Collectd Agent

This is an Ansible role for collectd agent. The collectd has a lot of configurable plugins which provide powerfull capabilities. However you no need to use majority of them, so it's reasonable to have an Ansible role which give a chance to configure selected plugins only. This code is an attempt to create such role.

By default this role uses a CI repositories from collectd vendor to install the latest versions of agent and plugins.

Requirements

This role has been tested with Ansible 2.4+. It's also supposed that you are using the merge behaviour for variables (please, see about hash_behaviour=merge for details)

Role Variables

This role declares and uses the configurations variables in a hash under the collectd key (besides a variable collectd_version). This is a description for main variables which you may want to change.

• versions.collectd is a desired version of collectd agent or plugins;

• collectd.plugins is a section to declare plugin settings which you want to use in your environment. There are a couple ways to define plugins. The first one allow to assign true/false value:

  plugin-name: true or false
  

  if you wish to enable/disable plugin with default settings, for example to enable interface plugin just add this configuration:

  collectd:
    ...
    plugins:
      interface: true
  

  The second way provides an ability to redefine plugin settings:

  plugin-name:
    enabled: true or false
    file: a file where plugin configuration will be saved
    options:
      plugin options in YAML format
  

  See examples below how to declare different parts of collectd configuration in YAML format.

• collectd.service is a section to declare global settings for collectd agent;

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

An example of how to use collectd agent:

    - hosts: all
      roles:
        - role: collectd
          versions:
            collectd: 5.8.1
          collectd:
            service:
              options:
                FQDNLookup: false
            plugins:

              # Write configuration in graphite.conf file
              write_graphite:
                file: graphite
                enabled: true
                options:
                  Node "graphite":
                    Host: "graphite-dev.example.lo"
                    LogSendErrors: true
                    Port: "2103"
                    Prefix: "collectd."
                    Protocol: "tcp"
                    EscapeCharacter: "_"
                    SeparateInstances: true
                    StoreRates: false
                    AlwaysAppendDS: false

              # Write configuration in main configuration file
              network:
                enabled: false
                options:
                  Server:
                    - "collectd-server-01.example.lo	23451"
                    - "collectd-server-02.example.lo	23451"

Using EPEL repo for installation

- hosts: rhel-all
  roles:
    - role: collectd
      versions:
        collectd: 5.8.1
      collectd:

        # EPEL repo is used for this installation
        providers:
          pm:
            repositories:
              # Disable collectd CI repository which is default.
              Collectd:
                enabled: no
            prerequisites:
              - epel-release
            packages:
              - collectd
              - collectd-netlink

        service:
          options:
            FQDNLookup: false

        plugins:
          write_graphite:
            file: graphite
            enabled: true
            options:
              Node "carbon-relay":
                Host: "{{ groups['collectd-gw'] | first }}"
                Port: "2003"
                Prefix: "owner.project.prod.us-east.ec2."
                LogSendErrors: true
                Protocol: "udp"
                EscapeCharacter: "_"
                SeparateInstances: true
                StoreRates: false
                AlwaysAppendDS: false

License

MIT

Author Information

Anton Talevnin <talantr@gmail.com>