This topic describes how to use Alibaba Cloud Metricbeat to collect system data and NGINX service data and then generate visual charts. The system data includes CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, and network I/O.

Prerequisites

  • An Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch cluster is created.

    For more information, see Create an Elasticsearch cluster.

  • The Auto Indexing feature is enabled for the Elasticsearch cluster.

    For security purposes, Alibaba Cloud Elasticsearch disables the Auto Indexing feature by default. However, Beats depends on this feature. If you select Elasticsearch for Output when you create a shipper, you must enable the Auto Indexing feature. For more information, see Enable auto indexing.

  • An Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance is created in the same Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) as the Elasticsearch cluster.

    For more information, see Create an instance by using the provided wizard.

    Notice Beats supports only Aliyun Linux, Red Hat Linux, and CentOS.
  • Cloud Assistant and Docker are installed on the ECS instance.

    For more information, see Install the Cloud Assistant client and Build Docker.

Use Metricbeat to collect system data

  1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Beats console.
  2. In the Create Shipper section of the page that appears, click Metricbeat.
  3. Install and configure the shipper.
    For more information, see Install a shipper and Prepare the YML configuration files for a shipper. The following figure shows the configurations that are used in this topic. Metricbeat
    Note
    • If you select Enable Kibana Monitoring, the system enables Metricbeat service monitoring in the Kibana console.
    • If you select Enable Kibana Dashboard, the system generates charts in the Kibana console. You do not need to configure the YML file. Alibaba Cloud Kibana is configured in a VPC. You must enable the Kibana private network access feature on the Kibana configuration page. For more information, see Configure a whitelist for access to the Kibana console over the Internet or an internal network.
    • The system module is enabled by default. You do not need to specify Shipper YML Configuration.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select the target ECS instance.
    Select the target ECS instance
    Notice If you are installing a shipper for the first time, click Authorize Now. Then, follow the instructions to authorize Elasticsearch to access ECS instances.
  6. Enable the shipper and check whether the shipper installation succeeds.
    1. Click Enable.
      Then, the Enable Shipper message appears.
    2. Click Back to Beats Shippers. In the Manage Shippers section of the Beats Data Shippers page, view the installed shipper.
    3. After the state of the shipper changes to Enabled 1/1, click View Instances in the Actions column.
    4. In the View Instances pane, check whether the shipper installation on the ECS instance succeeds. If the value of Installed Shippers is Heartbeat Normal, the shipper installation succeeds.
      Shipper installation succeeded
  7. View the collected data.
    1. Log on to the Kibana console of your Elasticsearch cluster.
      For more information, see Log on to the Kibana console.
    2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Dashboard.
    3. In the Dashboards section, click [Metricbeat System] Overview. On the page that appears, click the target Metricbeat system and view the dashboard for the system.
      Dashboard

Use Metricbeat to collect NGINX service data

Prerequisites: The stub_status module is enabled for the NGINX service. The ngx_http_stub_status_module module measures the number of requests received and that of requests processed by the NGINX service. Therefore, you must enable stub_status in the nginx.conf file. 
location /status {
           stub_status on;
           access_log off;
        }
Notice The value of server_status_path in the metricbeat.yml file must be the same as that of status in the nginx.conf file.
  1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Beats console.
  2. In the Create Shipper section of the page that appears, click Metricbeat.
  3. Install and configure the shipper.
    For more information, see Install a shipper and Prepare the YML configuration files for a shipper. The following figure shows the configurations that are used in this topic. Configure the shipper for the NGINX service
    Add the following script in the metricbeat.yml file: 
    metricbeat.modules:
- module: nginx
  metricsets: ["stubstatus"]
  enabled: true
  period: 10s
  # Nginx hosts
  hosts: ["http://121.41.**.**"]
  # Path to server status. Default server-status
  server_status_path: "status"
    Note
    • If you select Enable Kibana Monitoring, the system enables Metricbeat service monitoring in the Kibana console.
    • If you select Enable Kibana Dashboard, the system generates charts in the Kibana console. You do not need to configure the YML file. Alibaba Cloud Kibana is configured in a VPC. You must enable the Kibana private network access feature on the Kibana configuration page. For more information, see Configure a whitelist for access to the Kibana console over the Internet or an internal network.
  4. Click Next.
  5. Select the target ECS instance.
    Select the target ECS instance
    Notice If you are installing a shipper for the first time, click Authorize Now. Then, follow the instructions to authorize Elasticsearch to access ECS instances.
  6. Enable the shipper and check whether the shipper installation succeeds.
    For more information, see Use Metricbeat to collect system data.
  7. View the collected data.
    1. In the address bar of your browser, enter <IP address of the NGINX server>/status to access the monitoring page of the NGINX server.
      Enter the monitoring page
    2. Log on to the Kibana console of your Elasticsearch cluster.
      For more information, see Log on to the Kibana console.
    3. In the left-side navigation pane, click Dashboard.
    4. In the Dashboards section, click [Metricbeat Nginx] Overview. On the page that appears, view the dashboard for the NGINX service.
      Dashboard for the NGINX service