Overview

This files implement basic plugins for collectd, the system statistics collection daemon. Because collectd supports store or sending statistics in many different ways, this allows users of VMS to gain insights into how the technology is performing using a variety of graphing and analysis tools.

Installation

Copy the files src/vmsdoms.py and src/vmsfs.py to the collectd module /usr/lib/collectd path on your system. Normally this path is /usr/lib/collectd but it may be different on your system.

If you are using VMS with the KVM hypervisor, you may also copy src/vmsfs.py to the collectd module path for some additional statistics.

Finally, edit the file /etc/collectd/collectd.conf to load the module. In a minimal configuration, this would look like:

<LoadPlugin python>
  Globals true
</LoadPlugin>
<Plugin python>
  ModulePath "/usr/lib/collectd/"
  Import "vmsdoms"
  Import "vmsfs"
</Plugin>

To register statistics for individual VMs, you will probably also want:

LoadPlugin libvirt

Usage with Graphite

You may have other python modules loaded or different ways of sending data using collectd. If you are using collectd with graphite, the relevant portion of your /etc/collectd/collectd.conf file would look like:

<LoadPlugin python>
  Globals true
</LoadPlugin>

<Plugin python>
  ModulePath "/usr/lib/collectd/"
  Import "vmsdoms"
  Import "vmsfs"
  Import "carbon_writer"

  <Module "carbon_writer">
    LineReceiverHost "my-stats-server"
    LineReceiverPort 2003
    DifferentiateCountersOverTime true
    LowercaseMetricNames true
    TypesDB "/usr/share/collectd/types.db"
  </Module>
</Plugin>