README.md

sensu-transport-snssqs-ng

sensu-transport-snssqs-ng is a Sensu transport that produces messages over Amazon SNS and consumes messages from Amazon SQS, providing simplified monitoring using Sensu.

Messages flow from hosts onto an Amazon SNS topic. It is up to the operator to ensure that messages from the SNS topic flow to one SQS queue for consumption by the Sensu server.

This project is forked from the the Simple team's project to add additional community-generated enhancements. It is intended to provide a superset of the upstream features.

Architecture

Messages flow unidirectionally: from the monitored hosts to the Sensu server. In this diagram, an SNS topic is created for each monitoring environment. Hosts within these environments publish messages onto their environment's SNS topic. All of these SNS topics place messages onto a single SQS queue. This singular SQS queue is consumed by the Sensu cluster to act on messages.

Caveats

• This transport is compatible with Sensu 0.23.0 and presumably, later versions.

• Subscription-based checks are not supported. Sensu subscriptions require the transport to be two-way: The Sensu server must be able to send a message through the transport to a specific host. SQS has no way of filtering messages in an SQS queue. Therefore, to use this transport, you can only use standalone checks.

• A slight (possibly inconsequential/imperceptible) performance increase can be gleaned by configuring SNS to publish to your SQS queue in "Raw" mode.

• This transport assumes that Sensu's process environment is properly configured to use the aws-sdk gem.

• By default, messages are buffered to reduce cost (up to 80% in some testing). This can be disabled via the buffer_messages setting.

Installation

To use this snssqs transport, this gem must be in your Sensu installation's ruby include path.

If you're installing Sensu via Chef, you can use the sensu_gem resource to ensure the gem is in Sensu's ruby include path:

sensu_gem 'sensu-transport-snssqs-ng' do
  action :install
end

Otherwise, if you're running Sensu via bundler, add this line to your Sensu installation's Gemfile:

gem 'sensu-transport-snssqs-ng'

That should place this gem into the include path.

Configuration

First, we need to enable the snssqs transport. To do so, ensure that the following transport clause is in your configuration:

{
  "transport": {
    "name": "snssqs",
    "reconnect_on_error": true,
   }
}

Now that the SNSSQS transport has been enabled, configure it using an snssqs clause:

{
  "snssqs": {
    "max_number_of_messages": 10,
    "wait_time_seconds": 2,
    "region": "{{ AWS_REGION }}",
    "consuming_sqs_queue_url": "{{ SENSU_QUEUE_URL }}",
    "publishing_sns_topic_arn": "{{ SENSU_SNS_ARN }}"
    },
}

The following table lists possible settings and their descriptions. The values should be JSON strings unless specified otherwise.

Setting	Description
max_number_of_messages	The maximum number of messages to consume when consuming from SQS. This option is piped directly to the SQS client receive_message method. Setting this to the maximum possible value is the best way to improve performance. (JSON Number)
wait_time_seconds	The number of seconds to wait while polling for messages from SQS. Keeping this value too high will cause Sensu's EventMachine reactor to block while waiting for messages for possibly too long. As a result, this value should typically be low. This option is used directly in the SQS client receive_message method. (JSON Number)
region	The region to specify when initializing the AWS SNS and SQS clients.
access_key_id	IAM access key ID to use with AWS SDK (optional; use to override instance profile/environment variable credentials)
secret_access_key	IAM access key secret to use with AWS SDK (required if access_key_id is specified)
consuming_sqs_queue_url	The SQS Queue URL for which you want Sensu to consume from.
publishing_sns_topic_arn	The SNS Topic ARN for which you want Sensu to publish messages to.
statsd_addr	Address to send statsd metrics to. If not set, the transport will not emit metrics to statsd.
statsd_namespace	Prefix to prepend to all statsd metrics. Should not end with a period.
statsd_sample_rate	Set the sample rate for all statsd operations. This should be a string with a value between 0 and 1.0.
buffer_messages	Enable or disable message buffer. This should be a boolean with a value of true or false.
check_min_ok	The amount of ok messages before messages are buffered. This should be a number with a value between 0 and 20.
check_max_delay	The maximum delay in seconds between two subsequent ok messages. This should be a positive number.
metrics_max_size	The maximum size of the metrics buffer. This should be a value between 0 and 200,000 (SQS limit is 256KB) number.
metrics_max_delay	The maximum delay in seconds before a combined metrics message is sent. This should be a positive number.

Buffer implemntation

• The buffer can be disabled using the buffer_messages option.

• Consecutive positive sensu check events (status=0) are skipped once the min amount of OK messages are sent (check_min_ok) and the maximum delay is not reached (check_max_delay).

• Negative sensu check events (status!=0) are sent all the time and are never skipped.

• Metrics are concatenated until the maximum size of the metrics buffer is reached (metrics_max_size) or the maximum delay is reached (metrics_max_delay).

• Metrics are summed up in a single sensu metric event with the name combined_metrics.

• The combined_metrics can contain multiple metrics of the same check with different timestamps. This is not a problem in a graphite like format where each line contains a key, value and timestamp.

License

sensu-transport-snssqs-ng is released under the Apache 2.0 License, full copy of which is inside of the LICENSE file.