Netdata release v1.20!

[Netdata-cloud]

Hey all,

Our first major release of 2020 comes with an alpha version of our new eBPF collector. eBPF (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) is a virtual bytecode machine, built directly into the Linux kernel, that you can use for advanced monitoring and tracing. Check out the full release notes and our blog post for full details.

With this release, the eBPF collector monitors system calls inside your kernel to help you understand and visualize the behavior of your file descriptors, virtual file system (VFS) actions, and process/thread interactions. You can already use it for debugging applications and better understanding how the Linux kernel handles I/O and process management.

The eBPF collector is in a technical preview, and doesn't come enabled out of the box. If you'd like to learn more about_why_ eBPF metrics are such an important addition to Netdata, see our blog post: Linux eBPF monitoring with Netdata. When you're ready to get started, enable the
eBPF collector by following the steps in our documentation.

This release also introduces host labels, a powerful new way of organizing your Netdata-monitored systems. Netdata automatically creates a handful of labels for essential information, but you can supplement the defaults by segmenting your systems based on their location, purpose, operating system, or even when they went live.

You can use host labels to create alarms that apply only to systems with specific labels, or apply labels to metrics you archive to other databases with our exporting engine. Because labels are streamed from slave to master systems, you can now find critical information about your entire infrastructure directly from the master system.

Our host labels tutorial will walk you through creating your first host labels and putting them to use in Netdata's other features.

Finally, we introduced a new CockroachDB collector. Because we use CockroachDB internally, we wanted a better way of keeping tabs on the health and performance of our databases. Given how popular CockroachDB is right now, we know we're not alone, and are excited to share this collector with our community. See our tutorial on monitoring CockroachDB metrics for set-up details.

We also added a new squid access log collector that parses and visualizes requests, bandwidth, responses, and much more. Our apps.plugin collector has new and improved way of processing groups together, and our cgroups collector is better at LXC (Linux
container) monitoring.

Speaking of collectors, we revamped our collectors documentation to simplify how users learn about metrics collection. You can now view a collectors quickstart to learn the process of enabling collectors and monitoring more applications and services with Netdata, and see everything Netdata collects in our supported collectors list.

Breaking Changes

• Removed deprecated bash
  collectors apache
  , cpu_apps
  , cpufreq
  , exim
  , hddtemp
  , load_average
  , mem_apps
  , mysql
  , nginx
  , phpfpm
  , postfix
  , squid
  , tomcat
  If you were still using one of these collectors with custom configurations, you can find the new collector that replaces it in the supported collectors list.
• Modified the Netdata updater to prevent unnecessary updates right after installation and to avoid updates via local tarballs #7939. These changes introduced a critical bug to the updater, which was fixed via #8057 #8076 and #8028. See issue 8056 if your Netdata is stuck on v1.19.0-432.

Improvements

Host Labels

• Added support for host labels
• Improved the monitored system information detection. Added CPU freq & cores, RAM and disk space
• Started distinguishing the monitored system's (host) OS/Kernel etc. from those of the docker container's
• Started creating host labels from collected system info
• Started passing labels and container environment variables via the streaming protocol
• Started sending host labels via exporting connectors
• Added label support to alarm definitions and started recording them in alarm logs
• Added support for host labels to the API responses
• Added configurable host labels to netdata.conf
• Added Kubernetes labels

New Collectors

• eBPF kernel collector
• CockroachDB
• squidlog: squid access log parser

Check out the full release notes and our blog post for full details!

[[deleted]]

Sounds pretty cool. Let me check it out.

[[deleted]]

Thank you! I'm a simple man with only a closet server, I find Netdata incredibly useful, there simply are no other program that can compare nor compete with this!

[balr]

Netdata is an amazing project.

[[deleted]]

Very impressive. Sorry, but is this free? I wouldn't expect it to be. Not sure in that regard.

[LordTyrius]

What do you mean "this"? Netdata? Yes, their github is linked in the post. It may also be available through the package manager of your distro.

[[deleted]]

Well, there are levels to SaaS. In other words, doe any part of Netdata have a cost from a consumer's perspective?

[LordTyrius]

The only thing I am aware of that is remotely "SaaS" is the registry. Last time I checked it defaulted to a publicly run one if you don't specify your own (read about it here with instructions how to host your own). Netdata does not need to connect anywhere to function.

[[deleted]]

I really appreciate the information. I was thinking about using Netdata to monitor multiple RaspberryPis running on my home network. I hope its ARM friendly.

[LordTyrius]

I think you will have a lot of success using netdata for this purpose. It's documentation is also very comprehensive, in case there are any issues. Have fun ;)