cgroups

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the cgroups monitor. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the cgroups monitor type to report statistics about cgroups on Linux. This receiver supports cgroups version 1, not the newer cgroups version 2 unified implementation.

This monitor is available on Linux.

For general information on cgroups, see the Linux control groups and Linux Kernel documentation:

For detailed information on cpu and memory cgroup metrics, see the Red Hat guides:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/resource_management_guide/sec-cpu Note that the cpuacct cgroup is primarily an informational cgroup that gives detailed information on how long processes in a cgroup used the CPU.
https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/resource_management_guide/sec-memory

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
- Install on Kubernetes
- Install on Linux
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/cgroups:
    type: cgroups
    ... # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/cgroups]

Filtering

You can limit the cgroups for which metrics are generated with the cgroups config option to the receiver.

For example, the following only monitors Docker-generated cgroups:

receivers:
  smartagent/cgroups:
    type: cgroups
    cgroups:
      "/docker/*"

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for this receiver:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`cgroups`	no	`list of strings`	The cgroup names to include or exclude, based on the full hierarchy path. This set can be overridden. If not provided, `cgroups` defaults to a list of all cgroups. For example, to monitor all Docker container cgroups, you could use a value of `["/docker/*"]`.

Metrics

The following metrics are available for this integration:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector/main/internal/signalfx-agent/pkg/monitors/cgroups/metadata.yaml

Notes

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types.
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics.

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups.

Documentation