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ThingWorx Foundation

ThingWorx Foundation provides a very useful in-built endpoint (OpenMetrics/Prometheus format) allowing for easy collection of performance metrics into Prometheus. This dashboard is an internal creation that myself and a colleague have been using and evolving through the various projects that we work on with customers, partners, and our internal colleagues. Anyone developing or running applications on ThingWorx should be monitoring them for the various needs of those roles. This dashboard that I search for in my Grafana as 'foundation' is the Go-To monitoring stop. I have also enhanced things to add a few metrics which are not included in the standard monitoring endpoint. Please use this, and tell your friends as well. Monitoring trends and comparing baselines (requests, tasks, behavior) over many months is a key step in ensuring that applications run smoothly on reasonably sized infrastructure and avoiding surprise performance degradation that can lead to production environment outages! Production use of ThingWorx NEEDS to be monitored.... start with this. :-D Over the years I have been capturing and sharing my learnings around ThingWorx Observability, and you can find these videos on my YouTube channel here: [ThingWorx Performance and Health Monitoring](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-byEwO6_EXY&list=PL69Ma82gzaTx2JnbrRY8qOQsCZaQUGOgl)

The following is the Prometheus configuration which you can use to scrape metrics from ThingWorx.

This configuration leverages the default HTTP transport from the private network. You need to change the configuration to use HTTPS if these scrapes will be going across untrusted networks, as otherwise the metrics user credentials could be intercepted.

YML 
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'Thingworx'
    metrics_path: /Thingworx/Metrics
# scheme: https
    basic_auth:
      username: MetricsUser
      password: not-your-password-dude
    static_configs:
    - targets: ['wer-twx-foundation:8080','server1.dmag.field.devops.ptc.io:8080']
      labels: 
        group: Thingworx
    metric_relabel_configs:
    - source_labels: [ __name__ ]
      regex: '(thingworx_General___PTC_Reported_AzureIoT|thingworx_LicensingSubsystem_.*_CHECK_).*'
      action: drop

The RegEx for relabelling is a little trick to drop unneeded metrics. Considering the nearly 300 metrics collected on each scrape, you should be selective on which ones you need to keep if you are storing or forwarding metrics for long-term retention as the volumes will build up and slow your queries.

You’ll note the YAML list which allows adding multiple servers to scrape. You can break these out across multiple lines if you wish to apply specific application or other labels as a part of the scrape. Example:

YAML 
    - targets:
      - simulator.japaneast.cloudapp.azure.com:9100
      labels:
        group: Simulators
        region: Japan
    - targets:
      - simulator.centralus.cloudapp.azure.com:9100
      labels:
        group: Simulators
        region: USA
    - targets:
      - simulator.germanywestcentral.cloudapp.azure.com:9100
      labels:
        group: Simulators
        region: Germany
    - targets:
      - simulator.koreacentral.cloudapp.azure.com:9100
      labels:
        group: Simulators
        region: Korea

The following JMX Exporter configuration adds JVM and Tomcat monitoring to ThingWorx, as well as the DB connection pools and metrics not available as standard.

YML 
# Configuration by Greg Eva (geva@ptc.com) - please contact for questions or suggested changes/enhancements
lowercaseOutputLabelNames: false
lowercaseOutputName: true
# Eventually could put back whitelist, however are very specifically pulling only relevant attributes anyway
#whitelistObjectNames: ["java.lang:type=OperatingSystem", "java.lang:type=Memory", "java.lang:type=MemoryPool", "java.lang:type=Threading", "java.lang:type=GarbageCollector", "Catalina:*", "com.mchange.v2.c3p0:*" , "org.apache.commons.pool2:*"]
#blacklistObjectNames: []

rules:
## JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE ##
- pattern: 'java.lang<type=OperatingSystem><>(ProcessCpuLoad|SystemCpuLoad|SystemLoadAverage|AvailableProcessors):'
  name: jvm_processor_$1
  help: Java Virtual Machine processor load for $1
  type: GAUGE

- pattern: 'java.lang<type=OperatingSystem><>(\w+)FileDescriptorCount:'
  name: jvm_filedescriptor_$1_count
  help: Java Virtual Machine open and maximum file descriptors
  type: GAUGE

- pattern: 'java.lang<type=OperatingSystem><>(TotalSwapSpace|FreeSwapSpace|TotalPhysicalMemorySize|FreePhysicalMemorySize):'
  name: jvm_memory_$1_bytes
  help: Java Virtual Machine memory for $1
  type: GAUGE

- pattern: 'java.lang<type=Threading><>(CurrentThreadCpuTime|CurrentThreadUserTime):'
  name: jvm_threads_$1_total
  help: Java Virtual Machine threads for $1
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'java.lang<type=Memory><(\w+)MemoryUsage>(\w+): (\d+)'
  name: jvm_memory_bytes_$2
  labels:
    area: "$1"  # Heap/NonHeap
    value: $3
  type: GAUGE

# Skipping GC related metrics, as they come in with the Java agent exporter implementation (not HTTP server)
# Ideally I would like these two metrics, but I cannot get the JMX query to work
# LastGcInfo before and after memory details not needed as present on jvm_memory_pool_allocated_bytes_total
#- pattern: 'java.lang<name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*),type=GarbageCollector><LastGcInfo>(GcThreadCount|duration)'
#  name: jvm_gc_$2
#  labels:
#    pool: $1
#  help: Java Virtual Machine garbage collection for $1
#  type: GAUGE

## TOMCAT ##        
- pattern: 'Catalina<type=GlobalRequestProcessor, name=\"(\w+-.+?)-(\d+)\"><>(\w+):'
  name: tomcat_$3_total
  labels:
    port: "$2"
    protocol: "$1"
  help: Tomcat global $3
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'Catalina<type=GlobalRequestProcessor, Upgrade=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*), name=\"(\w+-.+?)-(\d+)\"><>(\w+):'
  name: tomcat_upgrade_$4_total
  labels:
    port: "$2"
    protocol: "$1"
    upgrade: "$3"
  help: Tomcat global $4
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'Catalina<j2eeType=Servlet, WebModule=//([-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:.,;]*[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]), name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*), J2EEApplication=none, J2EEServer=none><>(requestCount|maxTime|processingTime|errorCount):'
  name: tomcat_servlet_$3_total
  labels:
    module: "$1"
    servlet: "$2"
  help: Tomcat servlet $3 total
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'Catalina<type=ThreadPool, name="(\w+-.+?)-(\d+)"><>(currentThreadCount|currentThreadsBusy|keepAliveCount|maxKeepAliveRequests|pollerThreadCount|connectionCount|maxConnections|connectionTimeout|maxThreads|minSpareThreads|acceptCount|acceptorThreadCount):'
  name: tomcat_threadpool_$3
  labels:
    port: "$2"
    protocol: "$1"
  help: Tomcat threadpool $3
  type: GAUGE

- pattern: 'Catalina<type=Manager, host=([-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:.,;]*[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]), context=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*)><>(processingTime|sessionCounter|rejectedSessions|expiredSessions):'
  # (Catalina<j2eeType=Servlet, WebModule=//localhost/examples, name=stock, J2EEApplication=none, J2EEServer=none><>asyncSupported)
  name: tomcat_session_$3_total
  labels:
    context: "$2"
    host: "$1"
  help: Tomcat session $3 total
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'Catalina<type=WebResourceRoot, host=([-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%?=~_|!:.,;]*[-a-zA-Z0-9+&@#/%=~_|]), context=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*), name=Cache><>(\w+):'
  name: tomcat_cache_$3
  labels:
    context: "$2"
    host: "$1"
  help: Tomcat Resource cache confirguration and performance metrics (units are kb and ms)
  type: GAUGE

## C3P0 (ThingWorx Database Connection Library) ##
- pattern: 'com.mchange.v2.c3p0<type=PooledDataSource, identityToken=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*), name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*)><>(numFailedIdleTestsDefaultUser|numFailedIdleTestsAllUsers):'
  name: thingworx_PersistenceProvider_$3_total
  labels:
    pool: $2
  help: ThingWorx Persistence Provider DB Connection Pool performance metrics (C3P0)
  type: COUNTER

- pattern: 'com.mchange.v2.c3p0<type=PooledDataSource, identityToken=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*), name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*)><>(maxPoolSize|numBusyConnections|numBusyConnectionsAllUsers|numBusyConnectionsDefaultUser|numConnections|numConnectionsAllUsers|numConnectionsDefaultUser|numIdleConnections|numIdleConnectionsAllUsers|numIdleConnectionsDefaultUser|threadPoolNumActiveThreads|threadPoolNumIdleThreads|threadPoolNumTasksPending|threadPoolSize|unreturnedConnectionTimeout|statementCacheNumCheckedOutDefaultUser|statementCacheNumCheckedOutStatementsAllUsers|statementCacheNumConnectionsWithCachedStatementsAllUsers|statementCacheNumConnectionsWithCachedStatementsDefaultUser|numDeferredCloseThreads|statementCacheNumStatementsAllUsers|statementCacheNumStatementsDefaultUser):'
  name: thingworx_PersistenceProvider_$3
  labels:
    pool: $2
  help: ThingWorx Persistence Provider DB Connection Pool performance metrics (C3P0)
  type: GAUGE

## DBCP2/POOL2 (Thingworx Database Thing Template) ##
- pattern: 'org.apache.commons.pool2<type=GenericObjectPool, name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*)><>(BorrowedCount|CreatedCount|DestroyedCount|ReturnedCount):'
  name: thingworx_DatabaseThing_$2_total
  labels:
    pool: $1
  type: COUNTER
  help: ThingWorx Database Thing DB Connection Pool performance metrics (Apache Pool2/DBCP2)

- pattern: 'org.apache.commons.pool2<type=GenericObjectPool, name=([-a-zA-Z0-9+/$%~_-|!.]*)><>(MaxIdle|MaxTotal|MaxWaitMillis|MeanActiveTimeMillis|MeanBorrowWaitTimeMillis|MeanIdleTimeMillis|MinEvictableIdleTimeMillis|MinIdle|NumActive|NumIdle|NumWaiters)'
  name: thingworx_DatabaseThing_$2
  labels:
    pool: $1
  type: GAUGE
  help: ThingWorx Database Thing DB Connection Pool performance metrics (Apache Pool2/DBCP2)

# For everything missing... compatibility across MSAI deployments and my own dashboards.
#- pattern: "java.*"
- pattern: "Catalina*"

You will then need to either change your Tomcat service to include the JMX Exporter as a Java agent, or add it to the JAVA_OPTS or CATALINA_OPTS so that the exporter with associated configuration file will be loaded with Tomcat.

BASH 
-javaagent:/opt/jmx_exporter/jmx_prometheus_javaagent-0.18.0.jar=9111:/opt/jmx_exporter/jmx-exporter-config-twx.yaml

And then add the relevant Prometheus scrape configuration for the above JMX Exporter configuration. Consult the Prometheus documentation should you need to enhance it.

YAML 
  - job_name: 'jmx'

    static_configs:
    - targets: ['wer-twx-foundation:9111', 'wer-twx-iothubconnector:9111']

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