Consul

The Consul integration requires CXDOT Collector 1.4.0 or greater. Consul is a distributed system for connecting and configuring applications across dynamic infrastructure. Use the Consul integration with the Chronosphere XDOT Collector to collect cluster and catalog health metrics from Consul agents running in your environment. The Consul integration supports Consul 1.19 or greater.

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Supported telemetry types

The Consul integration supports these telemetry types:

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Prerequisites

The Consul integration has the following prerequisites:

• Make each Consul agent’s HTTP API reachable from the collector.
• If Consul access control lists are enabled, create a token with read access to the agent, catalog, and health endpoints.

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Configure

To configure the Consul integration, follow these steps:

1. For Consul pods that expose the HTTP API on port 8500, add the app: consul label to the pod template. For instances that require a different URL, access control list token, or transport layer security settings, provide them through autodiscovery annotations. For more information, see autodiscovery.
2. Optional: Configure static targets for Consul agents that autodiscovery doesn’t reach. For example, add the following to the values.yaml for your Helm chart:
   config:
     integrations:
       consul:
         endpoints:
           - endpoint: consul.example.com:8500
   

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Validate

To validate the Consul integration, follow these steps:

1. In Live Telemetry Analyzer, filter for cxdot.integration.name=consul. Confirm that Consul metric names appear.
2. In Metrics Explorer, run the following query:
   count by ("server.address", "server.port") ({"consul.peers"})
   
   Confirm that every Consul agent you expect appears in the results.

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Troubleshooting

• Consul metrics don’t appear and collector logs report HTTP 403 responses: Confirm that the Consul access control list token has read access to the agent, catalog, and health endpoints.
• Catalog metrics are missing for an agent, but consul.peers appears: Only the Raft leader for a data center reports catalog metrics. Other agents report peer count only.

For more information about diagnosing a failing integration, see Troubleshooting.

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Configuration reference

Configure one Consul integration instance with the following settings. In Helm values, place these settings under config.integrations.consul. In a Collector configuration file, place them under cxdot.integrations.consul.

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Optional settings

• enabled Type: boolean. Optional. Default: true. Whether to enable this Consul integration instance. If true, the Collector runs the instance. If false, the Collector doesn’t run it.
• endpoints Type: array of object. Optional. Static Consul targets. A nonempty list disables automatic discovery for this integration instance, and the Collector collects metrics from only the listed targets. Specify a target as host:port to use HTTP. Specify a full HTTP or HTTPS URL to control the scheme.
• endpoints[].endpoint Type: string. Required. Consul target as either host:port or a full HTTP or HTTPS URL.
• acl_token Type: string. Optional. Consul access control list token sent in the X-Consul-Token header. Provide a token with read access to the agent, catalog, and health endpoints when access control lists are enabled. The Collector masks this sensitive value in diagnostic output, logs, and errors. Discovery annotations can provide a target-specific token.
• collection_interval Type: duration. Optional. Default: 15s. How often the Collector collects metrics from each Consul target.
• timeout Type: duration. Optional. Default: 15s. Maximum time allowed to collect metrics from one Consul target. The value must not exceed collection_interval.
• max_services Type: integer. Optional. Default: 50. Minimum: 1. Cap on how many catalog services one collection interrogates. Each service costs one health-endpoint request, so an unbounded catalog would turn a single collection into thousands of requests against the agent. Services are taken in name order once the catalog exceeds the cap, so the truncated set stays the same between collections rather than shifting with the agent’s response ordering.
• tls Type: object. Optional. Transport layer security (TLS) settings for static HTTPS targets. Certificate verification is enabled unless insecure_skip_verify is true. These settings don’t apply to HTTP targets. Discovery annotations can provide target-specific TLS settings.
• tls.ca_file Type: string. Optional. Path to the CA cert. For a client this verifies the server certificate. For a server this verifies client certificates. If empty uses system root CA. (optional)
• tls.ca_pem Type: string. Optional. In memory PEM encoded cert. (optional)
• tls.cert_file Type: string. Optional. Path to the TLS cert to use for TLS required connections. (optional)
• tls.cert_pem Type: string. Optional. In memory PEM encoded TLS cert to use for TLS required connections. (optional)
• tls.cipher_suites Type: array of string. Optional. CipherSuites is a list of TLS cipher suites that the TLS transport can use. If left blank, a safe default list is used. See https://go.dev/src/crypto/tls/cipher_suites.go for a list of supported cipher suites.
• tls.curve_preferences Type: array of string. Optional. contains the elliptic curves that will be used in an ECDHE handshake, in preference order Defaults to empty list and “crypto/tls” defaults are used, internally.
• tls.include_system_ca_certs_pool Type: boolean. Optional. If true, load system CA certificates pool in addition to the certificates configured in this struct.
• tls.insecure Type: boolean. Optional. In gRPC and HTTP when set to true, this is used to disable the client transport security. See https://godoc.org/google.golang.org/grpc#WithInsecure for gRPC. Please refer to https://godoc.org/crypto/tls#Config for more information. (optional, default false)
• tls.insecure_skip_verify Type: boolean. Optional. InsecureSkipVerify will enable TLS but not verify the certificate.
• tls.key_file Type: string. Optional. Path to the TLS key to use for TLS required connections. (optional)
• tls.key_pem Type: string. Optional. In memory PEM encoded TLS key to use for TLS required connections. (optional)
• tls.max_version Type: string. Optional. MaxVersion sets the maximum TLS version that is acceptable. If not set, refer to crypto/tls for defaults. (optional)
• tls.min_version Type: string. Optional. MinVersion sets the minimum TLS version that is acceptable. If not set, TLS 1.2 will be used. (optional)
• tls.reload_interval Type: duration. Optional. ReloadInterval specifies the duration after which the certificate will be reloaded If not set, it will never be reloaded (optional)
• tls.server_name_override Type: string. Optional. ServerName requested by client for virtual hosting. This sets the ServerName in the TLSConfig. Please refer to https://godoc.org/crypto/tls#Config for more information. (optional)
• tls.tpm Type: object. Optional. Trusted platform module configuration
• tls.tpm.auth Type: string. Optional. Authorization value for the trusted platform module key.
• tls.tpm.enabled Type: boolean. Optional. Whether to use a trusted platform module for the TLS private key. If true, the Collector loads the key from the configured device or socket. If false, the Collector uses the configured key file or in-memory key.
• tls.tpm.owner_auth Type: string. Optional. Owner authorization value for the trusted platform module.
• tls.tpm.path Type: string. Optional. The path to the TPM device or Unix domain socket. For instance /dev/tpm0 or /dev/tpmrm0.