Setting up the Puppet metrics dashboard in Puppet 5.0 and later📍

By graphing Puppet infrastructure performance metrics you can diagnose and prevent performance issues and identify performance trends. Install and configure the Puppet metrics dashboard module using the steps in this article, and then troubleshoot a performance issue using the dashboard.

Version and installation information

Puppet version: 5.0 and later
Components: Puppet Server, PuppetDB, and PostgreSQL
OS: Redhat, Debian, Ubuntu
Installation type: Any
Gem requirements: toml-rb-1.1.2 and later

Solution

The puppetlabs-metrics_dashboard module installs and configures InfluxDB and Grafana to visualize metrics. Use this tool with new agent nodes that do not run any current Puppet infrastructure components.

You can use Telegraf, the Puppet metrics collector module, or Graphite to collect performance data for the metrics_dashboard module. Telegraf is preferred. It automatically polls metrics and imports them into Influx DB from Puppet Server, PuppetDB, and PostgreSQL. You can use it for real-time data or historical data. Examples in this article use the Telegraf. You can use the Puppet metrics collector with historical data (rather than with real-time data). Graphite is implemented for backward compatibility. It does not collect as many types of metrics as the other methods do.

Installation

Install the metrics dashboard.

1. Ensure that the node where you’re installing the metrics_dashboard meets the following requirements:

   • It meets the Low Load requirements for InfluxDB.

   • It is a puppetized node, but not an infrastructure node. In other words, it is not a primary server (formerly called a master), PuppetDB, or compiler node.

2. Install the metrics_dashboard module.

3. For the node that you provisioned, add the class to the catalog. Classify it using your preferred method.

   For example, to classify a node in site.pp:

    node 'pup-6-agent.puppetdebug.vlan' {
      class { 'puppet_metrics_dashboard':
        add_dashboard_examples => true,
        overwrite_dashboards   => false,
        master_list         => ['pup-6-server.puppetdebug.vlan'],
        puppetdb_list       => ['pup-6-server.puppetdebug.vlan'],
      }
    }

   The example gives us a collection and viewing platform running on the agent by:

   • Installing InfluxDB, Telegraf, and Grafana on the agent.

   • Installing some example dashboards into Grafana for Puppetserver and PuppetDB.

   • Making sure that changes to the dashboards that you make after installation aren’t overwritten.

   • Configuring Telegraf to query metrics from Puppet Server and PuppetDB on the primary server.

   If you have additional Puppet Server and PuppetDB instances, collect data from them by adding to the master_list and puppetdb_list arrays in classification.

4. On the node where you installed the metrics_dashboard, run the Puppet agent.

5. To access metrics dashboards, navigate to port 3000 of the node where you installed the module in a web browser, for example, http://pup-6-agent.puppetdebug.vlan:3000. To log in, use admin for both the username and password.

   Note: Change the password by adding the puppet_metrics_dashboard module’s grafana_password parameter to the module’s classification.

Additional resources

Learn more about how to select different time frames, servers, and dashboards from the Grafana Documentation.

Learn how to use the metrics dashboard to diagnose a performance issue.