Monitor cluster metrics with DSE Metrics Collector

DSE Metrics Collector aggregates DataStax Enterprise (DSE) metrics and integrates with existing monitoring solutions to facilitate problem resolution and remediation.

DSE Metrics Collector is built on collectd, a well-supported, open-source metric collection agent. With support for many plugins, you can configure DSE Metrics Collector to collect metrics that are most important to your organization.

Enable or disable DSE Metrics Collector

When enabled, DSE sends metrics and other structured events to DSE Metrics Collector.

Use dsetool insights_config to enable or disable DSE Metrics Collector.

Run dsetool insights_config commands on one node only. The change is propagated to other nodes automatically. You don’t need to restart DSE.

Get current configuration

Get the current DSE Metrics Collector configuration:

dsetool insights_config --show_config

Enable DSE Metrics Collector

DSE Metrics Collector is enabled by default. It must be enabled to aggregate and collect metrics.

If you disabled DSE Metrics Collector, you can reenable it with dsetool insights_config:

Enable metrics collection with local storage:

dsetool insights_config --mode ENABLED_WITH_LOCAL_STORAGE

Enable metrics collection for reporting to a real-time monitoring system:
```
dsetool insights_config --mode ENABLED_NO_STORAGE
```

For other options, see the command reference for dsetool insights_config.

Disable DSE Metrics Collector

You can disable DSE Metrics Collector with dsetool insights_config:

dsetool insights_config --mode DISABLED

Configure DSE Metrics Collector

When DSE Metrics Collector is enabled, you can set configuration options, directories, and filters:

Use dsetool insights_config to set the following:
- Storage mode.
- Frequency of metrics collection.
- Frequency at which configuration changes are propagated to all nodes in a cluster.
- Frequency at which node system information is collected.
- Maximum size of the local data directory when DSE Metrics Collector is enabled with local storage.
Set DSE Metrics Collector JVM startup properties.
Use insights_options in dse.yaml to set the directories where DSE Metrics Collector stores metrics data and logs.
Use dsetool insights_filters to create filters to include or exclude metrics.

You can modify the configuration settings as needed if your monitoring requirements change, or the metrics dashboards and exports aren’t providing the necessary insight.

Export and visualize metrics

You can use built-in dashboards, or you can export aggregated metrics to external monitoring and visualization tools like Prometheus, Graphite, Splunk, and Grafana: