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User Configuration for Analytics Alarms and Log Statistics

Configuring Alarms Based on User-Visible Entities Data

Contrail allows you to dynamically configure alarms based on the user-visible entities (UVE) data. An alarm configuration object is created based on the alarm configuration XSD schema. The alarm configuration object is added to the Contrail configuration database, using the Contrail API server REST API interface.

An alarm configuration object can be anchored in the configuration data model under global-system-config or project, depending on the alarm type. Under global-system-config, you should configure virtual network system-wide alarms, such as those for the analytics node, the config node, and so on. Under project, you should configure alarms related to project objects, such as virtual networks and similar objects.

To configure and monitor alarms using the Contrail UI:

  1. Navigate to Configure > Alarms> Project, and select the desired project to access the Alarm Rules page.
  2. Click the Gear icon to add a new alarm configuration or to edit an existing alarm configuration. Use the Edit screen to define descriptions and to set up alarm rules. See Table 1 for field descriptions.
    Table 1: Alarm Rules Fields

    Field

    Description

    Name

    Enter a name for the alarm.

    Severity

    Select the severity level of the alarm from the list.

    UVE Keys

    Select the list of UVE types to apply to this alarm.

    Description

    Enter a description of the alarm.

    Rule

    Set up the alarm rules. Alarm rules are expressed as OR of AND terms. Each term has operand1, operand2, and the operation. Operand1 is the UVE attribute. Operand2 can be either another UVE attribute or a JSON value. The rules are evaluated in the contrail-alarm-gen service and an alarm is raised or cleared as needed on respective conditions.

  3. To monitor alarms, navigate to Monitor > Alarms> Dashboard. The Dashboard screen lists the active alarms in the system.

Examples: Detecting Anomalies

The purpose of anomaly detection in Contrail is to identify a condition in which a metric deviates from its expected value, within given parameters.

Contrail uses a statistical process control model for time-series anomaly detection that can be computed online, in real-time. Raw metrics are sent as statistics by Sandesh generators embedded inside the UVEs. The model uses the running average and running standard deviation for a given raw metric. The model does not account for seasonality and linear trends in the metric.

The following example represents part of the UVE sent by the vRouter to the collector. The raw metrics are phy_band_in_bps and phy_band_out_bps.

The derived statistics are in in_bps_ewm and out_bps_ewm, which are generated when the model’s EWM algorithm is applied to the raw metrics. The raw metrics and the derived statistics are part of the UVE and are sent to the collector.

The following shows part of the UVE that lists the raw metric phy_band_out_bps and the derived statistic out_bps_ewm. The user can define an alarm based on the values in sigma or in stddev.

Configuring the User-Defined Log Statistic

Any deployment of Contrail cloud over an orchestration system requires tools for monitoring and troubleshooting the entire cloud deployment. Cloud data centers are built with a large collection of interconnected servers that provide computing and storage capacity for a variety of applications. The monitoring of the cloud and its infrastructure requires monitoring logs and messages sent to a variety of servers from many micro services.

Contrail analytics stores all of the monitored messages in the Contrail database node, and the analytics generates a large amount of useful information that aids in monitoring and troubleshooting the network.

With Contrail, the user-defined log statistic feature provides additional abilities for monitoring and troubleshooting by enabling the user to set a counter on any regular Perl-type expression. Each time the pattern is found in any system logs, UVEs, or object logs, the counter is incremented.

The user-defined log statistic can be configured from the Contrail UI or from the command line, using vnc_api.

To configure the user-defined log statistic from the Contrail UI:

  1. Navigate to Configure > Infrastructure > Global Config and select Log Statistic.
  2. To create a log statistic, click the plus (+) icon to access the Create Log Statistic screen. Enter a name for the user-defined log statistic, and in the RegExp Pattern field, enter the Perl-type expression to look for and count.
  3. To edit an existing log statistic, select the name of the statistic and click the Gear icon, then select Edit to access the Edit Log Statistic screen.
  4. To delete a log statistic, select the name of the statistic and click the gear icon, then select the Delete option.

To configure the user-defined statistic from the vnc_api:

To list the counters:

To add a counter:

To verify an addition:

Implementing the User-Defined Log Statistic

The statistics are sent as a counter that has been aggregated over a time period of 60 seconds.

A current sample from your system can be obtained from the UVE at:

http://<analytics-ip>:8081/analytics/uves/user-defined-log-statistic/<name>

You can also use the statistics table UserDefinedLogStatTable to get historical data with all supported aggregations such as SUM, AVG, and the like.

The schema for the table is at the following location:

http://<ip>:8081/analytics/table/StatTable.UserDefinedCounter.count/schema

Schema for User-Defined Statistics Table

The following is the schema for the user-defined statistic table: