Install and Manage Wavefront Proxies

VMware Aria Operations for Applications (formerly known as Tanzu Observability by Wavefront) offers several deployment options. During development, a single proxy is often sufficient for all data sources. In production, place a team of proxies behind a load balancer.

In most cases, a Wavefront proxy must be running in your environment before metrics begin streaming to your Operations for Applications service from a host or application.

Proxy Host Requirements

• Internet access - Run timeout 3s curl -fIsS <api_url> from the host and make sure you get a response and not a timeout.
• Networking:
  • By default, the proxy uses port 2878. Make sure this port is reachable from other machines on your network. You can change this default separately for different types of data (metrics, histograms, traces, etc.) in the proxy configuration file. For example, use traceListenerPorts to specify where to listen to trace data.
  • For egress, ensure that port 443 is available.
• Memory - The proxy does not use a lot of CPU, memory, or storage. However, we recommend running the proxy on a host with at least 4GB of free memory.
• CPU - A standalone proxy can easily handle up to 40K PPS (points per second). If you’re sending more, use multiple proxies behind a load balancer.
• Operating system and JRE - Wavefront proxy is a Java application and can run on operating systems supported by Java. Java 8, 9, 10 or 11 is required. See the requirements in the Wavefront Proxy README file.
• Other - Maven

Proxy Authentication Type

Before you add a proxy, you must have an API token associated with your user account or a service account with the Proxies permission. See Manage API Tokens for details.

Install a Proxy

Many users install a proxy when they set up an integration. You can also install a proxy from the UI or perform a scripted installation manually.

Install a Proxy from the UI

To install and run a proxy:

1. Log in to your service instance and select Browse > Proxies.
2. Click Add New Proxy.
3. Click the tab for your operating system and follow the steps on screen.

The proxy starts listening on port 2878. You can customize listener ports with the proxy configuration file.

Scripted Proxy Installation

You can use steps in an integration or perform a package install.

• Integration: Click Integrations on the toolbar and find the host integration (Mac, Windows, or Linux). The Setup tab gives the installation script. For Mac and Linux, you can install the proxy with or without the Telegraf agent.
• Package Install: See Installing a Proxy Manually.

Manage Proxy Services

After installing a proxy, you can start and stop the proxy service, check service status, and view the logs that are generated by the service. See Log Files for customizing your proxy, including its log configuration options.

To view the current proxies in your environment, you can use the Proxies Browser.

Start and Stop a Proxy

• On a non-ephemeral proxy, you can start the stopped proxy service again.
• On an ephemeral proxy, you cannot start the stopped proxy service again. The proxy is orphaned until you delete it. You can install a new proxy.
• On an ephemeral proxy, restarting the proxy service installs a new proxy with a new ID. The old proxy becomes orphaned until you delete it.

Run the following commands on the proxy host:

Check Proxy Service Status

To check if the proxy is running, run the following commands on the proxy host:

Test a Proxy

You can test that a proxy is receiving and sending data as follows:

1. Send data by running the following command:

    echo -e "test.metric 1 source=test_host\n" | nc <wavefront_proxy_address> 2878
   

   where <wavefront_proxy_address> is the address of your Wavefront proxy.

2. Log in to service instance and select Browse > Metrics.
3. In the Metrics field, type test.metric.
4. Click test.metric to display a chart of the metric.

Upgrade a Proxy

New proxy versions with new features are released frequently. See the Wavefront proxy GitHub page for details.

Upgrade from the UI

To upgrade from the UI, select Browse > Proxies > Add New Proxy. If an older version of the proxy exists, this process replaces it.

Upgrade from the Command Line

For Linux and Mac OS, can also upgrade a proxy from the command line as follows:

Upgrade a Proxy on Docker

On Docker, you don’t explicitly update the proxy version, but stop the proxy and then start the new version.

If you use a volume for the proxy buffer (queue) and you update from a version before 7.2 to 7.2 or later, permissions change:

• For earlier versions of the proxy, the proxy ran as root:root.
• Starting with version 7.2, the proxy runs as wavefront:wavefront.

If you performed the update and data are left in the proxy buffer, follow the steps in Proxy Troubleshooting.

Uninstall a Proxy

When you upgrade a proxy, we uninstall the older version for you. You can also uninstall a proxy explicitly:

Delete a Proxy

On the Proxies Browser page, you can see the status and the details of each proxy in your environment. If you don’t need an inactive proxy, you can delete it.

1. Log in to your service instance and select Browse > Proxies.
2. Select the check boxes for one or more proxies that you want to delete.
3. Click Delete and confirm.
4. In the top-right corner, from the drop-down menu, select Deleted and verify that the proxy was successfully deleted.

See Also

Advanced users can export proxy data to a file and perform other customizations.

Here’s some additional information in the doc:

• Run a Proxy in a Container shows how to install the proxy and Telegraf in a Docker container.
• Export Data Queued at the Proxy
• Install a Proxy in Non-Default Environments
• Use the proxy configuration file to customize proxy behavior for metrics, histograms, and traces.

Here’s a KB article for TLS connections between two proxies:

• How to enable TLS connection between two Wavefront Proxies