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DCD How-Tos

Set User Privileges

MaaS has a group privilege called Access and manage monitoring. Upon selection, the members of the respective group inherit this privilege.

Once the privilege is granted, contract users can create, access, manage, and use MaaS without additional permissions.

Prerequisite: Make sure you have one or more Groups in the User Manager. To create one, see Create a group.

To set user privileges to access and manage monitoring services, follow these steps:

  1. In the DCD, go to Menu > Management > Users & Groups.

  2. Select the Groups tab in the User Manager window.

  3. Select the target group name from the Groups list.

  4. Select Access and manage monitoring option in the Privileges tab.

Result: The Access and manage monitoring privilege is granted to all the members in the selected group.

Revoke user privileges

You can revoke a user's privilege by removing the user from all the groups with this privilege enabled.

Warning: You can revoke a user's privilege by clearing Access and manage monitoring for every group the user belongs to. In this case, all the members in the respective groups would also be revoked from this privilege.

To revoke this privilege from a contract administrator, disable the administrator option on the user account. On performing this action, the contract administrator gets the role of a contract user and the privileges that were set up for the user before being an administrator will then be in effect.

Access MaaS

There are two ways to access the metrics of an instance: from the Monitoring Manager view or via the .

Inside of the data center view of the , right-click the graphical representation of your . The context menu will show an item called Monitor, which will open a window with the server's metrics. This window can be minimized to the bottom bar.

Using the Monitoring Manager

The Monitoring Manager allows quick access to all running virtual instances within the contract. It also provides access to the configuration of alarms and actions.

Set Access and manage monitoring privilege
1. In the DCD, go to Menu > Observability > Monitoring as a Service.

2. In the Metrics tab, select the target Dedicated Core server. Metrics for the target server displays in the right-hand panel.

Each Dedicated Core server from the list on the left displays monitoring statistics in the view on the right side of the Manager

Using the Inspector pane

You can access MaaS via the properties panel of a virtual instance.

1. In the DCD, open your virtual data center.

2. Select your Dedicated Core server. The Inspector pane for this virtual instance displays on the right side of the window.

3. Click on the Metrics tab. The CPU utilization graph, followed by other graphs, displays showing the basic metrics for the last hour.

The Inspector pane gives you direct access to the Dedicated Core server metrics. You can also choose to Monitor in Background from this pane

4. In the Inspector, you may select Refresh. The basic metrics are refreshed.

5. You can choose to monitor separately. In the Inspector, select Monitor in Background. A separate window displays. The graphs display an enlarged view. Additional information is available for each graph.

Click Monitor in Background to open a separate monitoring window

In the upper right corner of the pop-up window there are three buttons: minimize (down arrow), maximize (up arrow) and close (x). You to can either enlarge the view to the entire screen or reduce the view to a monitoring bar, which will remain active in the background.

The monitoring bar

The monitoring bar remains visible even when switching between VDCs. You can add multiple monitoring views of different virtual instances from different VDCs to this bar. Even if you close a virtual data center, the monitoring bar option will remain active.

The monitoring bar will disappear when you log out of the DCD.

The monitoring bar when logging out of the DCD

If the VDC is closed, you can reopen the Monitoring Manager and also use the Focus Server option to load the VDC that contains the server instance. The server will be selected automatically. The relevant property panel will become available immediately.

Time range limits

In the Monitor in Background view, you may select the refresh interval as well as the time frame for data retrieval.

You can only choose a time frame of up to two weeks. If you select a wider time frame, MaaS will limit the data reported or it may return an error if no data is available. If you change one or both of these values, the view is refreshed. MaaS will display your latest chosen data in the graph.

You can define a time range inside the Monitoring Manager

If you want to create a long-term history of metrics, we advise you to retrieve the raw metric data and store it. Any data older than two weeks will be purged by IONOS Cloud.

Inspector pane
DCD
server

Create Alarms and Actions

Prerequisite: Make sure your account has Monitoring privileges enabled in the user group.‌

Create an Alarm

  1. In the DCD, go to the Menu > Management > Monitoring.

  2. In the Monitoring Manager‌, select Create in the Alarms tab.‌

  3. A drop-down list will open up. Enter the following values to create an alarm:‌

  • Name: Enter an appropriate name.

  • Server: Select a virtual instance.

  • Metric: Select the relevant metric.

  • Unit: Select either of the following values:

  1. Select Create to save the alarm.

Result: Your alarm will be created; you can edit or delete the alarm configuration if it is no longer needed.‌

Note: The Status and History provides an option to list the status and history of an alarm's state transition.‌

Upon alarm trigger, the alarm icon will blink to indicate that the configured threshold has been triggered. The blinking will stop automatically once the system is back within the threshold. This is monitored within the defined duration. The alarm status is OK while the system runs within the boundaries of the threshold. Once it is outside the boundaries and meets the criteria for triggering an action, the status will change from OK to FIRING. This transition will execute the defined action. When the system returns to the defined threshold boundaries, the status returns from FIRING to OK. The status change will be visible in the alarm manager but will not trigger an action.

Example of an alarm configuration with an alarm delay

The alarm configuration defines an average CPU utilization of 70% or higher as critical, and it has a defined range of two minutes and an alarm delay of zero seconds. The system collects four samples in two minutes in the following example, even though it collects metrics more often.

  • Sample01: 20% CPU utilization

  • Sample02: 30% CPU utilization

  • Sample03: 50% CPU utilization

  • Sample04: 70% CPU utilization

The alarm will not trigger for this two-minute range because the average of samples for the considered range will be below 70%. Considering subsequent samples:

  • Sample05: 71% CPU utilization

  • Sample06: 72% CPU utilization

  • Sample07: 75% CPU utilization

  • Sample08: 30% CPU utilization

When it reaches Sample07, the monitoring service will calculate an average CPU utilization above 70%. As the alarm delay is set to zero seconds, it will trigger an action immediately to send an alarm.

Assume the same example but with an alarm delay of 30 seconds. For Sample07, the monitoring service calculates an average CPU utilization above 70%. Still, the system does not trigger an action this time, as an alarm delay of another 60 seconds is configured, but the monitoring system constantly collects further metrics. When it receives Sample08, the monitoring services have calculated the average CPU utilization for the previous 120 seconds, which will be below 70%. The system does not trigger an action as the alarm threshold criteria are unfulfilled.

Configure Alarms

The examples below show possible configurations for the expression property of an Alarm.

Current CPU load for all cores

Setting a trigger when the average load of all cores over the last hour exceeds 90%.

Increase in received bytes

Setting a trigger when more than 1MB is incoming within the last ten minutes.

Sent packets per second (lower bound)

Set a trigger if the outgoing packet is less than one per second.

Storage writes per second

Set a trigger if the write operations are more than 100 per second.

Create an Action

In the Actions section, you can configure an action that will be executed when an alarm is activated. Currently, MaaS supports email notifications.

Prerequisite: Make sure your account has Monitoring enabled in the user group.‌

  1. In the DCD, go to the Menu > Management > Monitoring.

  2. In the Monitoring Manager‌, select Create in the Actions tab.

  3. A drop-down list will open up. Enter the following values to create an action:‌

  • Enter a Name for the action.

  • Select the Action type. We only support Send Email at the moment.

  • Enter an Email address.

  1. Select Create.

Result: Your action will be configured and executed when an alarm is activated.

Note: Once an alarm is created, you can edit the action configuration or delete it if it is not needed anymore. You can only delete an action by an alarm when it is not in use. The Execution History provides a detailed view of a created action for an executed alarm.

Total: Select the Total value for absolute numbers. Example: CPU utilization. Total is not supported for other metrics except if you use the Delta aggregation.

  • Per second: Select it for per-second rate.

  • Per minute: Select it for per-minute rate.

  • Per hour: Select it for per-hour rate.

  • Threshold Type: Define equality of value.

  • Threshold: Enter the threshold value.

  • Range: Define the time range within which the threshold must exceed the configured parameter limits before triggering an alarm event. The minimum time allowed is 120 seconds.

  • Range Aggregation: Time range aggregation types are Average or Delta.

    • Average: Calculates the average of the defined metrics for all samples collected within the defined range. The average metric must be outside the configured parameter for the defined range to trigger an action event. This range aggregation is useful for detecting constant load patterns.

    • Delta: Compares the change of the defined metric during the defined range. This range aggregation helps detect significant positive or negative spikes within the load patterns.

  • Alarm Delay: Define the duration between the monitoring metric exceeding the configured threshold parameters and sending an alarm notification. The minimum time allowed is zero seconds, which will trigger an action event immediately once the defined criteria are fulfilled. You can also delay the alarm notification by setting a higher value. Setting a higher alarm delay will consider further metric samples in the calculation and continue shifting the range as time passes. As a result, the system may return to its regular functioning mode after a brief spike in the load pattern.

  • Actions: Select one or multiple actions upon alarm trigger.

  • Default Values

    unit: total

    rangeAggregation: average

    comparisonOperator: greater_than_or_equal_to_threshold

    Default Values

    unit: totaL

    comparisonOperator: greater_than_or_equal_to_threshold

    Default Values

    range: 4m

    rangeAggregation: average

    Default Values

    unit: total

    rangeAggregation: average

    comparisonOperator: greater_than_or_equal_to_threshold

    privileges
    "expression": {
      "metric": 
        "instance_cpu_utilization_average",
      "source": {
        "uuid": "279565bf-...-e9572e185144"
      },
      "range": "1h",
      "comparisonThreshold": "90"
    }
    "expression": {
      "metric": "instance_network_in_bytes",
      "source": {
        "uuid": "e17f01e9-...-40968fbbb559"
      },
      "range": "10m",
      "rangeAggregation": "delta",
      "comparisonThreshold": "1000000"
    }
    "expression": {
      "metric": 
        "instance_network_out_packets",
      "source": {
        "uuid": "e17f01e9-...-40968fbbb559"
      },
      "unit": "per_second",
      "comparisonThreshold": "1",
      "comparisonOperator": 
        "less_than_threshold"
    }
    "expression": {
      "metric": 
        "instance_volumes_write_ops",
      "source": {
        "uuid": "e17f01e9-...-40968fbbb559"
      },
      "unit": "per_second",
      "comparisonThreshold": "100"
    }