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IBM Cloud Monitoring integration

IBM Cloud Monitoring integration

IBM Cloud® Monitoring is a cloud-native and container-intelligent management system that you can include as part of your IBM Cloud® architecture. Use it to gain operational visibility into the performance and health of your applications, services, and platforms. It offers administrators, DevOps teams, and developers full-stack telemetry with advanced features to monitor and troubleshoot, define alerts, and design custom dashboards.

Currently, IBM Cloud Monitoring integration is available for DNS Services deployments according to the following table:

IBM Cloud Monitoring regions
Deployment Region IBM Cloud Monitoring Region
Dallas Dallas
Frankfurt Frankfurt
London London
Madrid Madrid
Osaka Osaka
Paris Paris
São Paulo São Paulo
Sydney Sydney
Tokyo Tokyo
Toronto Toronto
Washington DC Washington DC

Platform metrics overview

You can configure only one instance of the IBM Cloud® Monitoring service per region to collect platform metrics. Platform metrics are enabled by default in all instances, and cannot be disabled.

  • Provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring service. After you provision the Monitoring instance, the Observability page opens. To continue working with IBM Cloud, go back to the IBM Cloud UI.
  • To configure the Monitoring instance, you must turn on the platform metrics configuration setting.
  • If a Monitoring instance in a region is already enabled to collect platform metrics, metrics from enabled-monitoring services are collected automatically and available for monitoring through this instance. For more information about enabled-monitoring services, see IBM Cloud® services.
  • Use the Metrics Router to allow customers to configure which Sysdig instance their platform metrics flows to. To learn more about Metrics Router, see IBM Cloud Metrics Routing.

To monitor platform metrics, check that the Monitoring instance is provisioned in the same region where the IBM Cloud instance is provisioned.

Viewing metrics

To monitor DNS Services metrics, you must launch the IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI instance that is enabled for platform metrics in the region where your IBM Cloud instance is available.

You can use different options to launch the IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI and monitor metrics that are described in the following section.

Launching IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI from the Observability page

Complete the following steps to launch the IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI from the Observability page:

  1. Launch the IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI.

  2. Click DASHBOARDS.

  3. In the Default Dashboards section, expand IBM.

  4. Choose the DNS Services Dashboard from the list.

    You can also reach your deployment's IBM Cloud Monitoring Dashboard from IBM Cloud Monitoring in the sidebar, under IBM.

    Next, change the scope or make a copy of the Default dashboard to monitor an DNS Services instance.

DNS Services metrics dictionary

DNS Services collects two levels of platform metrics from two locations within the data path; the data path and custom resolvers. By default, you'll receive only the summary of metrics which gives a minimum amount of information about DNS query requests, DNS query results, and custom resolver location health.

Open a Network Support case to enable the total metrics set.

Platform metrics are priced per usage.

Enabling the total metrics set increases the amount of metrics you receive, and can incur a greater cost depending on your usage.

Data path summary metrics

The data path summary metrics provide the request count and response count with the corresponding response codes.

Data path metrics summary
Metric name Labels
ibm_dns_svcs_dns_requests_summary not available
ibm_dns_svcs_dns_responses_summary rtype

The labels correspond to the following definitions:

  • rtype - Response type: NOERROR, SERVFAIL, and so on.

Data path total platform metrics

Data path total platform metrics collect the following set of metrics in a DNS Services instance:

Total DNS requests
Metric name Labels
ibm_dns_svcs_dns_requests_total qtype, proto, family, accountid, zoneid, zonename, instanceid, vpcid, mtype
ibm_dns_svcs_dns_responses_total rtype, accountid, zoneid, zonename, instanceid, vpcid, mtype, cachehit

The labels correspond to the following definitions:

  • qtype - Resource records type: A, AAAA, CNAME, NS, MX, TXT, and so on
  • rtype - Response type: NOERROR, SERVFAIL, and so on
  • proto - Protocol type: UDP or TCP
  • family - Transport family: IPv4 or IPv6
  • accountid - ID of the account which owns the DNS Service instance configured for this query
  • zoneid - ID of the zone for which the DNS query is configured for
  • zonename - Name of the zone for which the DNS query is configured for
  • instanceid - ID of the DNS Service instance configured for this query
  • vpcid - ID of the VPC from which this query originates from
  • mtype - Metric type: public or private
  • cachehit - True or false depending on if the response was served from cache

Custom resolver summary metrics

The custom resolver summary provides custom resolver location health.

Custom resolver summary metrics
Metric name Labels
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_location_health crid, accountid, instanceid, locationip
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_dp_health crid, accountid, instanceid, locationip

Where:

  • ibm_dns_svcs_cr_location_health is a metric that helps determine the health of critical applications in a custom resolver location. The values are 0 for unhealthy and 1 for healthy.
  • ibm_dns_svcs_cr_dp_health is a metric that shows the connectivity to the configured default forwarding rule IPs in the custom resolver location. This metric is marked 1 (healthy) when any one of the IPs in the default forwarding rule has connectivity. A 0 (unhealthy) means that none of the IPs in the default forwarding rule have connectivity.

The labels correspond to the following definitions:

  • crid - The ID of the custom resolver
  • accountid - The ID of the account which owns the DNS Service instance
  • instanceid - The ID of the DNS Service instance
  • locationip - The IP address of the virtual server instance appliance acting as a custom resolver location

Custom resolver total platform metrics

The set of metrics associates with DNS resolution through custom resolvers:

Custom resolver platform metrics
Metric Name Label
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_dns_requests_total server, zone, proto, family, type, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_dns_responses_total server, zone, rcode, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_cache_requests_total server, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_cache_hits_total server, type, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_cache_misses_total server, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_forward_requests_total to, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_forward_responses_total to, rcode, crid, accountid, instanceid
ibm_dns_svcs_cr_location_health crid, accountid, instanceid, locationip

The labels correspond to the following definitions:

  • server - The forwarding rule that handled this query
  • zone – The zone the query is for
  • type - Resource records type: A, AAAA, CNAME, NS, MX, TXT, and so on
  • proto - Protocol type: UDP or TCP
  • family - Transport family: IPv4 or IPv6
  • to – IP of the resolver the request is forwarded to
  • rcode – Response code of the forwarded query
  • crid - The ID of the custom resolver the query was handled by
  • accountid - The ID of the account which owns the DNS Service instance configured for this query
  • instanceid - The ID of the DNS Service instance configured for this query
  • locationip – The IP address of the virtual server instance appliance acting as a custom resolver location

DNS Services Dashboard's dictionary

The following table outlines the pre-defined dashboards that you can use to monitor DNS Services metrics:

Pre-defined dashboard
Dashboard name Description
DNS Services - Metrics Summary The default summary dashboard that opens when you launch IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI from your service instance UI.
DNS Services - DP Metrics The default data path dashboard that opens when you launch IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI from your service instance UI.
DNS Services - Custom Resolver (CR) Metrics The default custom resolver dashboard that opens when you launch IBM Cloud Monitoring web UI from your service instance UI.

The Default dashboard cannot be changed.