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Riemann – A network monitoring system

riemann.io

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Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#81

Evaluated it, and ultimately rejected it for a couple of reasons: - You must pick up Clojure to understand and configure Riemann (we're not a Clojure shop, so this is a non-trivial requirement) - Config file isn't a config file, it's an executed bit of Clojure code - Riemann is not a replacement for an alerting mechanism, it's another signal for alerting mechanisms (though since it's Clojure and the configuration fil…

[deleted]

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#82
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be really hesitant recommending Skyline, since Etsy has declared it and the rest of Kale a failure. https://vimeo.com/131581331

We use it (well, a derivative of it) to great success. The trend monitoring has proven invaluable at early detection of problems, at a level where pure thresholds would produce much more noise than signal.

What derivative are you using?

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#83
All new monitoring systems should be named YAMF-X (Yet Another Monitoring Framework)

Jokes aside.. while the stream processing on events seem powerful there was something similar in graphite but probably not as advanced or easy to use. However the push approach brings its own limitations specially on existing setups.

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use it (well, a derivative of it) to great success. The trend monitoring has proven invaluable at early detection of problems, at a level where pure thresholds would produce much more noise than signal.

What derivative are you using?

The falcolas derivative. Working on getting it open sourced and released... gotta love bureaucracy.

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#85
post #12
post #3

Clojure. I think I should stop thinking and really learn that language now. It seems very tempting as a first functional language.

It's an excellent beginner FP language. Clojure is fairly minimal and requires learning only a few concepts to become productive. At the same time it continues to see more use in the industry, so it's one of the easier FP languages to actually get a job with as well. I wrote a starter guide that might be helpful https://yogthos.github.io/ClojureDistilled.html There's also a free book that's very good http://www.brave…

Thanks for compiling such a great resource. I have had a look at it, and will go through it this weekend. I have also been doing some 4clojure in my spare time.

Although Brave and True looks like a great book, its not for me. I would love a book which blazes me through things rather than hand holding me through every concept. I have been looking at Living Clojure and will probably get that.

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#86
post #36
post #3

Clojure. I think I should stop thinking and really learn that language now. It seems very tempting as a first functional language.

Functional means different things to different people. By all means learn Clojure, but also learn a functional language with a first-class type system (e.g. Haskell).

Ah, Haskell. I find it equal parts fascinating and scary. I definitely won't start at Haskell, although I would surely want to come to it at some point of time. Static typing looks nice.

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#87
Love Riemann. So much that I'm writing a book about monitoring with Riemann as the core routing engine:

http://artofmonitoring.com/

There's a sample chapter available, which covers the initial Riemann implementation and a Clojure "getting started" guide which should help anyone - even if you're not interested in the rest of the book! :)

http://artofmonitoring.com/TheArtOfMonitoring_sample.pdf

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#88

Evaluated it, and ultimately rejected it for a couple of reasons: - You must pick up Clojure to understand and configure Riemann (we're not a Clojure shop, so this is a non-trivial requirement) - Config file isn't a config file, it's an executed bit of Clojure code - Riemann is not a replacement for an alerting mechanism, it's another signal for alerting mechanisms (though since it's Clojure and the configuration fil…

We use Riemann at Two Sigma to monitor/alert/heal our Mesos cluster [1], precisely because of above reasons to reject. >- You must pick up Clojure to understand and configure Riemann (we're not a Clojure shop, so this is a non-trivial requirement) >- Config file isn't a config file, it's an executed bit of Clojure code This is actually great -- static files quickly become their own franken-languages, with code genera…

> You probably don't want another alerting mechanism; you probably already have pagerduty or something else -- what you want is a rich way to create the alert

This is the heart of why we use Riemann. When we first started using it 2 years ago, we had thousands of different types of error emails per day (due to monitoring thousands of retail stores, all with their quirks). Because Riemann config is just code, we were able to build systems and abstractions on top of it for describing the various error types and their semantics. E.g If 500s are being returned from service A, only alert us if > 1% of those requests failed in the last 2 minutes. You can get these kinds of rules in something like Nagios, but if you want customization, you have to deal with plugins. Here, it's just code. If we don't like it, we change it. The result is that there's no excuse to setup gmail filters. You can ensure that all errors are actionable.

Re: Riemann – A network monitoring system

#89

Evaluated it, and ultimately rejected it for a couple of reasons: - You must pick up Clojure to understand and configure Riemann (we're not a Clojure shop, so this is a non-trivial requirement) - Config file isn't a config file, it's an executed bit of Clojure code - Riemann is not a replacement for an alerting mechanism, it's another signal for alerting mechanisms (though since it's Clojure and the configuration fil…

> Config file isn't a config file, it's an executed bit of Clojure code

What exactly here is the problem for you? That config is not a config, or that it's specifically Clojure?

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