Viewing health check events

When using global load balancing, you can create a health check to specify how the origin's health is monitored. Health check events are status changes from monitored origin pools and their associated origin servers. If an origin's status changes, a new event is recorded with the event's description.

IBM Cloud® Log Analysis manages system and application logs in the IBM Cloud. You can use this service to access health check events for your origin pools and origin servers. For more information, see the Getting started tutorial for IBM Cloud Log Analysis.

Before you begin

To view health check events in Log Analysis, make sure that you create an IBM Cloud Log Analysis instance in the Frankfurt region in the account.

Adding Log Analysis

From the UI, follow these steps to navigate to the Log Analysis service:

From the DNS Services navigation menu, click Global load balancers, then select the Health checks tab.
For new logging, click Add logging to start creating a new Log Analysis instance.
To view existing Log Analysis instances, click Launch logging.

IBM Cloud Log Analysis opens in a new tab.

Receiving health check events with the Log Analysis instance

To view health check events in a Log Analysis instance, you must configure the Log Analysis instance to receive platform logs with the following steps:

In the IBM Cloud UI, click the menu icon and select Observability. The Observability dashboard appears.
Select Logging. The list of logging instances appears.
Click Configure platform logs.
Select the Frankfurt region, then select one Log Analysis instance where you want to receive the platform logs.
Click Save.

Viewing health check events in the Log Analysis instance

To view health check events, use the UI of the Log Analysis instance that you configured to receive the platform logs in the previous steps.

For more information, see Launching the Log Analysis web UI through the IBM Cloud UI.

To search health check events from within the logging instance, enter the health check event type health_check_event in the Search field.

Log Analysis source search {: caption="Search within logging instance" caption-side="bottom"

You can also search for the events you want by combining other event fields. For example:

Search health check events for a specific DNS Services instance. {: caption="Search events by CRN" caption-side="bottom"
Search health check events for a pool by specifying its name and its DNS Services instance. {: caption="Search events by CRN and pool name" caption-side="bottom"
Search health check events for an origin by specifying its name and its DNS Services instance. {: caption="Search events by CRN and origin name" caption-side="bottom"
Search health check events for an origin when its status becomes healthy by specifying its name and overall_health fields and also its DNS Services instance. {: caption="Search events by CRN, origin name, and health" caption-side="bottom"
Search health check events for a pool when its status becomes DEGRADED by specifying its name and healthy fields and also its DNS Services instance. {: caption="Search events by CRN, pool name, and health" caption-side="bottom"

Health check event properties

Health check event records have the following properties:

event_time: The time at which the event was recorded. For example, 2020-10-28T15:04:05.00+0000.
logSourceCRN: CRN of the DNS Services instance in which the origin pools and origin servers were created. For example: crn:v1:bluemix:public:dns-svcs:global:a/bcf1865e99742d38d2d5fc3fb80a5496:85ed7b9d-cd48-4881-b354-52eb1d8e9011::
type: The value of this property is health_check_event for health check events.

origins: An array of objects representing the origin servers associated with the origin pool. For example:

[
     {
         "name": "web-server1",
         "address": "10.240.0.4",
         "enabled": true,
         "healthy": true,
         "overall_health": true,
         "health_failure_reason": "SUCCESS",
         "changed": true
     },
     {
         "name": "web-server2",
         "address": "10.240.100.4",
         "enabled": true,
         "overall_health": false,
         "health_failure_reason": "CONNECTION_ERROR",
         "changed": false
     }
 ]

pool: An object that represents the origin pool for which the health check event was generated. For example:

{
    "id": "987f3f96-c077-4124-87eb-846dc026e383",
    "name": "us-south-pool",
    "healthy_origins_threshold": 1,
    "enabled": true,
    "healthy": "DEGRADED",
    "changed": false
}