Monitoring Your Container Deployments with HCS

HostSpace's HCS provides a comprehensive UI for managing and monitoring your containerized applications without needing to use the command line. Here’s how you can set up and use monitoring features via the HCS UI:

Step-by-Step Guide for Monitoring Deployments on HCS

1. Access the Metrics Section

   • Log in to your HCS account.

   • Navigate to your dashboard and select the project/deployment you want to monitor.

   • Go to the "Metrics" section within your selected deployment.

2. Enable Monitoring

   • Ensure that monitoring is enabled for your deployment. This might involve toggling a switch or setting up monitoring configurations provided by HCS.

3. Set Up Monitoring Tools

Using Grafana and Prometheus

Grafana Configuration:

• Install Grafana: Ensure Grafana is installed and running.

• Add Prometheus as a Data Source:

  • Open Grafana, navigate to Configuration > Data Sources.

  • Click on "Add data source" and select "Prometheus."

  • Enter the URL of your Prometheus server, e.g., http://prometheus-server:9090.

  • Save and test the data source to ensure connectivity.

• Create Dashboards:

  • Go to Dashboards > New Dashboard.

  • Add panels to the dashboard to visualize key metrics like CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, and application-specific metrics.

  • Customize the panels to show real-time data and set appropriate time ranges for better visibility.

Prometheus Configuration:

• Set Up Prometheus:

  • Ensure Prometheus is installed and configured to scrape metrics from your deployment.

  • Add HCS endpoints to Prometheus' scrape configuration, typically in the prometheus.yml file.

  • Example configuration:

    yamlCopy codescrape_configs:
      - job_name: 'hcs-metrics'
        static_configs:
          - targets: ['<your-hcs-endpoint>']

• Define Alerting Rules:

  • Create alerting rules in the prometheus.yml file to trigger alerts based on specific metric thresholds.

  • Example alerting rule:

    yamlCopy codegroups:
      - name: hcs-alerts
        rules:
          - alert: HighCPUUsage
            expr: sum(rate(container_cpu_usage_seconds_total[1m])) by (instance) > 0.8
            for: 2m
            labels:
              severity: critical
            annotations:
              summary: "High CPU usage detected on {{ $labels.instance }}"
              description: "CPU usage has exceeded 80% for more than 2 minutes."

4. Configure Metrics Collection

   • Use HCS built-in metrics exporters or deploy additional exporters to collect necessary metrics from your deployment.

   • Ensure that metrics such as CPU usage, memory usage, disk I/O, and network traffic are being collected.

5. Set Up Alerts

   • Grafana Alerting:

     • Navigate to Alerting > Notification Channels in Grafana.

     • Add a new notification channel, specifying your preferred method (email, Slack, etc.).

     • Create alert rules within your dashboards and link them to the notification channel.

   • Prometheus Alerting:

     • Configure alert manager in Prometheus to handle alert notifications.

     • Example configuration:

       yamlCopy codeglobal:
         resolve_timeout: 5m
       
       route:
         receiver: 'email'
       
       receivers:
         - name: 'email'
           email_configs:
             - to: '[e-mail]'

6. Visualize Metrics

   • In Grafana, customize your dashboards to provide a comprehensive view of your deployment’s health.

   • Organize panels by different aspects of your deployments, such as resource utilization, application performance, and service health.

7. Advanced Operations

Resource Operations

• Access the "Resource Operations" section in HCS to manage operations like scaling, restarting, or stopping the deployment as needed.

Scheduled Tasks

• Set up scheduled tasks in the "Scheduled Tasks" section for automated operations and maintenance activities.

Webhooks

• Configure webhooks in the "Webhooks" section to trigger actions or notifications based on deployment events.