Google Cloud Monitoring Metrics via Telegraf

Google Cloud Monitoring Metrics via Telegraf

Ship your Google Cloud Monitoring Metrics via Telegraf to your Logit.io Stack

Configure Telegraf to ship Google Cloud Monitoring metrics to your Logit.io stacks via Logstash.

Install Integration

Please click on the Install Integration button to configure your stack for this source.

Set Credentials in GCP

@intro

  • Begin by heading over to the 'Project Selector' (opens in a new tab) and select the specific project from which you wish to send metrics.

    • Progress to the 'Service Account Details' screen. Here, assign a distinct name to your service account and opt for 'Create and Continue'.
    • In the 'Grant This Service Account Access to Project' screen, ensure the following roles: 'Compute Viewer', 'Monitoring Viewer', and 'Cloud Asset Viewer'.
    • Upon completion of the above, click 'Done'.
    • Now find and select your project in the 'Service Accounts for Project' list.
    • Move to the 'KEYS' section.
    • Navigate through Keys > Add Key > Create New Key, and specify 'JSON' as the key type.
    • Lastly, click on 'Create', and make sure to save your new key.

    Now add the environment variable for the key

    On the machine run:

    export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=<your-gcp-key>

Install Telegraf

This integration allows you to configure a Telegraf agent to send your metrics, in multiple formats, to Logit.io.

Choose the installation method for your operating system:

When you paste the command below into Powershell it will download the Telegraf zip file. Once that is complete, press Enter again and the zip file will be extracted into C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf-1.31.2.

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.31.2_windows_amd64.zip -UseBasicParsing -OutFile telegraf-1.31.2_windows_amd64.zip 
Expand-Archive .\telegraf-1.31.2_windows_amd64.zip -DestinationPath 'C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf'

Configure the Telegraf input plugin

First you need to set up the input plug-in to enable Telegraf to scrape the GCP data from your hosts. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

# Gather timeseries from Google Cloud Platform v3 monitoring API
[[inputs.stackdriver]]
  ## GCP Project
  project = "<your-project-name>"
 
  ## Include timeseries that start with the given metric type.
  metric_type_prefix_include = [
	"@metric_type",
  ]
 
  ## Most metrics are updated no more than once per minute; it is recommended
  ## to override the agent level interval with a value of 1m or greater.
  interval = "1m"

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for Stackdriver (opens in a new tab)

Configure the output plugin

Once you have generated the configuration file, you need to set up the output plug-in to allow Telegraf to transmit your data to Logit.io in Prometheus format. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

[[outputs.http]]
  url = "https://@metricsUsername:@metricsPassword@@metrics_id-vm.logit.io:@vmAgentPort/api/v1/write"
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"
 
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"

Start Telegraf

From the location where Telegraf was installed (C:\Program Files\InfluxData\telegraf\telegraf-1.31.2) run the program providing the chosen configuration file as a parameter:

.\telegraf.exe --config telegraf-demo.conf

Once Telegraf is running you should see output similar to the following, which confirms the inputs, output and basic configuration the application has been started with: Powershell Telegraf information

View your metrics

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View My Data

If you don't see metrics take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

How to diagnose no data in Stack

If you don't see data appearing in your stack after following this integration, take a look at the troubleshooting guide for steps to diagnose and resolve the problem or contact our support team and we'll be happy to assist.

Telegraf Google Cloud Monitoring metrics Overview

Telegraf, the highly versatile open-source server agent by InfluxData, is adept at collecting metrics and data from various sources, including cloud-based services. Google Cloud Monitoring provides comprehensive monitoring, logging, and diagnostics across Google Cloud and AWS, offering IT and DevOps teams detailed insights into the health, performance, and availability of their cloud infrastructure and applications.

Integrating Telegraf with Google Cloud Monitoring allows organizations to aggregate, visualize, and analyze metrics across their cloud environments efficiently. This integration is crucial for maintaining optimal performance and availability of cloud services, as it enables the monitoring of compute instances, databases, applications, and more. By leveraging Telegraf for data collection and Google Cloud Monitoring for insights, teams can detect anomalies, set up alerts for potential issues, and gain a holistic view of their cloud operations.

However, the sheer volume and variety of data produced can overwhelm traditional monitoring tools, making it challenging to derive actionable insights quickly. Logit.io offers a powerful solution by providing an advanced analytics platform tailored for the aggregation, visualization, and analysis of metrics from Telegraf and Google Cloud Monitoring.

With Logit.io, businesses can improve their cloud monitoring and management practices, ensuring they can swiftly identify and rectify issues, optimize resource utilization, and maintain the security and compliance of their cloud infrastructure. The platform's comprehensive analytics capabilities facilitate informed decision-making, enabling organizations to achieve operational excellence and deliver high-quality services.

For those using Telegraf in conjunction with Google Cloud Monitoring and seeking to elevate their cloud infrastructure monitoring and analytics, Logit.io is an invaluable resource. Logit.io provides a robust platform for log and metric management and analysis. However, to successfully fully integrate Google Cloud Monitoring with Logit.io, it's essential to understand how to interact with GCP's APIs. Explore our Google Cloud's API integration documentation to learn more about the APIs you might need to use for configuring and managing your metrics data. Furthermore, it's equally important to ensure that you have comprehensive visibility into your logs, which are often closely related to your metrics. Google Cloud Logging (opens in a new tab) is a powerful tool from Logit.io for collecting, analyzing, and monitoring logs from your GCP environment.