scollector

Overview ¶

Scollector is a metric collection agent for OpenTSDB 2.0.

tcollector (https://github.com/OpenTSDB/tcollector) is OpenTSDB's data collection framework built for OpenTSDB 1.0. scollector aims to be tcollector for OpenTSDB 2.0.

Unlike tcollector, scollector is a single binary with all collectors are compiled into scollector itself. scollector supports external collectors, but your goal should be to use those temporarily until the go version is written. It has native collectors for Linux, Darwin, and Windows.

Usage:

scollector [flag]

The flags are:

-h="bosun"
	OpenTSDB host; can optionally specify a port and scheme
	("https://tsdb.example.com:4242"), but will default to
	http://bosun/
-c=""
	external collectors directory
-s=""
	SNMP host to poll of the format:
	"community@host[,community@host...]"
-v=""
	vSphere host to poll of the format:
	"user:password@host[,user:password@host...]"
-i=""
	ICMP host to ping of the format:
	"host[,host...]"
-f=""
	filter collectors matching this term (regex)
-l
	list enabled collectors
-m
	disable sending of metadata
-n
	disable sending of scollector self metrics

Additional flags on Windows:

-winsvc=""
	Windows Service management; can be: install, remove, start, stop

Debug flags:

-d
	enables debug output
-p
	print to screen instead of sending to a host
-j
	with -p, prints JSON
-fake=0
	generates X fake data points per second on the test.fake metric

scollector will, by default, report to the host `bosun`, which you should configure on your local nameserver to point to your TSDB server. This makes it possible to run scollector correctly with zero configuration or command line flags.

Warning ¶

scollector has not been tested outside of the Stack Exchange environment, and thus may act incorrectly elsewhere.

scollector requires the new HTTP API of OpenTSDB 2.1 with gzip support, which is currently only present in the "next" branch (https://github.com/opentsdb/opentsdb/tree/next). Ensure that is in use if not using the docker image.

Logs ¶

If started with -p or -d, scollector logs to Stdout. Otherwise, on Unixes, scollector logs to syslog. On Windows when started as a service, the Event Log is used.

External Collectors ¶

External collectors are executables that scollector invokes, collects output from, and uses that like other collector data. The -c option specfies the external collectors directory. It should contain numbered directories like OpenTSDB tcollector expects. Any executable file in those directories is run every N seconds, where N is the name of the directory. Use 0 for a program that should be run continuously and simply pass data through to OpenTSDB (the program will be restarted if it exits). Data output format is:

metric timestamp value tag1=val1 tag2=val2 ...

Timestamp is in Unix format (seconds since epoch). Tags are optional. A host tag is automatically added, but overridden if specified. Stderr output is passed to scollector's log.

Configuration File ¶

If scollector.conf exists in the same directory as the scollector executable, it will set configuration flags. Configuration file values overwrite command line flags. The configuration file is of the form key = value, one per line. Supported keys are: host (-h), filter (-f), coldir (-c), snmp (-s), icmp (-i), vsphere (-v). Example:

host = other-tsdb:1234
filter = snmp
snmp = com@theswitch

Windows ¶

scollector has full Windows support. It can be run standalone, or installed as a service (see -winsvc). The Event Log is used when installed as a service.

SNMP ¶

By default, scollector will collect data from the current host and report it to the TSDB server. scollector has an SNMP mode where it instead polls a given host:

scollector -s community@host[,community@host...]

Poll frequency currently defaults to 5 minutes. Some common OIDs regarding interfaces are collected. Others can be added easily.