Cassandra Monitoring User Guide

Overview

Cassandra monitoring is a Gateway configuration file that enables monitoring of Cassandra through a set of samplers with customised JMX plug-in settings.

Apache Cassandra is a free and open-source distributed NoSQL database management system that provides scalability and high-availability.

Some of Cassandra's key attributes are:

Fault tolerant - Data is automatically replicated to multiple nodes for fault-tolerance.
Decentralized - There are no single points of failure.
Elastic - Read and write throughput increase linearly as new machines are added, with no downtime or interruption to applications.

It is important to monitor Cassandra performance to identify database slowdowns, interruptions, or pressing resource limitations - and take quick and appropriate actions to correct them.

To view the sample metrics and dataviews, see Cassandra Monitoring Technical Reference.

Intended audience

This guide is intended for users who are setting up, configuring, troubleshooting and maintaining this integration. Once the integration is set up, the samplers providing the dataviews become available to that Gateway.

As a user, you should be familiar with SQL Server or any other database, and with the administration of the Cassandra services.

Prerequisites

The following requirements must be met prior to the installation and setup of the template:

A machine running the Netprobe must have access to the host where the Cassandra instance is installed and the port Cassandra is listening to.
A JMX-enabled Cassandra cluster.
Netprobe version 4.6 or higher.
Gateway version 4.8 or higher.
Cassandra version 3.11.1.

Installation procedure

Ensure that you have read and can follow the system requirements prior to installation and setup of this integration template.

Download the integration package geneos-integration-cassandra-<version>.zip from the ITRS Downloads site.
Open Gateway Setup Editor.
In the Navigation panel, click Includes to create a new file.
Enter the location of the file to include in the Location field. In this example, it is the include/CassandraMonitoring.xml.
Update the Priority field. This can be any value except 1. If you input a priority of 1, the Gateway Setup Editor returns an error.
Expand the file location in the Includes section.
Select Click to load.
Click Yes to load the new Cassandra include file.

Click Managed entities in the Navigation panel.
Add the Cassandra type to the Managed Entity section that you will use to monitor Cassandra.
Click the Validate button to check your configuration and save if everything is correct.

Set up the samplers

These are the pre-configured samplers available to use in CassandraMonitoring.xml.

Configure the required fields by referring to the table below:

Samplers
Cassandra-GC
Cassandra-Throughput
Cassandra-Latency
Cassandra-DiskUsage
Cassandra-Errors
Cassandra-Tasks

Set up the variables

The CassandraMonitoring.xml template provides the variables that are set in the Environments section:

Variable	Description
CASSANDRA_JMX_PORT	Cassandra host name. Default: localhost
CASSANDRA_JMX_HOST	Cassandra JMX port. Default: 7199
CASSANDRA_MONITORING_GROUP_NAME	Sampler group name. Default: Cassandra

Set up the rules

The CassandraMonitoring-SampleRules.xml template also provides a separate sample rules that you can use to configure the Gateway Setup Editor.

Your configuration rules must be set in the Includes section. In the Navigation panel, click Rules.

The table below shows the included rule setup in the configuration file:

Sample Rules	Description
Errors - Read Unavailable	Sets the severity to critical if the number of read unavailable exceptions exceeds CASSANDRA_ERRORS_READ_UNAVAILABLE_THERESHOLD. Default: Threshold is set to 0
Errors - Write Unavailable	Sets the severity to critical if the number of write unavailable exceptions exceeds CASSANDRA_ERRORS_WRITE_UNAVAILABLE_THERESHOL. Default: Threshold is set to 0
Disk Usage - High Load	Sets the severity to critical if the storage load exceeds CASSANDRA_DISK_USAGE_HIGH_LOAD_THRESHOLD. The threshold must be set for the rule to take effect. There is no default value provided.
Throughput - High Read Throughput	Sets the severity to critical if the read throughput of the last minute exceeds CASSANDRA_THROUGHPUT_HIGH_READ_THRESHOLD. The threshold must be set for the rule to take effect. There is no default value provided.
Throughput - High Write Throughput	Sets the severity to critical if the write throughput of the last minute exceeds CASSANDRA_THROUGHPUT_HIGH_WRITE_THRESHOLD. The threshold must be set for the rule to take effect. There is no default value provided.
GC - ParNew - High Last GC Duration	Sets the severity to critical is the last ParNew GC duration exceeds CASSANDRA_GC_LONG_PARNEW_GC_DURATION_THRESHOLD. Default: Threshold is set to 300 milliseconds .
GC - CMS - High Last GC Duration	Sets the severity to critical if the last CMS GC duration exceeds CASSANDRA_GC_LONG_CMS_GC_DURATION_THRESHOLD. Default: Threshold is set to 300 milliseconds