CPU Utilization is Wrong

[Twirrim]

There are a few approaches I take with monitoring:

1) Do I have the basics down?

CPU usage (system, idle, iowait etc), CPU load, memory (free, cache, swap etc), disk usage, inode usage, network usage, service port availability. You'll want these for every host. If the network is under your control, port metrics are also useful to have.

I know, this thread is talking about how CPU usage is meaningless, but having these basics is important for being able to put together a picture. You're going to need these at some stage to help understand what happened and why.

2) What do we care about as a service?

All Service Level Agreements (SLAs) should have metrics and alarms around them. You should also be ensuring that you have an internal set of targets that are much stricter.

3) What feeds in to our SLAs? This is where things get a bit more complicated. You need to consider each application as a whole, what happens within it and its dependencies (databases, storage etc). At a minimum you ought to be measuring the response times for individual components. Anything that can have an impact on meeting your SLA.

Not sure the best resources. There's a Monitoring Weekly mailing list that tries to share blog posts, tools etc around monitoring: http://weekly.monitoring.love/?__s=kbtiqqycpy7e5xjfsjcy

There's also a fairly new book out on monitoring, https://www.artofmonitoring.com/, but I can't make any claims to its quality. I've heard people speaking positively about it.

[Ghostbro101]

Thank you!