Configuring Health Monitor notifications

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This topic describes how to configure notifications from the Health Monitor (HM), which monitors the health of the virtual machines in a Cloud Foundry (CF) deployment.

The HM is a BOSH component that continuously monitors all BOSH-deployed virtual machines (VMs) in a deployment. Each BOSH-deployed VM produces a heartbeat every minute and sends it to the HM, along with status and lifecycle events.

Operators can configure the HM to send an alert through notification plug-ins by editing the BOSH manifest and redeploying.

Step 1: Set up BOSH Director credentials

To enable HM notifications, you must provide the HM with credentials to access the BOSH Director. Perform the procedures below to give the HM the correct credentials.

1. Open your BOSH manifest and locate hm: director_account under properties:

   hm:
     director_account:
       ca_cert: "CA-CERT"
       client_id: UAA-CLIENT-ID
       client_secret: UAA-CLIENT-SECRET
       password: PASSWORD
       user: USERNAME
   

2. To enable the HM to access the BOSH Director, do one of the following:

   • Provide the user and password for a user that can access the BOSH Director, and remove the other lines under director_account.
   • Provide a UAA client ID for client_id, a UAA client secret for client_secret, and a certificate to verify the UAA endpoint for ca_cert. Remove the other lines under director_account.

Step 2: Configure notifications

Perform the procedures below to set the logging level of the HM and to configure how you receive notifications.

1. Locate the loglevel property in your BOSH manifest.

   hm:
     loglevel: info
   

   This property sets the logging level of the HM. You can set loglevel to fatal, error, warn, info, or debug.

2. You can enable notifications by e-mail, PagerDuty, AWS CloudWatch, DataDog, OpenTSDB, and Graphite. Follow the instructions below for the appropriate plug-in.

Configure email

Replace the placeholders with the values appropriate for your deployment.

hm:
  email_notifications: true
  email_recipients: [email protected], [email protected]
  smtp:
    from: SENDER-ADDRESS
    host: SENDER-SMTP-HOST
    port: SENDER-SMTP-PORT
    domain: SENDER-SMTP-DOMAIN
    tls: TRUE-OR-FALSE
    auth: SMTP-AUTH-TYPE
    user: SMTP-USER
    password: SMTP-PASSWORD

• email_notifications: Set to true.
• email_recipients: Provide a comma-delimited list of recipient addresses.
• smtp.from: Provide the email address of the sender of the notifications. For example, [email protected].
• smtp.host: Provide the address of the SMTP server. For example, smtp.example.com.
• smtp.port: Provide the port of the SMTP server. For example, 25, 465, or 587.
• smtp.domain: Provide the SMTP EHLO domain. This is typically the server’s FQDN, such as cloudfoundry.example.com.
• tls: Set tls to true to enable automatic STARTTLS.
• auth: Provide the SMTP authentication type. Only plain is supported.
• user: If you set auth to plain, provide the username for SMTP authentication.
• password: If you set auth to plain, provide the password for SMTP authentication.

To customize the contents of your notification email, see the Getting started with the notifications service topic.

Configure PagerDuty

Replace the placeholders with the values appropriate for your deployment.

hm:
  pagerduty_enabled: true
  pagerduty:
    service_key: YOUR-PAGERDUTY-SERVICE-KEY
    http_proxy: YOUR-HTTP-PROXY

• pagerduty_enabled: Set to true.
• pagerduty.service_key: Provide the PagerDuty service API key. For more information about how to generate an API key, see the PagerDuty documentation.
• pagerduty.http_proxy: Optionally, provide a HTTP proxy to connect to PagerDuty.

Configure AWS CloudWatch

Replace the placeholders with the values appropriate for your deployment.

hm:
  cloud_watch_enabled: true
aws:
  access_key_id: YOUR-AWS-ACCESS-KEY-ID
  secret_access_key: YOUR-SECRET-AWS-ACCESS-KEY

• cloud_watch_enabled: Set to true.
• aws.access_key_id: Provide the access key ID for your Amazon Web Services (AWS) account. For more information about Amazon CloudWatch, see the CloudWatch documentation.
• aws.secret_access_key: Provide the secret access key for your AWS account.

Configure DataDog

Replace the placeholders with the values appropriate for your deployment.

hm:
  datadog_enabled: true
  datadog:
    api_key:
    application_key:
    pagerduty_service_name:

• datadog_enabled: Set to true.
• datadog.api_key: Provide the API key for DataDog. For more information about DataDog, see the DataDog documentation.
• datadog.application_key: Provide the HM application key for DataDog.
• datadog.pagerduty_service_name: Provide the service name to alert in PagerDuty on HM events.