Integrate Nginx Monitoring into Monitis.com

When you are looking for a web server which is highly scalable with low memory footprint, Nginx can be your winning candidate. Nginx is well-known for its ability to deliver static content with efficient use of server resources. Nginx is also lightweight compare to Apache, and Nginx can handle concurrency very well. To appreciate Nginx's power, Nginx comes with a module called stub_status, which allows you to monitor the server statistics in real time. Here is an example of the output once you enable the stub_status module:

Active connections: 291
server accepts handled requests
  16630948 16630948 31070465
Reading: 6 Writing: 179 Waiting: 106  

However, the information Nginx provides above is a bit cryptic. Furthermore, if you need to monitor several Nginx servers, things can quickly go out of control. Isn't it nice for systemadin to have the stats organize into columns? Better yet, can we keep tracking all stats continuously with a nice graph?


Monitis (https://www.monitis.com/), a hosted statistics and monitoring provider, can organize those Nginx statistics for you. Once you have a Monitis account, you can create several custom monitors, and track several Nginx servers at once. Everything is inside your Monitis Dashboard. We've demonstrated the solution for Integrate Apache Monitoring into Monitis.com. Today we'll show you how to achieve this for Nginx.

Figure 1: Monitis shows a nice graph for Nginx Stub Staus.

Figure 2: Monitis provides a cleaner output for Nginx Server Stats.



Automatically Feed Nginx Statistics to Your Monitis account


Let's quickly show an available program to do this. In 5 steps, you can fetch your Nginx stats and send them to your Monitis account periodically.



1. You Nginx stub_status module is installed.

2. Edit your nginx.conf, so that Nginx knows the url for stats. Here we use port 80, listen on localhost with address of nginx_status. i.e.

    server {

        listen       80;

        server_name  localhost;

        location /nginx_status {

        stub_status on;

        access_log   off;

        allow 127.0.0.1;

        deny all;

        }

i.e. with the configuration above, you can view the original Nginx stats @ http://localhost/nginx_status


3. Start your Nginx Server with Stub Status enable


4. Download the code and run the program.(required .Net 3.5+)


On your windows command line, run the program like this:

monitis_nigix_stats.exe "[apikey]" "[secretkey]" "[monitorname]" "[minitortag]" "[nginx stub status url]"


For example,assume you already have a Monitis account:

monitis_nginx_stats.exe "14NAC40PIMSUEEBQFJOQL18T5U" "74H6U7A2DG71JU80QR48FEOPAL" "Nginx Monitor" "Nginx+Stub+Status" "http://localhost/nginx_status"



*note: please register to get your free apiKey and secreKey from Monitis

https://www.monitis.com/free_signup.jsp


5. Log in to your Monitis account, you can see a new custom monitor ready to be added (Monitors->Manage Monitors->Custom Monitors). Check and add your new monitor to your dashboard.

6. You are all set.

Conclusion:

In this article, we demonstrate Monitis' enterprise solution in Nginx monitoring. Now statistics from Nginx are eye-candy to view, and we can gather data from several Nginx servers in a single dashboard. The code example above is in C#. However, Monitis provides opensource library (SDK) and scripts available for your custom monitors. You are free to pick a SDK in your favorite language, or simply integrate the already working script with your Monitis account. Get your free registration at https://www.monitis.com/free_signup.jsp


Happy Nginx monitoring!


The Monitis Team



External Scripts:

Nginx Monitoring in Python

https://github.com/crystalcoding/Monitis-Scripting/tree/master/python

Nginx Monitoring in C#

https://github.com/crystalcoding/Monitis-Scripting/tree/master/csharp



External Links for further information:

http://monitis.com/api/api.html#addCustomMonitor

https://www.monitis.com/free_signup.jsp25 Apache Performance Tuning Tips