ISP-Watchtower

• ISP-Watchtower
  • Overview
    • High level architecture
      • Components
      • Diagram
      • Operation
  • Installation
    • Using Podman
    • Using docker

Overview

This project sets up a simple monitoring solution for home network's Internet Service Provider (ISP) performance. It uses Telegraf, InfluxDB, Grafana ( TIG ) stack, running in containers to collect data using various telegraf plugins and display it in an easy-to-understand graphical interface.

High level architecture

Components

• InfluxDB is a high-performance time-series database used to store and analyze metrics and events data.
• Telegraf is an open-source agent that collects, processes, and sends metrics and data from various sources to different datastores like InfluxDB.
• Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics software used for monitoring and analyzing data from various sources.

Diagram

Operation

• Telegraf based on the input plugins will collect data about ping response times, internet speed, and DNS queries etc.
• Telegraf then sends the collected data to InfluxDB, which is a time-series database that stores and organizes the data.
• Grafana is then used to visualize the data collected by Telegraf and stored in InfluxDB, providing real-time monitoring of ping response times, internet speed, and DNS queries.
• Dashboards can be created in Grafana to display the data in a graphical format, for example sample dashboard included in this repo.

NOTE:

The entire stack can be deployed using docker or podman.

The individual components can be installed as containers or natively as well.

Installation

• Clone this repository using following command:

Using SSH
---------
git clone git@github.com:UchihaItachiSama/ISP-Watchtower.git

OR

Using HTTPS
-----------
git clone https://github.com/UchihaItachiSama/ISP-Watchtower.git

• Have the required packages installed for example if using docker based installation have docker, docker-compose installed, similarly for podman have required setup completed before proceeding.
• Following are the files in the repository
  • ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/telegraf/telegraf.conf contains the telegraf configuration for input and output plugins.
  • ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/grafana/provisioning/datasources/ folder contains the InfluxDB datasource YAML file.
  • ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/ contains the dashboard YAML and JSON file.
  • ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/podman/ contains the Kubernetes YAML definition files for deploying the volumes & pods using podman.
  • ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/docker/ contains the docker-compose.yaml file to deploy the stack using docker.

ISP-Watchtower/monitoring
├── docker
│   └── docker-compose.yaml
├── grafana
│   └── provisioning
│       ├── dashboards
│       │   ├── dashboard.yaml
│       │   └── isp-watchtower.json
│       └── datasources
│           └── datasources.yaml
├── podman
│   ├── grafana-pod.yaml
│   ├── influxdb-pod.yaml
│   ├── persistent-volumes.yaml
│   └── telegraf-pod.yaml
├── telegraf
│   └── telegraf.conf
└── tools
    └── manage-pods.sh

Using Podman

• Refer to below section if deploying the TIG container stack using podman
• Move to the monitoring folder

cd ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/

• Create the volumes for Grafana and InfluxDB

podman kube play podman/persistent-volumes.yaml

--

podman volume ls

DRIVER      VOLUME NAME
local       grafana-data-pvc
local       influxdb-data-pvc

• Deploy the pods

podman kube play podman/influxdb-pod.yaml
podman kube play podman/telegraf-pod.yaml
podman kube play podman/grafana-pod.yaml

• Confirm the pods are up and running

podman pod ls

POD ID        NAME        STATUS      CREATED      INFRA ID      # OF CONTAINERS
97ed8c6fac51  telegraf    Running     6 hours ago  1bc9fe7c0c88  2
35dc24ddfd6b  grafana     Running     6 hours ago  56cd68dfa7df  2
4a5d27ddc17b  influxdb    Running     6 hours ago  0e7128f3fb93  2

• If using any firewall filtering on host, allow the connection for TCP port 3000
• Connect to Grafana UI on http://<host-ip>:3000/
• Login using username / password set in grafana-pod.yaml, password can be changed to a stronger password at login.
• Confirm datasource Home -> Connections -> Data sources -> influxdb is visible and tested to be working.
• Open the Home -> Dashboards -> ISP Watchtower dashboard.

Using docker

• Refer to below section if deploying the TIG container stack using docker
• Move to the monitoring folder

cd ISP-Watchtower/monitoring

• Using the docker-compose.yaml file present under ISP-Watchtower/monitoring/docker/ folder deploy the stack

docker-compose -p gondor -f docker/docker-compose.yaml up -d

• Confirm the containers are up and running

docker-compose -p gondor -f docker/docker-compose.yaml ps -a

  Name                Command               State                                                            Ports
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
grafana    /run.sh                          Up      0.0.0.0:3000->3000/tcp,:::3000->3000/tcp
influxdb   /entrypoint.sh -config /et ...   Up      0.0.0.0:8086->8086/tcp,:::8086->8086/tcp
telegraf   /entrypoint.sh telegraf          Up      0.0.0.0:8092->8092/tcp,:::8092->8092/tcp, 8092/udp, 0.0.0.0:8094->8094/tcp,:::8094->8094/tcp,
                                                    0.0.0.0:8125->8125/tcp,:::8125->8125/tcp, 8125/udp

• Connect to Grafana UI on http://<host-ip>:3000/
• Login using username / password set for grafana service in docker-compose.yaml, password can be changed to a stronger password at login.
• Confirm datasource Home -> Connections -> Data sources -> influxdb is visible and tested to be working
• Open the Home -> Dashboards -> ISP Watchtower dashboard