GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics

GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics

The App.Metrics.GrafanaCloudHostedMetrics nuget package reports metrics to GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics using the App.Metrics.Formatters.GrafanaCloudHostedMetrics nuget package to format metrics.

GrafanCloud URL, API Key and UserId

You will need these three to correctly configure App.Metrics to report to GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics.

By default a graphite hosted metrics instance is created for you when you sign up to GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics, usually named [YourOrganisation]-graphite. You can see this at https://grafana.com/orgs/[YourOrganisation]/hosted-metrics

Within that hosted metrics instance you will see a section titled ‘Using Grafana with Hosted Metrics’. The data source by default will be of type graphite, usually named grafanacloud-[YourOrganisation]-graphite. You can find your User id in here along with the URL. Ensure that ‘Basic Auth’ is checked.

You can view the metrics being published within the grafana cloud instance at https://[YourOrganisation].grafana.net/. Note: You must create a dashboard and configure queries to filter on your new metrics.

Getting started

To use the GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics reporter, first install the nuget package:

nuget install App.Metrics.GrafanaCloudHostedMetrics

Then enable the reporter using Report.ToHostedMetrics(...):

var metrics = new MetricsBuilder()
    .Report.ToHostedMetrics("base url of your hosted metrics", "userid of host metrics data source:your grafana.com hosted metrics api key")
    .Build();

See Reporting for details on configuring metric report scheduling.

Configuration

Configuration options are provided as a setup action used with ToHostedMetrics(...).

To configure GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics reporting options:

var filter = new MetricsFilter().WhereType(MetricType.Timer);
var metrics = new MetricsBuilder()
    .Report.ToHostedMetrics(
        options => {
            options.HostedMetrics.BaseUri = "base url of your hosted metrics";
            options.HostedMetrics.ApiKey = "userid of host metrics data source:your grafana.com hosted metrics api key";
            options.HttpPolicy.BackoffPeriod = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(30);
            options.HttpPolicy.FailuresBeforeBackoff = 5;
            options.HttpPolicy.Timeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10);
            options.Filter = filter;
            options.FlushInterval = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(20);
        })
    .Build();

The configuration options provided are:

Option Description
MetricsHostedMetricsJsonOutputFormatter The metric payment formatter used when reporting metrics to GrafanCloud Hosted Metrics.
Filter The filter used to filter metrics just for this reporter.
FlushInterval The delay between reporting metrics.
BaseUri The URI of the GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics instance.
ApiKey The Api Key which your application will use to authenticate with GrafanaCloud Hosted Metrics. Prefix this with the user id of the hosted metrics data source (by default the graphite instance) and a colon. eg: 1234:apikey
HttpPolicy.BackoffPeriod The TimeSpan to back-off when metrics are failing to report to the metrics ingress endpoint.
HttpPolicy.FailuresBeforeBackoff The number of failures before backing-off when metrics are failing to report to the metrics ingress endpoint.
HttpPolicy.Timeout The HTTP timeout duration when attempting to report metrics to the metrics ingress endpoint.

Web Monitoring

Grafana

The App.Metrics.AspNetCore.Tracking nuget package automatically records typical web metrics when added to an ASP.NET Core application. App Metrics includes a couple of pre-built Grafana dashboards to visualize these metrics:

Install the App Metrics Grafana dashboard. There is also an OAuth2 dashboard for APIs using OAuth2.