Apache Cassandra integration for Grafana Cloud

Before you begin

In order for the integration to properly work, you must set up the JMX Exporter for Prometheus on each node in your cluster.

Set up JMX Exporter

Each instance of the JMX Exporter can be run with this Apache Cassandra JMX Exporter configuration file.

For more information on how to configure the JVM on each node, please refer to the JMX Exporter documentation for further configuration details.

Apache Cassandra nodes by default expose 7199 for JMX by default, please make sure the port matches your environment. The JMX URL for the exporter should be properly configured to match your environment e.g. jmxUrl: service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:7199/jmxrmi

Once deployed, Grafana Alloy instance should be able to reach the JMX Exporter’s exposed endpoint in order to scrape metrics.

Install Apache Cassandra integration for Grafana Cloud

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
2. Find Apache Cassandra and click its tile to open the integration.
3. Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Apache Cassandra metrics and logs to your Grafana Cloud instance.
4. Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboards and alerts to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Apache Cassandra setup.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Alloy

Advanced mode

The following snippets provide examples to guide you through the configuration process.

To instruct Grafana Alloy to scrape your Apache Cassandra instances, copy and paste the snippets to your configuration file and follow subsequent instructions.

Advanced metrics snippets

river Copy

prometheus.scrape "metrics_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	targets = concat(
		[{
			__address__       = "<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9000>",
			cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
			cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
			instance          = constants.hostname,
		}],
		[{
			__address__       = "<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9001>",
			cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
			cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
			instance          = constants.hostname,
		}],
		[{
			__address__       = "<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9002>",
			cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
			cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
			instance          = constants.hostname,
		}],
	)
	forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.metrics_service.receiver]
	job_name   = "integrations/apache-cassandra"
}

To monitor your Apache Cassandra instance, you must use a discovery.relabel component to discover your Apache Cassandra Prometheus endpoint and apply appropriate labels, followed by a prometheus.scrape component to scrape it.

Configure the following properties within each discovery.relabel component:

• __address__: The address to your Apache Cassandra Prometheus metrics endpoint.
• instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Apache Cassandra instance. Make sure this label value is the same for all telemetry data collected for this instance.
• cassandra_cluster: The cassandra_cluster label to group your Apache Cassandra instances within a cluster. Set the same value for all nodes within your cluster.
• cluster: if you are running your Cassandra instance within a k8s cluster, set the name of it to allow k8s cluster grouping.

If you have multiple Apache Cassandra servers to scrape, configure one discovery.relabel for each and scrape them by including each under targets within the prometheus.scrape component.

Advanced logs snippets

darwin

river Copy

local.file_match "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	path_targets = [{
		__address__       = "localhost",
		__path__          = "/var/log/cassandra/system.log",
		cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
		cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
		instance          = constants.hostname,
		job               = "integrations/apache-cassandra",
	}]
}

loki.source.file "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	targets    = local.file_match.logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra.targets
	forward_to = [loki.write.grafana_cloud_loki.receiver]
}

To monitor your Apache Cassandra instance logs, you will use a combination of the following components:

• local.file_match defines where to find the log file to be scraped. Change the following properties according to your environment:

  • __address__: The Apache Cassandra instance address
  • __path__: The path to the log file.
  • instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Apache Cassandra instance. Make sure this label value is the same for all telemetry data collected for this instance.
  • cassandra_cluster: The cassandra_cluster label to group your Apache Cassandra instances within a cluster. Set the same value for all nodes within your cluster.
  • cluster: if you are running your Cassandra instance within a k8s cluster, set the name of it to allow k8s cluster grouping.

• loki.source.file sends logs to Loki.

linux

river Copy

local.file_match "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	path_targets = [{
		__address__       = "localhost",
		__path__          = "/var/log/cassandra/system.log",
		cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
		cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
		instance          = constants.hostname,
		job               = "integrations/apache-cassandra",
	}]
}

loki.source.file "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	targets    = local.file_match.logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra.targets
	forward_to = [loki.write.grafana_cloud_loki.receiver]
}

To monitor your Apache Cassandra instance logs, you will use a combination of the following components:

• local.file_match defines where to find the log file to be scraped. Change the following properties according to your environment:

  • __address__: The Apache Cassandra instance address
  • __path__: The path to the log file.
  • instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Apache Cassandra instance. Make sure this label value is the same for all telemetry data collected for this instance.
  • cassandra_cluster: The cassandra_cluster label to group your Apache Cassandra instances within a cluster. Set the same value for all nodes within your cluster.
  • cluster: if you are running your Cassandra instance within a k8s cluster, set the name of it to allow k8s cluster grouping.

• loki.source.file sends logs to Loki.

windows

river Copy

local.file_match "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	path_targets = [{
		__address__       = "localhost",
		__path__          = "/var/log/cassandra/system.log",
		cassandra_cluster = "<your-cluster-name>",
		cluster           = "<your-k8s-cluster-name>",
		instance          = constants.hostname,
		job               = "integrations/apache-cassandra",
	}]
}

loki.source.file "logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra" {
	targets    = local.file_match.logs_integrations_integrations_apache_cassandra.targets
	forward_to = [loki.write.grafana_cloud_loki.receiver]
}

To monitor your Apache Cassandra instance logs, you will use a combination of the following components:

• local.file_match defines where to find the log file to be scraped. Change the following properties according to your environment:

  • __address__: The Apache Cassandra instance address
  • __path__: The path to the log file.
  • instance label: constants.hostname sets the instance label to your Grafana Alloy server hostname. If that is not suitable, change it to a value uniquely identifies this Apache Cassandra instance. Make sure this label value is the same for all telemetry data collected for this instance.
  • cassandra_cluster: The cassandra_cluster label to group your Apache Cassandra instances within a cluster. Set the same value for all nodes within your cluster.
  • cluster: if you are running your Cassandra instance within a k8s cluster, set the name of it to allow k8s cluster grouping.

• loki.source.file sends logs to Loki.

Before you begin

In order for the integration to properly work, you must set up the JMX Exporter for Prometheus on each node in your cluster.

Set up JMX Exporter

Each instance of the JMX Exporter can be run with this Apache Cassandra JMX Exporter configuration file.

For more information on how to configure the JVM on each node, please refer to the JMX Exporter documentation for further configuration details.

Apache Cassandra nodes by default expose 7199 for JMX by default, please make sure the port matches your environment. The JMX URL for the exporter should be properly configured to match your environment e.g. jmxUrl: service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://localhost:7199/jmxrmi

Once deployed, the Grafana Agent should be able to reach the JMX Exporter’s exposed endpoint in order to scrape metrics.

Install Apache Cassandra integration for Grafana Cloud

1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
2. Find Apache Cassandra and click its tile to open the integration.
3. Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Apache Cassandra metrics and logs to your Grafana Cloud instance.
4. Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboards and alerts to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Apache Cassandra setup.

Post-install configuration for the Apache Cassandra integration

After enabling the metrics generation, instruct the Grafana Agent to scrape your Apache Cassandra nodes.

Make sure to change targets in the snippet according to your environment.

You must configure a custom label for this integration:

• cluster, the value that identifies a Apache Cassandra cluster

You can define a cluster label by adding an extra label to the scrape_configs of the JMX Exporter.

If you want to show logs and metrics signals correlated in your dashboards as a single pane of glass, ensure the following:

• job and instance label values must match for the Apache Cassandra integration and logs scrape config in your agent configuration file.
• job must be set to integrations/apache-cassandra
• instance label must be set to a value that uniquely identifies your Apache Cassandra node. Please replace the default hostname value according to your environment - it should be set manually. Note that if you use localhost for multiple nodes, the dashboards will not be able to filter correctly by instance.
• cassandra_cluster must be the value that identifies the Apache Cassandra Cluster this node belongs to.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Agent

Below metrics.configs.scrape_configs, insert the following lines and change the URLs according to your environment:

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    - job_name: integrations/apache-cassandra
      metrics_path: "/metrics"
      static_configs:
        - targets:
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9000>'
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9001>'
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9002>'
          labels:
            cassandra_cluster: '<your-cluster-name>'
            cluster: '<your-k8s-cluster-name>'
            instance: '<your-instance-name>'

Below logs.configs.scrape_configs, insert the following lines according to your environment.

yaml Copy

    - job_name: integrations/apache-cassandra
      static_configs:
        - targets: [localhost]
          labels:
            job: integrations/apache-cassandra
            instance: '<your-instance-name>'
            cassandra_cluster: <your-cluster-name>
            cluster: '<your-k8s-cluster-name>'
            __path__: /var/log/cassandra/system.log

Full example configuration for Grafana Agent

Refer to the following Grafana Agent configuration for a complete example that contains all the snippets used for the Apache Cassandra integration. This example also includes metrics that are sent to monitor your Grafana Agent instance.

yaml Copy

integrations:
  prometheus_remote_write:
  - basic_auth:
      password: <your_prom_pass>
      username: <your_prom_user>
    url: <your_prom_url>
  agent:
    enabled: true
    relabel_configs:
    - action: replace
      source_labels:
      - agent_hostname
      target_label: instance
    - action: replace
      target_label: job
      replacement: "integrations/agent-check"
    metric_relabel_configs:
    - action: keep
      regex: (prometheus_target_sync_length_seconds_sum|prometheus_target_scrapes_.*|prometheus_target_interval.*|prometheus_sd_discovered_targets|agent_build.*|agent_wal_samples_appended_total|process_start_time_seconds)
      source_labels:
      - __name__
  # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `integrations` section.
  # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
logs:
  configs:
  - clients:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_loki_pass>
        username: <your_loki_user>
      url: <your_loki_url>
    name: integrations
    positions:
      filename: /tmp/positions.yaml
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `logs.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
    - job_name: integrations/apache-cassandra
      static_configs:
        - targets: [localhost]
          labels:
            job: integrations/apache-cassandra
            instance: '<your-instance-name>'
            cassandra_cluster: <your-cluster-name>
            cluster: '<your-k8s-cluster-name>'
            __path__: /var/log/cassandra/system.log
metrics:
  configs:
  - name: integrations
    remote_write:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_prom_pass>
        username: <your_prom_user>
      url: <your_prom_url>
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `metrics.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
    - job_name: integrations/apache-cassandra
      metrics_path: "/metrics"
      static_configs:
        - targets:
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9000>'
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9001>'
            - '<your-jmx-exporter-hostname:9002>'
          labels:
            cassandra_cluster: '<your-cluster-name>'
            cluster: '<your-k8s-cluster-name>'
            instance: '<your-instance-name>'
  global:
    scrape_interval: 60s
  wal_directory: /tmp/grafana-agent-wal