MQ Exporter for OpenTSDB monitoring

This README should be read in conjunction with the repository-wide README that covers features common to all of the collectors in this repository.

This directory contains the code for a monitoring solution that exports queue manager data to an OpenTSDB data collection system. It also contains configuration files to run the monitor program

The monitor collects metrics published by an MQ V9 queue manager or the MQ appliance. The monitor program pushes those metrics into the database, over an HTTP connection, where they can then be queried directly or used by other packages such as Grafana.

You can see data such as disk or CPU usage, queue depths, and MQI call counts.

An example Grafana dashboard is included, to show how queries might be constructed. The data shown is the same as in the corresponding Prometheus and InfluxDB-based dashboards, also in this repository. To use the dashboard, create a data source in Grafana called "MQ OpenTSDB" that points at your database server, and then import the JSON file.

Configuring MQ

It is convenient to run the monitor program as a queue manager service. This directory contains an MQSC script to define the service. In fact, the service definition points at a simple script which sets up any necessary environment and builds the command line parameters for the real monitor program. As the last line of the script is "exec", the process id of the script is inherited by the monitor program, and the queue manager can then check on the status, and can drive a suitable STOP SERVICE operation during queue manager shutdown.

Edit the MQSC script and the shell script to point at appropriate directories where the program exists, and where you want to put stdout/stderr. Ensure that the ID running the queue manager has permission to access the programs and output files.

There are a number of required parameters to configure the service, including the queue manager name, how to reach a database, and the frequency of reading the queue manager publications. Look at the mq_opentsdb.sh script or config.go to see how to provide these parameters.

The queue manager will usually generate its publications every 10 seconds. That is also the default interval being used in the monitor program to read those publications.

Configuring OpenTSDB

No special configuration is required for the database.

Metrics

Once the monitor program has been started, you will see metrics being available. Multiple series of metrics are created, one for each type of object (queue, channel, topic etc) that is being monitored.

The example Grafana dashboard shows how queries can be constructed to extract data about specific object or the queue manager.

More information on the metrics collected through the publish/subscribe interface can be found in the MQ KnowledgeCenter with further description in an MQDev blog entry

The metrics stored in the database are named after the descriptions that you can see when running the amqsrua sample program, but with some minor modifications to match a more useful style.