Monitis Backend for StatsD

Overview

StatsD is a Node.js daemon that accepts metrics over a simple and lightweight UDP protocol, aggregates those metrics, and sends the results to one or more backend systems for long-term time series data storage, graphing, alerting, etc. Existing backends included with StatsD support graphite and console output for testing. Third-party backends exist for Librato, Ganglia, and AMQP. Using statsd-monitis-backend, the same aggregated metrics can be sent to Monitis, with custom monitors automatically created as necessary.

Requirements

• Node.js
• StatsD, with patches for Raw metrics
• NPM
• Monitis account

Installation

Prerequisites

• Install Node.js and NPM (Node Package Manager)

StatsD

StatsD can be installed via npm, or cloned from GitHub. Using Git, clone your own local copy of StatsD.

$ git clone git://github.com/etsy/statsd.git

statsd-monitis-backend

In your StatsD directory, you can use NPM to install statsd-monitis-backend.

$ cd statsd
$ npm install https://github.com/jeremiahshirk/statsd-monitis-backend/tarball/master

Monitis account

Sign up for a Monitis account at https://www.monitis.com/free_signup.jsp. Once signed up, log in at https://www.monitis.com/login.jsp. When you're logged in, you can retrieve API keys under:

• Tools -> API -> API Key.

StatsD configuration

In a new StatsD install, you'll typically copy exampleConfig.js to local.config. Edit your local.config to use the Monitis backend. It should have someting like the following:

{
  backends: ["statsd-monitis-backend"],
  flushInterval: 60000,
  dumpMessages: true,
  monitis: {
    apikey: '_your_api_key_',
    secretkey: '_your_secret_key_'
  }
}

Running StatsD

In the same StatsD directory where you used NPM to install statsd-monitis-backend and edited local.config, use node to run StatsD.

$ node stats.js local.config

More information

For more information, contact Jeremiah Shirk, [email protected].