AWS SQS Monitoring Extension

Use Case

Captures SQS statistics from Amazon CloudWatch and displays them in the AppDynamics Metric Browser.

Prerequisites

  1. Please give the following permissions to the account being used to with the extension.
   **cloudwatch:ListMetrics**
   **cloudwatch:GetMetricStatistics**
  1. Before the extension is installed, the prerequisites mentioned here need to be met. Please do not proceed with the extension installation if the specified prerequisites are not met.
  2. Download and install Apache Maven which is configured with Java 8 to build the extension artifact from source. You can check the java version used in maven using command mvn -v or mvn --version. If your maven is using some other java version then please download java 8 for your platform and set JAVA_HOME parameter before starting maven.
  3. The extension needs to be able to connect to AWS Cloudwatch in order to collect and send metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product, or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

  1. Clone the "aws-sqs-monitoring-extension" repo using git clone <repoUrl> command.
  2. Run 'mvn clean install' from aws-sqs-monitoring-extension
  3. Copy and unzip AWSSQSMonitor-<version>.zip from 'target' directory into <machine_agent_dir>/monitors/
  4. Edit config.yml file in AWSSQSMonitor and provide the required configuration (see Configuration section)
  5. Restart the Machine Agent.

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

In order to use the extension, you need to update the config.yml file that is present in the extension folder. The following is a step-by-step explanation of the configurable fields that are present in the config.yml file.

  1. If SIM is enabled, then use the following metricPrefix -

    metricPrefix: "Custom Metrics|Amazon SQS|"

    Else, configure the "COMPONENT_ID" under which the metrics need to be reported. This can be done by changing the value of <COMPONENT_ID> in
    metricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|Amazon SQS|".

    For example,

    metricPrefix: "Server|Component:100|Custom Metrics|Amazon SQS|"
    

More details around metric prefix can be found here.

  1. Provide accessKey(required) and secretKey(required) of your account(s), also provide displayAccountName(any name that represents your account) and
    regions(required). If you are running this extension inside an EC2 instance which has IAM profile configured then you don't have to configure accessKey and secretKey values, extension will use IAM profile to authenticate. You can provide multiple accounts and regions as below -

    accounts:
      - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX1"
        awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX1"
        displayAccountName: "TestAccount_1"
        regions: ["us-east-1","us-west-1","us-west-2"]
    
      - awsAccessKey: "XXXXXXXX2"
        awsSecretKey: "XXXXXXXXXX2"
        displayAccountName: "TestAccount_2"
        regions: ["eu-central-1","eu-west-1"]
    
  2. If you want to encrypt the awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey then follow the "Credentials Encryption" section and provide the encrypted values in awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey. Configure enableDecryption of credentialsDecryptionConfig to true and provide the encryption key in encryptionKey.
    For example,

    #Encryption key for Encrypted password.
    credentialsDecryptionConfig:
        enableDecryption: "true"
        encryptionKey: "XXXXXXXX"
    
  3. To report metrics only from specific dimension values, configure the dimesion section. Dimensions for AWS SQS are QueueName.

    dimensions:
      - name: "QueueName"
        displayName: "QueueName"
        values: [".*"]
    

    If .* is used, all dimension values are monitored and if empty, none are monitored.

  4. Configure the metrics section.

    For configuring the metrics, the following properties can be used:

    Property Default value Possible values Description
    alias metric name Any string The substitute name to be used in the metric browser instead of metric name.
    statType "ave" "AVERAGE", "SUM", "MIN", "MAX" AWS configured values as returned by API
    aggregationType "AVERAGE" "AVERAGE", "SUM", "OBSERVATION" Aggregation qualifier
    timeRollUpType "AVERAGE" "AVERAGE", "SUM", "CURRENT" Time roll-up qualifier
    clusterRollUpType "INDIVIDUAL" "INDIVIDUAL", "COLLECTIVE" Cluster roll-up qualifier
    multiplier 1 Any number Value with which the metric needs to be multiplied.
    convert null Any key value map Set of key value pairs that indicates the value to which the metrics need to be transformed. eg: UP:0, DOWN:1
    delta false true, false If enabled, gives the delta values of metrics instead of actual values.

    For example,

    - name: "Bytes"
      alias: "Bytes per minute (Unit - byte; StatType - sum)"
      statType: "sum"
      aggregationType: "AVERAGE"
      timeRollUpType: "AVERAGE"
      clusterRollUpType: "INDIVIDUAL"
      delta: false
      multiplier: 1
    

    All these metric properties are optional, and the default value shown in the table is applied to the metric(if a property has not been specified) by default.

Config.yml

Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go to Yaml Validator . On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Validate YAML” button.
If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Metrics

Typical metric path: Application Infrastructure Performance|<Tier>|Custom Metrics|Amazon SQS|<Account Name>|<Region>|Queue Name|<Queue Name> followed by the metrics defined in the link below:

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on password encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench

Troubleshooting

Please follow the steps listed in this troubleshooting-document in order to troubleshoot your issue. These are a set of common issues that customers might have faced during the installation of the extension.

Contributing

Always feel free to fork and contribute any changes directly via GitHub.

Version

Name Version
Extension Version 1.0.6
Last Update 18/05/2021
Change List ChangeLog

Note: While extensions are maintained and supported by customers under the open-source licensing model, they interact with agents and Controllers that are subject to AppDynamics’ maintenance and support policy. Some extensions have been tested with AppDynamics 4.5.13+ artifacts, but you are strongly recommended against using versions that are no longer supported.

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