Jenkins and Splunk Integration

Input and output integration overview

The Jenkins plugin collects vital information regarding jobs and nodes from a Jenkins instance through its API, facilitating comprehensive monitoring and analysis.

This output plugin facilitates direct streaming of Telegraf collected metrics into Splunk via the HTTP Event Collector, enabling easy integration with Splunk’s powerful analytics platform.

Integration details

Jenkins

The Jenkins Telegraf plugin allows users to gather metrics from a Jenkins instance without needing to install any additional plugins on Jenkins itself. By utilizing the Jenkins API, the plugin retrieves information about nodes and jobs running in the Jenkins environment. This integration provides a comprehensive overview of the Jenkins infrastructure, including real-time metrics that can be used for monitoring and analysis. Key features include configurable filters for job and node selection, optional TLS security settings, and the ability to manage request timeouts and connection limits effectively. This makes it an essential tool for teams that rely on Jenkins for continuous integration and delivery, ensuring they have the insights they need to maintain optimal performance and reliability.

Splunk

Use Telegraf to easily collect and aggregate metrics from many different sources and send them to Splunk. Utilizing the HTTP output plugin combined with the specialized Splunk metrics serializer, this configuration ensures efficient data ingestion into Splunk’s metrics indexes. The HEC is an advanced mechanism provided by Splunk designed to reliably collect data at scale via HTTP or HTTPS, providing critical capabilities for security, monitoring, and analytics workloads. Telegraf’s integration with Splunk HEC streamlines operations by leveraging standard HTTP protocols, built-in authentication, and structured data serialization, optimizing metrics ingestion and enabling immediate actionable insights.

Configuration

Jenkins

[[inputs.jenkins]]
  ## The Jenkins URL in the format "schema://host:port"
  url = "http://my-jenkins-instance:8080"
  # username = "admin"
  # password = "admin"

  ## Set response_timeout
  response_timeout = "5s"

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

  ## Optional Max Job Build Age filter
  ## Default 1 hour, ignore builds older than max_build_age
  # max_build_age = "1h"

  ## Optional Sub Job Depth filter
  ## Jenkins can have unlimited layer of sub jobs
  ## This config will limit the layers of pulling, default value 0 means
  ## unlimited pulling until no more sub jobs
  # max_subjob_depth = 0

  ## Optional Sub Job Per Layer
  ## In workflow-multibranch-plugin, each branch will be created as a sub job.
  ## This config will limit to call only the lasted branches in each layer,
  ## empty will use default value 10
  # max_subjob_per_layer = 10

  ## Jobs to include or exclude from gathering
  ## When using both lists, job_exclude has priority.
  ## Wildcards are supported: [ "jobA/*", "jobB/subjob1/*"]
  # job_include = [ "*" ]
  # job_exclude = [ ]

  ## Nodes to include or exclude from gathering
  ## When using both lists, node_exclude has priority.
  # node_include = [ "*" ]
  # node_exclude = [ ]

  ## Worker pool for jenkins plugin only
  ## Empty this field will use default value 5
  # max_connections = 5

  ## When set to true will add node labels as a comma-separated tag. If none,
  ## are found, then a tag with the value of 'none' is used. Finally, if a
  ## label contains a comma it is replaced with an underscore.
  # node_labels_as_tag = false

Splunk

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Splunk HTTP Event Collector endpoint
  url = "https://splunk.example.com:8088/services/collector"

  ## HTTP method to use
  method = "POST"

  ## Splunk authentication token
  headers = {"Authorization" = "Splunk YOUR_SPLUNK_HEC_TOKEN"}

  ## Serializer for formatting metrics specifically for Splunk
  data_format = "splunkmetric"

  ## Optional parameters
  # timeout = "5s"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"

Input and output integration examples

Jenkins

1. Continuous Integration Monitoring: Use the Jenkins plugin to monitor the performance of continuous integration pipelines by collecting metrics on job durations and failure rates. This can help teams identify bottlenecks in the pipeline and improve overall build efficiency.

2. Resource Allocation Analysis: Leverage Jenkins node metrics to assess resource usage across different agents. By understanding how resources are allocated, teams can optimize their Jenkins architecture, potentially reallocating agents or adjusting job configurations for better performance.

3. Job Execution Trends: Analyze historical job performance metrics to identify trends in job execution over time. With this data, teams can proactively address potential issues before they grow, making adjustments to the jobs or their configurations as needed.

4. Alerting for Job Failures: Implement alerts that leverage the Jenkins job metrics to notify team members in case of job failures. This proactive approach can enhance operational awareness and speed up response times to failures, ensuring that critical jobs are monitored effectively.

Splunk

1. Real-Time Security Analytics: Utilize this plugin to stream security-related metrics from various applications into Splunk in real-time. Organizations can detect threats instantly by correlating data streams across systems, significantly reducing detection and response times.

2. Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: Integrate Telegraf to consolidate metrics from multi-cloud environments directly into Splunk, enabling comprehensive visibility and operational intelligence. This unified monitoring allows teams to detect performance issues quickly and streamline cloud resource management.

3. Dynamic Capacity Planning: Deploy the plugin to continuously push resource metrics from container orchestration platforms (like Kubernetes) into Splunk. Leveraging Splunk’s analytics capabilities, teams can automate predictive scaling and resource allocation, avoiding resource bottlenecks and minimizing costs.

4. Automated Incident Response Workflows: Combine this plugin with Splunk’s alerting system to create automated incident response workflows. Metrics collected by Telegraf trigger real-time alerts and automated remediation scripts, ensuring rapid resolution and maintaining high system availability.

Feedback

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