New Relic Synthetics Plugin

This plugin runs queries against New Relic Insights to calculate things like % of locations with a failure. It works by querying Insights every 30 seconds, calculating the new metrics (like % of failing locations) and publishing the results as Plugin metrics.

Installation and Setup

There are currently 3 options for running this plugin:

Run the plugin directly through NodeJS
Run the plugin as a Docker container
Run the plugin inside K8S

Setup and Run Directly

Here are the steps to get set up with this plugin:

Pre-requisite is NodeJS (7.10 or newer) and npm
Clone or download this repository
Once in the directory run npm install
Setup your configuration for a single account

Once you are all set up you can run the plugin with npm start

Setup and Run as Docker Container

Thanks to @ntkach there are now some Docker files. Here's how you run through Docker.

Pre-requisite is NodeJS (8 or newer) and npm
Clone or download this repository
Once in the directory run npm install
Create the ENV variables (see the 4 required variables below)
Build the container with something such as: docker build -t nr-synthetics-plugin .
Run the container detatched with the compose file: docker-compose up -d

Setup and Run inside K8S

Here's how you run through K8S.

Clone or download this repository
Copy config/default.json to config/production.json
Put in the required license keys in the config
Build the container like docker build -t kenahrens/nr-synthetics-plugin:2.2.2 . and publish to your K8S repository
Run the deployment with kubectl apply -f k8s/plugin-deployment.yaml

Metrics Included

For every monitor that has reported data, this plugin currently will calculate and publish the following metrics:

Component/Location/{locationName}/Success[pct]
Component/Location/{locationName}/Failure[pct]
Component/Location/{locationName}/Duration[ms]
Component/Overall/Success[pct]
Component/Overall/Success[count]
Component/Overall/Failure[pct]
Component/Overall/Failure[count]
Component/Overall/Duration[ms]

Configure for a Single Account

There is a config file default.json which defines the required keys. You have 2 options for how to configure the keys:

Config File: Copy default.json and create your own config file
Environment Variables: Set environment variables

Single Account: Config file

Copy default.json and make your own file like ken-config.json. At runtime you must define an environment variable NODE_ENV and set to the name of your file (do not include the extension).

kahrens@envy5:~/dev/node/nr-synthetics-plugin$ ls -al config/
total 20
drwxrwxr-x 2 kahrens kahrens 4096 Mar 27 10:41 .
drwxrwxr-x 7 kahrens kahrens 4096 Jun 26 15:28 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kahrens kahrens  359 Mar 27 10:41 ahrens.json
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kahrens kahrens  214 Mar 27 10:15 custom-environment-variables.json
-rw-rw-r-- 1 kahrens kahrens  226 Mar 27 10:15 default.json
kahrens@envy5:~/dev/node/nr-synthetics-plugin$ export NODE_ENV=ahrens

Donor and Recipient Account setup

To setup a different event source (donor) and target (recipient) account Insights events, that is pulling Synthetics events and then publishing plugin metrics to a different account. Set and add the following optional properties to your default.json file.

{
    "licenseKey": "<Recipient account license key>"
    "target":{
       "accountId": "<Recipient   account ID>",    
       "insightsInsertKey": "<Recipient Insights Insert key>",
       "insightsQueryKey":"<Recipient Insights Query key>"
     }

}

Sample JSON:

{
  "guid": "com.adg.synthetics.monitor.Synthetics",
  "duration": 30,
  "licenseKey": "888111-1112222333444555666",
  "configArr": [
    "newrelic"
  ],
  "newrelic": {
    "accountId": "12345",
    "insightsQueryKey": "12345-QueryKey",
    "insightsInsertKey": "12345-InsertKey",

    "restAPIAdminKey":"12345-restAPIAdminkey"

    "target":{
      "accountId": "888111",
      "insightsQueryKey":"888111-QueryKey",
      "insightsInsertKey": "888111-InsertKey"
    }
  }
}

Monitor retrieval using REST API

For accounts with 1,000+ Synthetics monitors, use the Synthetics REST API to retrieve the monitors.
Set the value to the account owner/admin user API Key

{
    "restAPIAdminKey": "Source REST API Admin key"
}

Sample JSON

Extract Synthetics events from source/donor account and publish Plugin metrics and Plugin custom Insights events to a recipient account.


{
  "guid": "com.adg.synthetics.monitor.Synthetics",
  "duration": 30,
  "licenseKey": "888111-1112222333444555666",   <-- publish Plugin metrics to recipient account
  "configArr": [
    "newrelic"
  ],
  "newrelic": {
    "accountId": "12345",
    "insightsQueryKey": "12345-QueryKey",
    "insightsInsertKey": "12345-InsertKey",

    "restAPIAdminKey":"12345-restAPIAdminkey",  <-- read from source account 12345

    "target":{
      "accountId": "888111",
      "insightsQueryKey":"888111-QueryKey",     <-- query Insights events from recipient account
      "insightsInsertKey": "888111-InsertKey"   <-- publish custom Insights events to recipient account
    }

  }
}

Single Account: Environment Variables

If you want to query metrics from a single account and post to the same account, you can just set these 3 environment variables:

NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY maps to licenseKey (for plugin to publish metrics)
NEWRELIC_ACCOUNT_ID maps to accountId
NEWRELIC_INSIGHTS_QUERY_KEY maps to insightsQueryKey (for plugin to query metrics)
NEWRELIC_INSIGHTS_INSERT_KEY maps to insightsInsertKey (for plugin to publish events)

Running the Plugin Directly

You can run the plugin directly like so. Note that it picked up my NODE_ENV that I set earlier to ahrens.

kahrens@envy5:~/dev/node/nr-synthetics-plugin$ npm start

> nr-synthetics-plugin@2.1.1 start /home/kahrens/dev/node/nr-synthetics-plugin
> node index.js

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:27:33 GMT - info: Synthetics Plugin version: 2.1.1 started:
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:27:33 GMT - info: * GUID: com.adg.synthetics.monitor.Synthetics
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:27:33 GMT - info: * Frequency is every 30s, cron: (*/30 * * * * *)
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:27:33 GMT - info: * Running as a single config.
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:28:00 GMT - info: Starting poll cycle with NODE_ENV Environment: ahrens
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:28:00 GMT - info: - Query by location: (14) locations < (55) monitors
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:28:01 GMT - info: - There are: 55 monitors
Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:28:01 GMT - info: - Processing complete for : 55 monitors

Running the Plugin with Forever

Or you can use forever to launch the plugin (and re-launch if it crashes):

kahrens:nr-synthetics-plugin kahrens$ ./node_modules/forever/bin/forever start index.js 
warn:    --minUptime not set. Defaulting to: 1000ms
warn:    --spinSleepTime not set. Your script will exit if it does not stay up for at least 1000ms
info:    Forever processing file: index.js

This is how you get a list of all your forever processes:

kahrens:nr-synthetics-plugin kahrens$ ./node_modules/forever/bin/forever list
info:    Forever processes running
data:        uid  command             script   forever pid   id logfile                          uptime      
data:    [0] UKn_ /usr/local/bin/node index.js 70782   70783    /Users/kahrens/.forever/UKn_.log 0:0:0:8.935

And this is how you get the log:

kahrens:nr-synthetics-plugin kahrens$ ./node_modules/forever/bin/forever logs 0
data:    index.js:71019 - Mon, 22 Aug 2016 12:45:59 GMT - info: Synthetics Plugin started
data:    index.js:71019 - Mon, 22 Aug 2016 12:46:00 GMT - info: Starting poll cycle with env: multi
data:    index.js:71019 - Mon, 22 Aug 2016 12:46:00 GMT - info: getMonitorList for: Ahrens Design Group
data:    index.js:71019 - Mon, 22 Aug 2016 12:46:00 GMT - info: getMonitorList for: Demotron

This is how you stop your plugin, then run list to see it's no longer running.

kahrens:nr-synthetics-plugin kahrens$ ./node_modules/forever/bin/forever stop index.js 
info:    Forever stopped process:
    uid  command             script   forever pid   id logfile                          uptime      
[0] UKn_ /usr/local/bin/node index.js 70782   70783    /Users/kahrens/.forever/UKn_.log 0:0:8:0.212

Running the Tests

The tests work if you're using a single account and will make sure your node environment is setup properly. All you have to do to run them is:

kahrens:nr-synthetics-plugin kahrens$ npm test

> nr-synthetics-plugin@1.0.0 test /Users/kahrens/Documents/github/nr-synthetics-plugin
> mocha

  New Relic Insights API Test
    ✓ calls the query api (271ms)

  New Relic Plugin Make Metric Test
    ✓ makes a full metric name
    ✓ makes the complete metric JSON

  3 passing (283ms)

kenahrens / nr-synthetics-plugin

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