Google Cloud Platform - Creating a Cloud Monitor

Cloud monitoring is the process of reviewing and managing the operational workflow and processes within a cloud infrastructure or asset. These techniques confirm the performance of websites, servers, applications, and other cloud infrastructure.

The following steps create the monitor in the Google cloud console.

Step 1: Create a Compute Engine instance :

 Navigation menu --> Compute Engine --> VM instances --> Create.

Field	Value
Name	GeeksforGeeks
Region	us-central1 (Iowa)
Zone	us-central-a
Series	N1
Machine type	n1-standard-2
Firewall	check allow HTTP traffic

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Step 2: Add Apache2 HTTP Server to your instance

In the SSH of created instance, the following commands will set up Apache2 HTTP Server.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apache2 php7.0
sudo service apache2 restart

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To verify the setup, go to the external IP and view the successful deployment of the server.

Step 3: Create a Monitoring workspace

Navigation menu --> Monitoring

Run the Monitoring agent install script command in the SSH terminal of your VM instance to install the Cloud Monitoring agent.

curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh
sudo bash add-monitoring-agent-repo.sh
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install stackdriver-agent

Run the Logging agent install script command in the SSH terminal of your VM instance to install the Cloud Logging agent

curl -sSO https://dl.google.com/cloudagents/add-logging-agent-repo.sh
sudo bash add-logging-agent-repo.sh
sudo apt-get install google-fluentd

Step 4: Create an uptime check

Cloud Console --> Uptime checks (in the left menu) --> Create Uptime Check

 Set the following fields:

Title: GFG Uptime Check, then click Next.
Protocol: HTTP
Resource Type: Instance
Applies to: Single, geeksforgeeks
Path: leave at default
Check Frequency: 1 min

After entering all the necessary fields, click "TEST" . If it responds the way depicted in the below picture, click "CREATE".

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Step 5: Create an alerting policy

1. In the left menu, click Alerting, and then click Create Policy.
2. Click Add Condition.
3. Set the following in the panel that opens:

• Target: Start typing "VM" in the resource type and metric field, and then select:
• Resource Type: VM Instance (gce_instance)
• Metric: Type "network"

Step 6: Now select Network traffic (gce_instance+1). Be sure to choose the Network traffic resource with agent.googleapis.com/interface/traffic:

• Configuration
• Condition: is above
• Threshold: 500
• For: 1 minute
• Click ADD.

Step 7: Click on Next.

Step 8: Click on drop-down arrow next to Notification Channels, then click on Manage Notification Channels.

Step 9: Scroll down the page and click on ADD NEW for Email.

Step 10: In Create Email Channel dialog box, enter your personal email address in the Email Address field and a Display name. Click on Save.

Step 11: Go back to the previous Create alerting policy tab.

Step 12: Click on Notification Channels again, then click on the Refresh icon to get the display name you mentioned in the previous step.

Step 13: Now, select your Display name and click OK. Click Next.

Step 14: Mention the Alert name as Inbound Traffic Alert.

Step 15: Add a message in the documentation, which will be included in the emailed alert. Click on Save.

 You've created an alert! While you wait for the system to trigger an alert, create a dashboard and chart, and then check out Cloud Logging.

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Create a dashboard and chart

 To display the metrics collected by Cloud Monitoring create your own charts and dashboards. In this section, you create the charts for the lab metrics and a custom dashboard.

Step 1: In the left menu select Dashboards, and then Create Dashboard.

Step 2: Name the dashboard Cloud Monitoring GeeksforGeeks.

Step 3: Add the first chart and Click the Line option in the Chart library.

Step 4: Name the chart title CPU Load.

Step 5: Set the Resource type to VM Instance.

Step 6: Set the Metric CPU load (1m). Refresh the tab to view the graph.

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View your logs

Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging are closely integrated. Check out the logs for your lab.

Select Navigation menu --> Logging --> Logs Explorer.

Select the logs you want to see, in this case, you select the logs for the geeksforgeeks instance you created at the start of this lab:

Resource --> VM instances --> geeksforgeeks

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Step 1: Click "ADD"

Step 2: Click "Stream logs"

Step 3: You see the logs for your VM instance

Step 4: Open the Compute Engine window in a new browser window. 

Select Navigation menu --> Compute Engine, right-click VM-instances --> Open link in new window.

Step 5: Move the Logs Viewer browser window next to the Compute Engine window. This makes it easier to view how changes to the VM are reflected in the logs.

Step 6: In the Compute Engine window, select the geeksforgeeks instance, click Stop at the top of the screen, and then confirm to stop the instance.

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Step 7: Watch in the Logs View tab for when the VM is stopped.

Step 8: In the VM instance details window, click Start at the top of the screen, and then confirm. It will take a few minutes for the instance to re-start. Watch the log messages to monitor the startup.