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Configure Harvest (basic)

The main configuration file, harvest.yml, consists of the following sections, described below:

Pollers

All pollers are defined in harvest.yml, the main configuration file of Harvest, under the section Pollers.

parameter type description default
Poller name (header) required Poller name, user-defined value
datacenter required Datacenter name, user-defined value
addr required by some collectors IPv4 or FQDN of the target system
collectors required List of collectors to run for this poller
exporters required List of exporter names from the Exporters section. Note: this should be the name of the exporter (e.g. prometheus1), not the value of the exporter key (e.g. Prometheus)
auth_style required by Zapi* collectors Either basic_auth or certificate_auth basic_auth
username, password required if auth_style is basic_auth
ssl_cert, ssl_key optional if auth_style is certificate_auth Absolute paths to SSL (client) certificate and key used to authenticate with the target system.

If not provided, the poller will look for <hostname>.key and <hostname>.pem in $HARVEST_HOME/cert/.

To create certificates for ONTAP systems, see using certificate authentication
use_insecure_tls optional, bool If true, disable TLS verification when connecting to ONTAP cluster false
credentials_file optional, string Path to a yaml file that contains cluster credentials. The file should have the same shape as harvest.yml. See here for examples. Path can be relative to harvest.yml or absolute
tls_min_version optional, string Minimum TLS version to use when connecting to ONTAP cluster: One of tls10, tls11, tls12 or tls13 Platform decides
labels optional, list of key-value pairs Each of the key-value pairs will be added to a poller's metrics. Details below
log_max_bytes Maximum size of the log file before it will be rotated 5_242_880 (5 MB)
log_max_files Number of rotated log files to keep 5
log optional, list of collector names Matching collectors log their ZAPI request/response

Defaults

This section is optional. If there are parameters identical for all your pollers (e.g. datacenter, authentication method, login preferences), they can be grouped under this section. The poller section will be checked first and if the values aren't found there, the defaults will be consulted.

Exporters

All exporters need two types of parameters:

  • exporter parameters - defined in harvest.yml under Exporters section
  • export_options - these options are defined in the Matrix data structure that is emitted from collectors and plugins

The following two parameters are required for all exporters:

parameter type description default
Exporter name (header) required Name of the exporter instance, this is a user-defined value
exporter required Name of the exporter class (e.g. Prometheus, InfluxDB, Http) - these can be found under the cmd/exporters/ directory

Note: when we talk about the Prometheus Exporter or InfluxDB Exporter, we mean the Harvest modules that send the data to a database, NOT the names used to refer to the actual databases.

Prometheus Exporter

InfluxDB Exporter

Tools

This section is optional. You can uncomment the grafana_api_token key and add your Grafana API token so harvest does not prompt you for the key when importing dashboards.

Tools:
  #grafana_api_token: 'aaa-bbb-ccc-ddd'

Configuring collectors

Collectors are configured by their own configuration files (templates), which are stored in subdirectories in conf/. Most collectors run concurrently and collect a subset of related metrics. For example, node related metrics are grouped together and run independently of the disk related metrics. Below is a snippet from conf/zapi/default.yaml

In this example, the default.yaml template contains a list of objects (e.g. Node) that reference sub-templates (e.g. node.yaml). This decomposition groups related metrics together and at runtime, a Zapi collector per object will be created and each of these collectors will run concurrently.

Using the snippet below, we expect there to be four Zapi collectors running, each with a different subtemplate and object.

collector:          Zapi
objects:
  Node:             node.yaml
  Aggregate:        aggr.yaml
  Volume:           volume.yaml
  SnapMirror:       snapmirror.yaml

At start-up, Harvest looks for two files (default.yaml and custom.yaml) in the conf directory of the collector (e.g. conf/zapi/default.yaml). The default.yaml is installed by default, while the custom.yaml is an optional file you can create to add new templates.

When present, the custom.yaml file will be merged with the default.yaml file. This behavior can be overridden in your harvest.yml, see here for an example.

For a list of collector-specific parameters, refer to their individual documentation.

Zapi and ZapiPerf

Rest and RestPerf

EMS

StorageGRID

Unix

Labels

Labels offer a way to add additional key-value pairs to a poller's metrics. These allow you to tag a cluster's metrics in a cross-cutting fashion. Here's an example:

  cluster-03:
    datacenter: DC-01
    addr: 10.0.1.1
    labels:
      - org: meg       # add an org label with the value "meg"
      - ns:  rtp       # add a namespace label with the value "rtp"

These settings add two key-value pairs to each metric collected from cluster-03 like this:

node_vol_cifs_write_data{org="meg",ns="rtp",datacenter="DC-01",cluster="cluster-03",node="umeng-aff300-05"} 10

Keep in mind that each unique combination of key-value pairs increases the amount of stored data. Use them sparingly. See PrometheusNaming for details.

Credentials File

If you would rather not list cluster credentials in your harvest.yml, you can use the credentials_file section in your harvest.yml to point to a file that contains the credentials. At runtime, the credentials_file will be read and the included credentials will be used to authenticate with the matching cluster(s).

This is handy when integrating with 3rd party credential stores. See #884 for examples.

The format of the credentials_file is similar to harvest.yml and can contain multiple cluster credentials.

Example:

Snippet from harvest.yml:

Pollers:
  cluster1:
    addr: 10.193.48.11
    credentials_file: secrets/cluster1.yml
    exporters:
      - prom1 

File secrets/cluster1.yml:

Pollers:
  cluster1:
    username: harvest
    password: foo