Collecting and Analyzing dstat data

Scenario

dstat is a versatile resource statistics tool that replaces vmstat, iostat, mpstat, netstat and ifstat.

By collecting dstat output into Fluentd and storing them in various backend systems, one can create a resource monitoring system very easily. For example,

1. Sending dstat data into MongoDB for analysis
2. Sending dstat data into Elasticsearch for analysis

Setup

1. Install the dstat plugin by running the following command

   $ fluent-gem install fluent-plugin-dstat
   

2. Open your Fluentd configuration file and add the following lines:

   <source>
     type dstat
     tag input.dstat
     option -c
     delay 3
    </source>    
   

   With the above set up, Fluentd runs dstat periodically (roughly every 10 seconds) to gather resource data and tag it with "input.dstat".

What's Next?

It's time to configure data outputs. Here are some examples.