metrics | YES - | YES | YES | YES | NO | YES | ||||||||||||
| Container resource usage Monitoring | YES | NO | NO | Docker | Docker | Docker | ||||||||||||
| Databases Support Writing to and Monitoring : [Influxdb, MongoDb, MySql, PostgreSql, Carbon(graphite), Prometheus, RRDCache,Redis, TSDB] | YES for all | MySql, PostgreSql, MongoDb - monitoring | Influxdb, Vertica, MySql, PostgreSql, Cassandra - monitoring | Monitoring only | Writing - Influxdb Monitoring - All. | Monitoring - All | ||||||||||||
| Encryption Support | YES | NO | NO | NO | YES | |||||||||||||
| Extensibility - multilanguage support [Python, Java, Golang, C/C++, Lua] | YES for all | Java | Java | Java, Python | ||||||||||||||
| Interoperability [with other monitoring solutions] | Sensu, statsd, telegraf? | Nagios zabbix | ceilometer | Collectd | Nagios | |||||||||||||
| Write to Message Queues and protocols (AMQP, Kafka, MQTT, NSQ) | YES for ALL | AMQP | Kafka | NO | kafka, MQTT, NSQ | |||||||||||||
| Metrics Pub/sub Mode Support | YES | YES | YES | |||||||||||||||
| Metrics ResReq/Resp Mode Support | NO | NO | NO | |||||||||||||||
| Support for Events (polling, Pushing) | Yes | NO (1) | NO (1) | |||||||||||||||
| Notification Support | YES | NO (1) | NO (1) | NO (1) | ||||||||||||||
| Logging Support | YES | YES | YES | YES | ||||||||||||||
| Hypervisor metrics | YES | YES | ||||||||||||||||
| Log-File Analysis | YES | NO | NO | |||||||||||||||
| Other Writing Support: [CSV, HTTP, RRD, UnixSocket] | ALL that are listed. | |||||||||||||||||
| Transport Protocol | Depends on the end point it's communicating with | TCP, UDP | ||||||||||||||||
| Data-Format [XML, JSON, etc] | JSON, Custom, XML | JSON XML | JSON | Custom | ||||||||||||||
| Data-model | Custom | KVP | KVP | Custom | ||||||||||||||
| Hardware: IPMI, Battery, Sensors, | YES for all | IPMI | IPMI | |||||||||||||||
| Metric Types: Guage, Derive, Counter, absolute | YES for all | Guage cumulative delta | ||||||||||||||||
| Language (written) | C | Python | Python | Go | ||||||||||||||
| Last-Updated | 2017 | 2017 | 2017 | |||||||||||||||
| Commercial Versions? | NO | ? | No | |||||||||||||||
| Resource consumption by the agent | Binary: 617Kb
| |||||||||||||||||
| License | MIT/GPL v2 or later | Apache License, Version 2.0 | Apache License, Version 2.0 | |||||||||||||||
| Webserver monitoring [Nginix, Apache] | YES for all | Apache | Apache | Nginix, Apache, Passenger varnish | ||||||||||||||
| Platforms - OS? | Supports windows, linux, freebsd... | Linux | Linux | |||||||||||||||
| Configuration Tool support [Puppet, Chef, Ansible, Salt] | YES for all | Puppet Chef | ||||||||||||||||
| Server-mode support? | YES | |||||||||||||||||
| Other Services Support | statsd, webhooks | |||||||||||||||||
...
(1) This aspect is realized either as a server-side component or by a 'customized' agent.
(2) Custom solution exist, and may not be part of main distribution.
(3)
Inference Questions
| The Questions | The Answer |
| Lowest Interval: Which agent supports the lowest sampling interval, and what is the value? | |
| Interoperability: Which agent is 'most interoperable'? (Work with maximum of 'servers' (collection node) | |
| Large-scale deployment: Which agent is ideal for large-scale monitoring (Provide description in a separate page, if needed) | |
| Low-footprint: Which agent has the lowest footprint (memory and CPU)? | |
| Metrics: Which agent supports maximum number of metrics? | |
| Gaps: Are there any metrics that are not supported by any of the agent and that are relavant to NFV? | |
| Which agent is ideal for realtime analytics?- [Support for maximum scalable datastores, visualization tools and Analytics engines?] | |
| Is any of the agents been used in large-scale real-world deployments? If so, please provide the details on the performance. | |
| Which agent has the least/maximum dependency - Libraries, OS/Kernel versions, etc.? | |
| Which agent provides maximum 'freedom' w.r.t. Licenses (core agent + plugins)? | |
| Which agent is best for the following datastores: Influxdb, Graphite, ElasticSearch? | |
| Which agent support dynamic configuration? | |