OpenStack and Thanos Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin collects metrics from essential OpenStack services, facilitating the monitoring and management of cloud infrastructures.

This plugin sends metrics from Telegraf to Thanos using the Prometheus remote write protocol over HTTP, allowing efficient and scalable ingestion into Thanos Receive components.

Integration details

OpenStack

The OpenStack plugin allows users to collect performance metrics from various OpenStack services such as CINDER, GLANCE, HEAT, KEYSTONE, NEUTRON, and NOVA. It supports multiple OpenStack APIs to fetch critical metrics related to these services, enabling comprehensive monitoring and management of cloud resources. As organizations increasingly adopt OpenStack for their cloud infrastructure, this plugin plays a vital role in providing insights into resource usage, availability, and performance across the cloud environment. Configuration options allow for customized polling intervals and filtering unwanted tags to optimize performance and cardinals.

Thanos

Telegraf’s HTTP plugin can send metrics directly to Thanos via its Remote Write-compatible Receive component. By setting the data format to prometheusremotewrite, Telegraf can serialize metrics into the same protobuf-based format used by native Prometheus clients. This setup enables high-throughput, low-latency metric ingestion into Thanos, facilitating centralized observability at scale. It is particularly useful in hybrid environments where Telegraf is collecting metrics from systems outside Prometheus’ native reach, such as SNMP devices, Windows hosts, or custom apps, and streams them directly to Thanos for long-term storage and global querying.

Configuration

OpenStack

[[inputs.openstack]]
  ## The recommended interval to poll is '30m'

  ## The identity endpoint to authenticate against and get the service catalog from.
  authentication_endpoint = "https://my.openstack.cloud:5000"

  ## The domain to authenticate against when using a V3 identity endpoint.
  # domain = "default"

  ## The project to authenticate as.
  # project = "admin"

  ## User authentication credentials. Must have admin rights.
  username = "admin"
  password = "password"

  ## Available services are:
  ## "agents", "aggregates", "cinder_services", "flavors", "hypervisors",
  ## "networks", "nova_services", "ports", "projects", "servers",
  ## "serverdiagnostics", "services", "stacks", "storage_pools", "subnets",
  ## "volumes"
  # enabled_services = ["services", "projects", "hypervisors", "flavors", "networks", "volumes"]

  ## Query all instances of all tenants for the volumes and server services
  ## NOTE: Usually this is only permitted for administrators!
  # query_all_tenants = true

  ## output secrets (such as adminPass(for server) and UserID(for volume)).
  # output_secrets = false

  ## Amount of time allowed to complete the HTTP(s) request.
  # timeout = "5s"

  ## HTTP Proxy support
  # http_proxy_url = ""

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = /path/to/cafile
  # tls_cert = /path/to/certfile
  # tls_key = /path/to/keyfile
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Options for tags received from Openstack
  # tag_prefix = "openstack_tag_"
  # tag_value = "true"

  ## Timestamp format for timestamp data received from Openstack.
  ## If false format is unix nanoseconds.
  # human_readable_timestamps = false

  ## Measure Openstack call duration
  # measure_openstack_requests = false

Thanos

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Thanos Receive endpoint for remote write
  url = "http://thanos-receive.example.com/api/v1/receive"

  ## HTTP method
  method = "POST"

  ## Data format set to Prometheus remote write
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Optional headers (authorization, etc.)
  # [outputs.http.headers]
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

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

  ## Request timeout
  timeout = "10s"

Input and output integration examples

OpenStack

1. Cross-Cloud Management: Leverage the OpenStack plugin to monitor and manage multiple OpenStack clouds from a single Telegraf instance. By aggregating metrics across different clouds, organizations can gain insights into resource utilization and optimize their cloud architecture for cost and performance.

2. Automated Scaling Based on Metrics: Integrate the metrics gathered from OpenStack into an automated scaling solution. For example, if the plugin detects that a specific service’s performance is degraded, it can trigger auto-scaling rules to launch additional instances, ensuring that system performance remains optimal under varying workloads.

3. Performance Monitoring Dashboard: Use data collected by the OpenStack Telegraf plugin to power real-time monitoring dashboards. This setup provides visualizations of key metrics from OpenStack services, enabling stakeholders to quickly identify trends, pinpoint issues, and make data-driven decisions in managing their cloud infrastructure.

4. Reporting and Analysis of Service Availability: By utilizing the metrics collected from various OpenStack services, teams can generate detailed reports on service availability and performance over time. This information can help identify recurring issues, improve service delivery, and make informed decisions regarding changes in infrastructure or service configuration.

Thanos

1. Agentless Cloud Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across cloud VMs to collect system and application metrics, then stream them directly into Thanos using Remote Write. This provides centralized observability without requiring Prometheus nodes at each location.

2. Scalable Windows Host Monitoring: Use Telegraf on Windows machines to collect OS-level metrics and send them via Remote Write to Thanos Receive. This enables observability across heterogeneous environments with native Prometheus support only on Linux.

3. Cross-Region Metrics Federation: Telegraf agents in multiple geographic regions can push data to region-local Thanos Receivers using this plugin. From there, Thanos can deduplicate and query metrics globally, reducing latency and network egress costs.

4. Integrating Third-Party Data into Thanos: Collect metrics from custom telemetry sources such as REST APIs or proprietary logs using Telegraf inputs and forward them to Thanos via Remote Write. This brings non-native data into a Prometheus-compatible, long-term analytics pipeline.

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