Visualization of F5 BIG-IP metrics on Grafana using Prometheus and Telemetry Streaming service

This user guide is all about configuration and deployment of telemetry streaming service on F5 BIG-IP device and scraps those metrics by Prometheus which will be finally visualized by the Grafana. One can select the relevant metrics scraped by the Prometheus and visualize them on the Grafana which will be demonstrated later in the guide.

This guide is heavily based on the work performed by Michael O'Leary and one can view on here. The purpose of this guide is to document a little more elaborated guide for both learning and deployment aspects and also address the possible issues that could be faced during the process of deployment.

 

Telemetry streaming (TS) is an iControl LX extension delivered as a TMOS-independent RPM file with the ability to declaratively aggregate, normalize and forward statistics and events from the BIG-IP to a consumer application by posting a single TS JSON declaration to TS’s declarative REST API endpoint. Additional information about Telemetry streaming can be found on

Diagram of BIG-IP or API service Gateway

Reference to the above diagram can be found here.

Prometheus is an open-source monitoring solution that stores time series data like metrics whereas Grafana allows visualizing the data stored in Prometheus and also supports a wide range of other sources.

Architecture diagram used on the deployment

A short briefing about the architecture diagram in case of this user-deployment case scenario, the F5 BIG-IP system is on standalone mode with a management IP of 172.20.100.173, and both Prometheus and Grafana services are running on the same host with an IP address of 192.168.180.191 where the service port for Prometheus is on default – 9090 and the service port for Grafana is 5000.

The whole deployment guide is broadly divided into the following sections and one can jump to the required step if they have achieved the previous configuration successfully:

• Section I: Download and install Telemetry Streaming
• Section II: Telemetry Streaming Declaration on the F5 BIG-IP device
• Section III: Configuration of Prometheus
• Section IV: Configuration on Grafana using Prometheus as a data source

Section I: Download and install Telemetry Streaming

We need to first download and install the telemetry streaming package on the F5 BIG-IP device. Since the telemetry streaming package is an RPM file that can be downloaded and can install through GUI or curl command on the CLI of the F5 BIG-IP device.

 

In this user manual guide, we will download and then upload the telemetry streaming package on the BIG-IP using the iControl/iApp LX framework.

One can use the alternative way which can be found here.

 

At first, we need to download the RPM file, one can find the latest telemetry streaming RPM file on the F5 Telemetry site on GitHub and download the latest RPM file.

The GitHub page to download telemetry streaming can be found here.

After downloading the file, you need to access your F5 BIG-IP GUI with your admin privilege account then follow the following steps:

Section II: Telemetry Streaming Declaration on the F5 BIG-IP device

Once the download and installation of the F5 telemetry streaming package have been completed, we need to send a Telemetry Streaming declaration to configure a Telemetry Streaming pull consumer target.

Before we jump into this configuration, we need to create a new user with an administrator role on the F5 BIG-IP device and you can just continue with the default admin user on the further configuration.

We can create a new user in the following steps:

• Go to System > Users > User List
• Click on Create button
• Input the new user’s name and password
• Select role as administrator then add
• Click on the Finished button

As we’re using Prometheus on this user-guide manual so, the Telemetry Streaming consumer target will be Prometheus which is hosted on 192.168.180.191:5000

We can either use Postman or using curl command on the CLI of the F5 BIG-IP device to configure a Telemetry Streaming pull consumer target.

 

Configuration using Postman application

Just follow the following steps for the configuration of the telemetry streaming consumer target using the Postman application.

Step I: Open the Postman and create a new tab

Step II: Select the GET method and paste the following link

https://<big-ip-management-ip-address>/mgmt/shared/telemetry/declare

 

Step III: Browse on Auth field and fill up the credentials

Use the credentials used to log into F5 BIG-IP (in this case, recently created new user)

Step IV: Select on Body option

Change the method into POST, then select raw sub-option and then JSON data format. Past the Telemetry Streaming declaration on the body section and then click on the send button.

{     "class": "Telemetry",     "My_Poller": {         "class": "Telemetry_System_Poller",         "interval": 0     },     "My_System": {         "class": "Telemetry_System",         "enable": "true",         "systemPoller": [             "My_Poller"         ]     },     "metrics": {         "class": "Telemetry_Pull_Consumer",         "type": "Prometheus",         "systemPoller": "My_Poller"     } }

 

Step V: Verify the response as the success status

Step VI: Verify the available metrics

Create a new tab on Postman:

-        On the URL section

https://<big-ip-management-ip-address>/mgmt/shared/telemetry/pullconsumer/metrics

-        On the authorization section, use the same credentials used before

 

You will obtain a response something like this:

 

Configuration using CLI of F5 BIG-IP device

Following steps for the configuration of telemetry streaming consumer target using CLI of F5 BIG-IP device are discussed below:

Once you have accessed your F5 BIG-IP device CLI terminal then access either your default admin credentials or the new user you’ve recently created on the above section. Then execute the following commands on the terminal:

On the username and password section, you either enter your default admin credentials or the new user you’ve recently created has the administrator privilege.

curl -u username:password -k https://localhost/mgmt/shared/telemetry/declare

Note:

-k, --insecure

to be made secure by using the CA certificate bundle installed by default. This makes all connections considered "insecure" fail unless -k, --insecure is used.

 

ChangChange into tmp directory and create a file called ts-config.json and I am using vi editor for it.  

cd /tmp vi ts-config.json

 

Paste the Telemetry Streaming declaration and then save the file and exit the vi editor.

{     "class": "Telemetry",     "My_Poller": {         "class": "Telemetry_System_Poller",         "interval": 0     },     "My_System": {         "class": "Telemetry_System",         "enable": "true",         "systemPoller": [             "My_Poller"         ]     },     "metrics": {         "class": "Telemetry_Pull_Consumer",         "type": "Prometheus",         "systemPoller": "My_Poller"     } }

 

Then execute the following command on the terminal on the same directory /tmp and change the username and password section with your F5 BIG-IP device credentials having the administrator privilege.

curl -X POST -u username:password -k https://localhost/mgmt/shared/telemetry/declare -d @ts-config.json -H “content-type:application/json”

 

 

To verify the available metrics

curl -u username:password -k https://localhost/mgmt/shared/telemetry/pullconsumer/metrics

 

 

Section III: Configuration of Prometheus

Once the telemetry streaming service has been successfully configured and the metrics are available on the path. We need to configure Prometheus in order to scrape the metrics data on the predefined path. The following are the steps to configure the Prometheus:

Note: On this user-guide demonstration, both Grafana and Prometheus are installed on the same host with different service ports as mentioned earlier. CentOS 7 is used as the OS for this host machine and you may have different syntax to view the following status check.

First check the status of the Prometheus

sudo systemctl status prometheus.service

 

View the current working directory and change into /etc/prometheus

pwd cd /etc/prometheus ls -al

 

global:   scrape_interval: 10s   scrape_configs:   - job_name: 'TelemetryStreaming'     scrape_timeout: 30s     scrape_interval: 30s     scheme: https       tls_config:      insecure_skip_verify: true       metrics_path: '/mgmt/shared/telemetry/pullconsumer/metrics'     basic_auth:      username: 'F5-BIG-IP-username'      password: 'F5-BIG-IP-password'     static_configs:       - targets: ['BIGIP-managementIP:443']

 

Then restart the Prometheus service and check the status of the Prometheus service.

sudo systemctl restart prometheus.service sudo systemctl status prometheus.service

 

Note: If the configuration is correct, then the Prometheus service will be enabled otherwise, the status of the Prometheus service will be disabled.

 

To further verify whether instances has been discovered on the the Prometheus:

-                   Go to http://prometheus-ip:service/port

-                Click on the Status option and select the Target option

 

 

Section IV: Configuration on Grafana using Prometheus as a data source

In this section, we need to connect Prometheus as a data source on Grafana

Once the data source has been successfully configured on Grafna then Create a new dashboard and select Prometheus as the data source then select the relevant metrics and change the refresh interval as required. Save and apply the panel. Then, Save the dashboard and view the metrics on the Grafana dashboard.

The possible issue that can arise during the configuration

If you use the default TS declare from the official telemetry streaming document website then you may fail to view the available metrics on the mentioned link:

https://<f5-management-ip>/mgmt/shared/telemetry/pullconsumer/metrics