HAProxy and Grafana Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin gathers and reports statistics from HAProxy, a popular open-source load balancer and proxy server, to help in monitoring and optimizing its performance.

This plugin enables Telegraf to stream metrics directly to Grafana dashboards in real-time, leveraging Grafana Live for instantaneous data visualization and operational insights.

Integration details

HAProxy

The HAProxy plugin for Telegraf enables users to gather statistics directly from a HAProxy server via its stats socket or HTTP statistics page. HAProxy is a widely employed software load balancer and proxy server that provides high availability and performance for TCP and HTTP applications. By integrating with HAProxy, this plugin allows users to monitor and analyze various performance metrics such as active server counts, request rates, response codes, and session statuses in real-time, facilitating better decision-making and proactive management of network resources. Key features include support for both HTTP and socket-based metrics collection, compatibility with basic authentication for secure access, and configurable options for metric field naming, allowing for customization tailored to user preferences.

Grafana

Telegraf can be used to send real-time data to Grafana using the Websocket output plugin. Metrics collected by Telegraf are instantly pushed to Grafana dashboards, enabling real-time visualization and analysis. This plugin is ideal for use cases where low latency, live data visualization is essential, such as operational monitoring, real-time analytics, and immediate incident response scenarios. It supports authentication headers, customizable data serialization formats (like JSON), and secure communication via TLS, offering flexibility and ease of integration in dynamic, interactive dashboard environments.

Configuration

HAProxy

[[inputs.haproxy]]
  ## List of stats endpoints. Metrics can be collected from both http and socket
  ## endpoints. Examples of valid endpoints:
  ##   - http://myhaproxy.com:1936/haproxy?stats
  ##   - https://myhaproxy.com:8000/stats
  ##   - socket:/run/haproxy/admin.sock
  ##   - /run/haproxy/*.sock
  ##   - tcp://127.0.0.1:1936
  ##
  ## Server addresses not starting with 'http://', 'https://', 'tcp://' will be
  ## treated as possible sockets. When specifying local socket, glob patterns are
  ## supported.
  servers = ["http://myhaproxy.com:1936/haproxy?stats"]

  ## By default, some of the fields are renamed from what haproxy calls them.
  ## Setting this option to true results in the plugin keeping the original
  ## field names.
  # keep_field_names = false

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

Grafana

[[outputs.websocket]]
  ## Grafana Live WebSocket endpoint
  url = "ws://localhost:3000/api/live/push/custom_id"

  ## Optional headers for authentication
  # [outputs.websocket.headers]
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_GRAFANA_API_TOKEN"

  ## Data format to send metrics
  data_format = "influx"

  ## Timeouts (make sure read_timeout is larger than server ping interval or set to zero).
  # connect_timeout = "30s"
  # write_timeout = "30s"
  # read_timeout = "30s"

  ## Optionally turn on using text data frames (binary by default).
  # use_text_frames = false

  ## TLS configuration
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

Input and output integration examples

HAProxy

1. Dynamic Load Adjustment: Utilize the HAProxy plugin to monitor traffic patterns in real time, enabling automated adjustments to load balancing algorithms. By continuously gathering metrics on server loads and request rates, system administrators can dynamically allocate resources, ensuring that no single server becomes a bottleneck, thus enhancing overall application performance and availability.

2. Historical Performance Analytics: Integrate this plugin with a time series database to collect HAProxy metrics over time, allowing you to analyze historical performance and traffic trends. This can facilitate predictive analysis and planning for capacity, giving businesses insights into peak traffic times and helping to identify potential future resource needs.

3. Alerting on Anomalies: Implement alerting workflows that trigger when unusual patterns are detected in HAProxy metrics, such as sudden spikes in error rates or drops in request handling capacity. By leveraging this plugin, operations teams can receive timely notifications, allowing for swift intervention and minimizing the impact of potential downtime on end-users.

Grafana

1. Real-Time Infrastructure Dashboards: Deploy Telegraf to stream server health metrics directly to Grafana dashboards, enabling IT teams to visualize infrastructure performance in real-time. This setup allows immediate detection and response to critical system events.

2. Interactive IoT Monitoring: Integrate IoT device metrics collected by Telegraf and push live data into Grafana, creating dynamic and interactive dashboards for monitoring smart city projects or manufacturing processes. This real-time visibility significantly enhances responsiveness and operational efficiency.

3. Instantaneous Application Performance Analysis: Stream application metrics in real-time from production environments into Grafana dashboards, enabling development teams to rapidly detect and diagnose performance bottlenecks or anomalies during deployments, minimizing downtime and improving reliability.

4. Live Event Analytics: Utilize Telegraf to capture and stream real-time audience or system metrics during major live events directly into Grafana dashboards. Event organizers can dynamically monitor and react to changing conditions or trends, significantly enhancing audience engagement and operational decision-making.

Feedback

Thank you for being part of our community! If you have any general feedback or found any bugs on these pages, we welcome and encourage your input. Please submit your feedback in the InfluxDB community Slack.