Full-blown traffic monitoring of Cisco UCS servers using Grafana, InfluxDB and Telegraf.
- Data source: Cisco UCS Manager (UCSM), read-only account is enough
- Data receiver: Telegraf
- Data storage: InfluxDB, a time-series database
- Visualization: Grafana
- Tested OS: CentOS 7.x. Should work on other OS also.
- Python version: Version 3 only. Should be able to work on Python 2 also with minor modification.
- Install Telegraf
- Install InfluxDB
- Install Grafana. Install following plugins:
- Flowchart
- Pie Chart
- ePict panel
- multistat
- Install apache webserver (Good to have, not mandatory)
- Install following Python modules
- Cisco UCSM Python SDK
- netmiko library Also available as an OVA.
ucs_traffic_monitor.py fetches metrics from Cisco UCS and stitches them. This file is invoked by telegraf exec input plugin every 60 seconds. Login credentials of UCS should be available in ucs_domains_group*.txt.
Try
$ python3 /usr/local/telegraf/ucs_traffic_monitor.py -h
if you are running this for the first time.
Change/Add to your telegraf.conf file as below
[[inputs.exec]]
interval = "60s"
commands = [
"python3 /usr/local/telegraf/ucs_traffic_monitor.py /usr/local/telegraf/ucs_domains.txt influxdb-lp -vv",
]
timeout = "50s"
data_format = "influx"
also update the global values like
logfile = "/var/log/telegraf/telegraf.log"
logfile_rotation_max_size = "10MB"
logfile_rotation_max_archives = 5
This should be able to
- Pull metrics from UCS every 60 seconds
- Stitch them end-to-end between FI uplink ports and vNIC/vHBA on blade servers
- Write the data to InfluxDB
Import the dashboards into Grafana. You should have it running.
For detailed steps-by-step instructions, especially if you do not have prior experience with Grafana, InfluxDB and Telegraf, check out: Cisco UCS monitoring using Grafana, InfluxDB, Telegraf – UTM Installation
- My wife (Dimple) and kids (Manan and Kiara) while I took away precious weekend hours from you and invested in the development of UTM.
- Folks in the Cisco UCS business unit and TAC, who knowingly or unknowingly helped me to build UTM and also for awesome content on ciscolive.com.
- Colleagues and friends in Cisco (Art, Craig, Eugene, Mark and a long list of people) for the inspiration.
- End-users/customers: Philipe, Jason, Shawn, Ryan and others for your great feedback.