Kafka Monitoring User Guide

Overview

Kafka monitoring is a Gateway configuration file that enables monitoring of Kafka Brokers through a set of samplers with customised JMX plug-in settings.

Kafka is a distributed streaming platform that allows you to:

Publish and subscribe to stream of records.
Store streams of records in a fault-tolerant way.
Process streams of records as they occur.

It is important to monitor Kafka because it carries crucial data that many applications rely on. Geneos provides a JMX server sampler configuration to monitor Kafka.

This guide discusses the steps to set up the Kafka integration on a Gateway. Once the integration is set up, the samplers providing the dataviews become available to that Gateway.

To view the sample metrics and dataviews, see Kafka Monitoring Technical Reference.

Intended audience

This guide is intended for users who are setting up, configuring, troubleshooting and maintaining this integration. Once the integration is set up, the samplers providing the dataviews become available to that Gateway.

As a user, you should be familiar with Linux or any other database, and with the administration of the Kafka services.

Prerequisites

The following requirements must be met prior to the installation and setup of the template:

A machine running the Netprobe must have access to the host where the Kafka instance is installed and the port Kafka is listening to.
A JMX-enabled Kafka cluster.
Netprobe 4.6 or higher.
Gateway 4.8 or higher.
Kafka 1.0.0.

Java requirements

You must have Java installed on the machine running the Netprobe. For information on supported Java versions, see Java support in 5.x Compatibility Matrix.
Once you have Java installed, configure the environment variables required by the Netprobe so that it can locate the required resource files. For guidance, see Configure the Java environment.

Caution: The Java installation and environment configuration is a common source of errors for users setting up Java-based components and plug-ins. It is recommended to read Configure the Java environment to help you understand your Java installation.

Installation procedure

Ensure that you have read and can follow the system requirements prior to installation and setup of this integration template.

Download the integration package geneos-integration-kafka-<version>.zip from the ITRS Downloads site.
Open Gateway Setup Editor.
In the Navigation panel, click Includes to create a new file.
Enter the location of the file to include in the Location field. In this example, it is the include/KafkaMonitoring.xml.
Update the Priority field. This can be any value except 1. If you input a priority of 1, the Gateway Setup Editor returns an error.
Expand the file location in the Include section.
Select Click to load.
Click Yes to load the new Kafka include file.

Click Managed entities in the Navigation panel.
Add the Kafka-Broker and Kafka-Cluster types to the Managed Entity section that you will use to monitor Kafka.
Click Validate current document to check your configuration.
Click Save current document to apply the changes.

Set up the samplers

These are the pre-configured samplers available to use in KafkaMonitoring.xml.

Configure the required fields by referring to the table below:

Samplers
Kafka-HeapMemoryUsage
Kafka-Broker
Kafka-Topics
Kafka-Cluster

Set up the variables

The KafkaMonitoring.xml template provides the variables that are set in the Environments section:

Variable	Description
KAFKA_MONITORING_GROUP_NAME	Sampler group name.
KAFKA_JMX_HOST	Host name (or IP address) of the machine hosting the broker.
KAFKA_JMX_PORT	JMX port that has been configured for that broker.

Set up the rules

The KafkaMonitoring-SampleRules.xml template also provides a separate sample rules that you can use to configure the Gateway Setup Editor.

Your configuration rules must be set in the Includes section. In the Navigation panel, click Rules.

The table below shows the included rules in the integration file:

Sample Rules	Description
Broker - Kafka Status	Generates a human readable version of the numeric State value of the broker and has the following conditions: Red - the broker State=0: Not Running Amber - the broker State=2, 5, or 6
Cluster - Partition Underreplicated	Applies to all cells in a Kafka-Cluster. The rule turns red if the value is > 0.
Broker - Active Controller	Applies to all Active Controller Count Cells in the Kafka-Broker. The Active Controller count shows the number of active controllers across the cluster. A value of greater than 1 in this column indicates that there are more than one controllers with alerts.
Broker - Offline Partitions	Applies to all offline partitions count in the Kafka-Broker. The offline partitions count shows the total number of under replicated partitions across the cluster. A value of greater than 0 indicates that there are under replicated partitions with alerts.