Introduction to Ceph Exporter
Ceph Exporter is a tool designed to collect and provide rich metadata from a Ceph cluster, making it accessible via Prometheus. This tool is essential for monitoring and obtaining detailed cluster information seamlessly, as it uses a wrapper over rados_mon_command() to fetch data, thereby eliminating the need for complex additional setups.
Key Features and Functionality
Purpose and Function
The primary role of Ceph Exporter is to gather and export various metrics from an active Ceph cluster. Prometheus, a popular monitoring and alerting toolkit, leverages this data to display detailed metrics, ensuring administrators have a clear view of their Ceph cluster’s health and performance.
Metrics Accessibility
The exporter facilitates the retrieval of metrics using well-organized methods, and a comprehensive list of these metrics can be found in the METRICS.md file within the project repository. This structured access allows users to easily integrate and monitor cluster performance with Prometheus.
Dependencies and Setup
Requirements
To deploy Ceph Exporter, it should ideally be run from a client system that can communicate with the Ceph cluster. Much like any other Ceph client, it requires access to:
- A
ceph.conffile that holds the necessary configuration for cluster connectivity. - A
ceph.<user>.keyringfile for user authentication with the cluster.
Ceph Exporter automatically searches for these files in default locations, but users can manually specify configurations via environment variables if needed.
Supported Ceph Releases
This tool supports the Nautilus, Octopus (though untested), and Pacific releases. Users must ensure they are using one of these supported versions to guarantee optimal functionality.
Configuration Through Environment Variables
Ceph Exporter allows configuration customization using several environment variables, including:
TELEMETRY_ADDRfor specifying the host and port of the metrics endpoint.CEPH_CLUSTER,CEPH_CONFIG, andCEPH_USERto define cluster name, configuration file path, and user information, respectively.- Other settings to control telemetry path, request timeouts, logging levels, and Transport Layer Security (TLS) files.
Installation Process
Go Installation
Installing Ceph Exporter using Go is straightforward:
$ go install -tags nautilus
For building:
$ go build -o ceph_exporter -tags nautilus
These steps will create a binary that is compatible with the supported Ceph releases.
Docker Image
Using Docker Hub
The official Docker image for Ceph Exporter is available on Docker Hub at digitalocean/ceph_exporter, making deployment as simple as pulling the image.
Building Locally
Users can also build the Docker image from source with the following command:
$ docker build -t digitalocean/ceph_exporter .
The built image needs to be configured with Ceph settings to ensure proper operation.
Running the Exporter
To start the exporter via Docker:
$ docker run -v /etc/ceph:/etc/ceph -p=9128:9128 -it digitalocean/ceph_exporter
For network communication, additional options such as --net=host might be required depending on network needs.
Contributing to the Project
Contributors are welcome to enhance the Ceph Exporter project. Detailed guidelines on contributing can be found in the project's CONTRIBUTING.md guide.
Visualization and Examples
For users interested in sample setups, there are examples available with docker-compose, including pre-configured dashboards with Grafana for quick testing environments and visualization via Promdash.
In conclusion, Ceph Exporter serves as an invaluable tool for Ceph cluster monitoring, offering ease of integration with Prometheus and flexible deployment options. Its ability to efficiently gather and present cluster data makes it an essential part of systems reliant on Ceph infrastructure.