AVI Networks (NSX ALB) Integration

Learn about the Wavefront AVI Networks (NSX ALB) Integration.

AVI Networks (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) provides multi-cloud load balancing, web application firewall, application analytics, and container ingress services from the data center to the cloud.

In addition to setting up the metrics flow, this integration also sets up a dashboard. images/nsx-alb-summary.png

AVI Networks (NSX Advanced Load Balancer) Setup

Note: We have included these instructions because we believe that they are useful. We have not performed independent testing of these instructions.

Prerequisites

Requirements:

Python 3.6+
Packages: python3-yaml, python3-requests

Installation

Create a directory avi_metrics and download the file metricscollection.py and configuration.yaml into the directory.

mkdir avi_metrics
cd avi_metrics
curl -o metricscollection.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avinetworks/devops/master/monitoring/metrics%20collection/metricscollection.py

Create a file configuration.yaml and add the following configuration snippet.

#----------Controllers to Poll Data From - REQUIRED ------------
#---------------------------------------------------------------
controllers:
   - avi_cluster_name: demo_controller
     #_comment: FQDN or IP address that the script will connect to for API calls
     avi_controller: <IP_or_FQDN>
     avi_user: admin
     #_comment: ACCEPTS PLAIN TEXT OR BASE64 ENCODED PASSWORD
     avi_pass: password
     tags:
      environment: dev
      location: datacenter1
     #_comment: Realtime metrics will cause the script to take longer to complete, optional
     virtualservice_stats_config:
         virtualservice_metrics: True
         virtualservice_realtime: True
         virtualservice_runtime: True
         # virtualservice_names:
         #   - AutoScaleout-VS
         #   - Avi-DemoAvi-VS
         #   - WAF_Demo_VS
         virtualservice_metrics_list:
            - l4_client.avg_bandwidth
            - l4_client.avg_rx_pkts
            - l4_client.avg_tx_pkts
            - l4_client.avg_rx_bytes
            - l4_client.avg_tx_bytes
            - l7_client.avg_ssl_handshakes_new
     serviceengine_stats_config:
         serviceengine_metrics: True
         serviceengine_runtime: True
         serviceengine_realtime: True
     pool_stats_config:
         pool_metrics: True
         pool_runtime: True
         pool_realtime: True
     controller_stats_config:
         controller_metrics: True
         controller_runtime: True
         controller_metrics_list:
            - controller_stats.avg_cpu_usage
            - controller_stats.avg_disk_usage
            - controller_stats.avg_mem_usage
     metrics_endpoint_config:
         - type: wavefront
           enable: True
           metric_prefix: "avi"
           #_comment: IP or FQDN for Wavefront
           instance: <IP_or_FQDN>
           #_comment:  If using direct ingestion specify an api_key, if no key then wavefront proxy will be used
           #api_key: <API_TOKEN>
           #_comment:  If using proxy specify the listening port, if not defined defaults to 2878
           proxy_port: 2878

NOTE:

It is recommended to configure Wavefront Proxy over direct ingestion.
It is recommended to comment out the virtualservice_names block.
Update the IP_or_FQDN, and API_TOKEN with the corresponding values as per your environment.

Running the script locally

Run the script to push metrics to the Wavefront endpoint.
```
python3 metricscollection.py
```

Run as a Container

Download the Dockerfile into the avi_metrics directory.

curl -o Dockerfile https://raw.githubusercontent.com/avinetworks/devops/master/monitoring/metrics%20collection/dockerfile

Build the container.
```
docker build -t metricscollection .
```

Start the container.

docker run -d --name metricscollection --restart always --log-opt max-size=1m -e "EN_CONFIGURATION=$(<configuration.yaml)"  metricscollection

NOTE: To start the container, you must specify the configuration by using the EN_CONFIGURATION environment variable.

For more information on AVI Controller configuration, see the configuration document.