This topic describes the Metric Registrar for VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs (TAS for VMs), which lets developers define and use their own custom app metrics.
The topic also explains how to enable and configure the Metric Registrar from the TAS for VMs tile.
App metrics include custom app metrics that you can export with the Metric Registrar, plus container metrics emitted by all TAS for VMs containers. For information about container metrics, see Container Metrics.
The Metric Registrar allows app developers to export custom app metrics in a format that Loggregator can consume. App developers can then use the custom metrics to monitor apps with App Metrics and configure autoscaling rules with App Autoscaler.
App developers can export custom metrics to Loggregator by configuring their apps in one of the following ways:
Metrics Endpoint: Publish and register a Prometheus Exposition metrics endpoint to an app. The Metric Registrar then polls this endpoint every 35 seconds and convert the metrics found in the response to Loggregator metrics.
Structured Log: Modify your app to emit metrics using a specific JSON or DogStatsD format. The Metric Registrar then converts all matching log messages into Loggregator metrics or events.
For more information about installing the Metric Registrar Plugin and registering your app, see Emitting Custom App Metrics to the Metric Registrar.
For more information about the components and products mentioned, see:
The following diagram illustrates how the Metric Registrar sends your custom app metrics to Loggregator. The components of the Metric Registrar are:
The cf CLI plugin
The metric_registrar_endpoint_worker and metric_registrar_log_worker jobs running on the Doppler VM of the TAS for VMs deployment
The metric_registrar_orchestrator and metric_registrar_smoke_test jobs running on the Clock Global VM of the TAS for VMs deployment
Click the image for a larger representation.
Note: The Metric Registrar is bundled with TAS for VMs, and you configure it in the TAS for VMs tile. You do not install and configure Metric Registrar as a separate product tile.
In the Metric Registrar pane, you configure the Metric Registrar. Metric Registrar allows the conversion of structured logs into metrics. It also scrapes metrics endpoints and forwards the metrics to Loggregator. If enabled, VMware recommends also enabling the Metric Registrar Smoke Test errand.
The Metric Registrar is enabled by default.
To deactivate the Metric Registrar:
Select Metric Registrar.
Clear the Enable Metric Registrar check box.
Click Save.
The scraping interval defines how often the Metric Registrar polls custom metric endpoints. The default is 35 seconds.
To edit the Metric Registrar scraping interval:
Select Metric Registrar.
Edit the Endpoint scraping interval field.
Click Save.
To prevent the Metric Registrar from consuming the value of a metric or event tag, you can add the tag to the Blocked tags field. For example, if you tag your metrics with a customer_id, you may want to add customer_id to the list of blocked tags.
By default, the following tags are blocked to prevent interference with other products like App Metrics that use and rely on such tags.
deploymentjobindexidTo prevent the Metric Registrar from consuming the value of a metric or event tag:
Select Metric Registrar.
Add the desired tags to the Blocked tags field in a comma-separated list.
Click Save.
