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Collect Apache web server metrics with the Ops Agent

1. Security constraints defined by your organization might prevent you from completing the following steps. For troubleshooting information, see Develop applications in a constrained Google Cloud environment.

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Compute Engine, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and OS Config APIs.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the APIs

In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

• Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
• Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Go to project selector

If you're using an existing project for this guide, verify that you have the permissions required to complete this guide. If you created a new project, then you already have the required permissions.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Enable the Compute Engine, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and OS Config APIs.

Roles required to enable APIs

To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

Enable the APIs

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to create a Compute Engine instance, install Apache, and to view metric data, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on your project:

• Compute Instance Admin (v1) (roles/compute.instanceAdmin.v1)
• Monitoring Editor (roles/monitoring.editor)
• OSPolicyAssignment Admin (roles/osconfig.osPolicyAssignmentAdmin)
• Service Account User (roles/iam.serviceAccountUser)
• Service Usage Admin (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin)

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

Create a VM instance

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page:

   Go to VM instances

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Compute Engine.

2. Create a VM by clicking Create instance. Configure your instance by using the options in the navigation menu.
3. In the Machine configuration option, do the following:
   1. In the Name field, enter a descriptive name.
   2. In the Machine type preset drop-down, select Shared-core > e2-small.
4. Verify that the OS and storage option displays Debian GNU/Linux. If not, click the OS and storage option and click Change. In the Boot disk dialog, set Version to Debian GNU/Linux.
5. In the Networking option, for Firewall, select both Allow HTTP traffic and Allow HTTPS traffic.
6. Verify that the Observability option displays Install Ops Agent. If not, click the Observability option and select Install Ops Agent for Monitoring and Logging.
7. Click Create.

Install an Apache web server

To install an Apache web server on your Compute Engine VM instance, do the following:

1. On the VM instances page, locate your new VM, go to the Connect column, and then click SSH.

   Having trouble connecting? Refer to Troubleshooting SSH.

2. To update the package lists, copy the following command to your clipboard, paste the command into the SSH terminal, and then press enter:

   sudo apt-get update
   

3. After you see the message "Reading package lists... Done", in the SSH terminal, run the following command to install an Apache2 web server:

   sudo apt-get install apache2 php7.0
   

   When asked to continue the installation, enter Y. If the install command fails, then use sudo apt-get install apache2 php.

4. When your command prompt returns, go to the VM instances page and copy the VM's external IP address into the following URL:

   http://EXTERNAL_IP
   

5. To connect to your Apache web server, open a new browser tab, and then enter the URL from the previous step.

   When the web server is successfully installed, the browser tab displays the Apache2 Debian default page.

   

Collect Apache web server logs and metrics

Copy the following command, then paste it into the terminal for your instance, and then press enter:

# Configures Ops Agent to collect telemetry from the app. You must restart the agent for the configuration to take effect.

set -e

# Check if the file exists
if [ ! -f /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml ]; then
  # Create the file if it doesn't exist.
  sudo mkdir -p /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent
  sudo touch /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml
fi

# Create a back up of the existing file so existing configurations are not lost.
sudo cp /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml.bak

# Configure the Ops Agent.
sudo tee /etc/google-cloud-ops-agent/config.yaml > /dev/null << EOF
metrics:
  receivers:
    apache:
      type: apache
  service:
    pipelines:
      apache:
        receivers:
          - apache
logging:
  receivers:
    apache_access:
      type: apache_access
    apache_error:
      type: apache_error
  service:
    pipelines:
      apache:
        receivers:
          - apache_access
          - apache_error
EOF

The previous command creates the configuration to collect and ingest logs and metrics from the Apache web server. For more information, see Configure the Ops Agent for Apache web server.

Generate traffic

To generate traffic to your Apache web server, do the following:

1. Go to the SSH terminal for your VM instance. If you don't have a terminal open, then do the following:

   1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page:

      Go to VM instances

      If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Compute Engine.

   2. Locate your new VM and then click SSH.

2. In the SSH terminal, run the following command, which generates requests to your Apache web server:

   timeout 120 bash -c -- 'while true; do curl localhost; sleep $((RANDOM % 4)) ; done'

3. Wait two minutes for the command prompt to return or for the terminal to close. While the command is running, HTML text is shown in the terminal.

View Apache metrics

To view the Apache Overview dashboard, which is automatically created, do the following:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the dashboard Dashboards page:

   Go to Dashboards

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

2. In the My Dashboards pane, select the Apache Overview dashboard from the list.

   

You've configured the Ops Agent to collect logs and metrics from your Apache web server, and you've viewed the metrics. The next step is to create an alerting policy so that you're notified when load on your Apache web server exceeds a threshold.

Create an email notification channel

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the notifications Alerting page:

   Go to Alerting

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

2. In the toolbar, click Edit Notification Channels.
3. On the Notification channels page, scroll to Email, and then click Add new.
4. Enter your email address, a display name such as My email, and then click Save.

Create an alerting policy

In this section, you create an alerting policy so that you are notified when the traffic to your Apache web server exceeds a defined threshold:

1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the notifications Alerting page:

   Go to Alerting

   If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Monitoring.

2. Click Create policy.

3. Select the time series to be monitored:

   1. Click Select a metric and select VM instance.
   2. In the Active metric categories list, select Apache.
   3. In the Active metrics list, select workload/apache.traffic.
   4. Click Apply.

   The chart for Apache traffic is shown.

4. Advance to the Configure trigger fields, and then set the Threshold value field to 1500.

   The chart displays the threshold as a dashed line. Ensure that the dashed line is much less than the peak traffic level.

5. Advance to the Notifications and name fields, and then use the Notification channels menu to select your email address.

6. For the policy name, enter Apache traffic above threshold.

7. Advance to the Review alert fields, review the alerting policy, and then click Create policy.

Test the alerting policy

To test the alerting policy, generate traffic that exceeds the threshold:

1. Go to the SSH terminal for your VM instance. If you don't have a terminal open, then do the following:

   1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the VM instances page:

      Go to VM instances

      If you use the search bar to find this page, then select the result whose subheading is Compute Engine.

   2. Locate your new VM and then click SSH.

2. In the SSH terminal, run the following command, which generates requests to your Apache web server:

   timeout 120 bash -c -- 'while true; do curl localhost; sleep $((RANDOM % 4)) ; done'

3. Wait two minutes for the command prompt to return or for the terminal to close. While the command is running, HTML text is shown in the terminal.

4. When the command prompt returns, check your email for a message whose subject line begins with [ALERT].

   If you don't see an email, then examine the chart on the alerting policy to verify that the traffic level exceeded the threshold. You might need to run the previous command again. Otherwise, wait a minute or two for the email to arrive.

   The notification provides a summary of the alerting policy and a link to an incident. Each incident contains a record of the failure, and these are typically helpful when troubleshooting.

   

You've configured the Ops Agent to collect logs and metrics from your Apache web server, but you've only viewed metrics. For information about how to view Apache web server logs, see the quickstart View Apache web server logs.