An AppDynamics Machine Agent extension to bring metrics from collectd into AppDynamics.

collectd is a daemon which collects system performance statistics periodically and provides mechanisms to store the values in a variety of ways, for example in RRD files.

This extension requires the Java Machine Agent.

When it starts, the extension begins listening on a UDP port like a standard collectd server, as described in the collectd networking docs. Any metrics that are sent to it will be imported into AppDynamics.

The collectd metric path will be kept intact and created under "Application Infrastructure Performance" in AppDynamics.

Example:

• collectd: Metrics/myhost/cpu-0/cpu-user
• AppDynamics: Application Infrastructure Performance|MyTier|Custom Metrics|collectd|myhost|cpu-0|cpu-user

Collectd currently supports four types of metrics. Here is how the extension handles each type:

• GAUGE - converted to long integer.
• DERIVE - derived using the standard collectd formula and stored as long integer.
• COUNTER - currently not handled by the extension.
• ABSOLUTE - currently not handled by the extension.

1. Download CollectdMonitor.zip from the Community.
2. Copy CollectdMonitor.zip into the directory where you installed the machine agent, under $AGENT_HOME/monitors.
3. Unzip the file. This will create a new directory called CollectdMonitor.
4. In $AGENT_HOME/monitors/CollectdMonitor, edit the file config.yaml to configure the extension.
5. Restart the machine agent.

The extension is configured via a YAML file in the conf subdirectory of the extension. Here is the default configuration:

# prefix used to create metrics in AppDynamics
metricPrefix:  "Custom Metrics|collectd|"

# IP address and port number for the UDP listener
listenAddress: "0.0.0.0:25628"

# IP address bound to the multicast interface
# interfaceAddress: "127.0.0.1"

sendOnlyChanges: false

Once you have set up the extension, you can then configure collectd to start sending metrics to it. Load the network plugin and add a stanza in collectd.conf to the IP address and port you configured above. For example, assuming your machine agent is running on 192.168.1.15:

LoadPlugin network

<Plugin network>
    <Server "192.168.1.15" "25628">
        Interface "eth0"
    </Server>
</Plugin>

This monitor can potentially register hundreds or thousands of new metrics, depending on how many metrics you import from collectd. By default, the Machine Agent will only report 200 metrics to the controller, so you may need to increase that limit when installing this monitor. To increase the metric limit, you must add a parameter when starting the Machine Agent, like this:

java -Dappdynamics.agent.maxMetrics=1000 -jar machineagent.jar

For any questions or feature requests, please open a support ticket.

Version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
Controller Compatibility: 3.6 or later
Last Updated: 01-Mar-2016
Author: Todd Radel

Please see the file CHANGES.md.