{"id":1460,"date":"2012-03-24T10:55:33","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T15:55:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/?p=1460"},"modified":"2012-03-24T10:57:49","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T15:57:49","slug":"specialized-syslog-collector-for-metrics-via-syslog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/2012\/03\/24\/specialized-syslog-collector-for-metrics-via-syslog\/","title":{"rendered":"Specialized Syslog Collector for Metrics via Syslog"},"content":{"rendered":"

I figured I would throw this out to the wolves, before working on any of the
\nideas, in hope of collecting experience from any who have worked with this
\nidea before me. I’m likely to implement at least a proof of concept unless
\nsomeone points out a glaring show-stopping logic flaw.<\/p>\n

Idea<\/h2>\n

Collect Graphite<\/a> (or Graphite-style) centralized metrics (anything you can think of) via syslog<\/a>. We don’t need a new way to send and collect small UDP messages.<\/p>\n

Why<\/h2>\n

“Why not?” is the question really.<\/p>\n

“Why?” is easy:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Uses as much omnipresent tooling as possible.<\/li>\n
  2. Uses established system library calls instead of requiring developers to write, install, or copy\/paste new ones.<\/li>\n
  3. Because I found myself asking the following this past week: “Why am I about to build and package GNU netcat, for distribution to all of our Solaris 10 boxes, to get remarkably simple frigging UDP packets sent from shell commands?”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    How: Client (Ideas)<\/h2>\n

    Standard syslog configuration:<\/p>\n

    well-known-facility.well-known-severity        @metricshost<\/pre>\n
    Developers use standard syslog calls specifying the well-known-facility<\/code> and well-known-severity<\/code><\/p>\n
    For non-real-time metrics from “shell land”, just use logger(1)<\/code><\/a><\/p>\n
    How: Server (Ideas)<\/h2>\n
    Tweak rsyslog or other well-known syslog “collector” product to:<\/p>\n
      \n
    1. Parse basic Graphite or Graphite-like metric messages and perform RRD and\/or   Whisper writes.  Additionally could implement built-in stats aggregation stuff like StatsD quite easily.<\/li>\n
    2. Ignore all non-metric-conforming syslog data<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
      Thanks for any thoughts below or via the original thread<\/a> that links here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
      I figured I would throw this out to the wolves, before working on any of the ideas, in hope of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,11,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-programming","category-sysadmin","category-unixlinux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1460"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1470,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1460\/revisions\/1470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kickflop.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}