Plugin Integrations

Plugins are a great way to monitor your entire stack and keep track of data that matters the most. Choose from our ready-to-install plugin integrations or build your own.

How it works
Plugin template configuration
100+ plugin integrations
Build your own plugin
Inventory dashboard
Set thresholds
AppLogs integration
Licensing
Troubleshooting Tips

How it Works

A Windows/Linux monitoring agent is required to install and add the plugins in Site24x7. Once the agent is successfully installed, it will execute the plugin script added in the agent directory and push the output to the Site24x7 data center. The resulting data can be viewed in the Site24x7 web client.

Plugin Template Configuration

What is a plugin template?

A plugin template is a user-customized monitor type using which you can define the attributes with units you wish to monitor. The keys present in the plugin's JSON output will be the attributes for the plugin template. Using a plugin template, users can customize the performance charts by choosing related attributes and then showcase the charts on the plugin monitor details page.

Whenever you register a new plugin script on Site24x7, it will cross-check the attributes with the existing plugin template. If these attributes don't match, it creates a new plugin template. If the attributes match, it will map it under the existing plugin template. You can modify the plugin template by adding or removing the JSON keys in the plugin script, but you must increase the plugin version by 1.

Example: Whenever you register a custom plugin script on Site24x7 servers, Site24x7 automatically creates a plugin template for a custom plugin with performance attributes.

What is the need for a plugin template?

The Site24x7 server monitoring agent recognizes the plugin output only if it is as JSON output. Thus, it is essential to define them in a template, so that the agent picks it for monitoring. You can edit an existing plugin template and re-define the units for your attributes. It is important to note that any change done to an existing template will require the plugin version to be incremented. Know under what conditions you have to change the plugin version.

What is a plugin monitor?

A plugin monitor will be created in the Site24x7 web client under Server > Plugins. This monitor will use the plugin template and monitor the attributes defined in it.
Example: The mysql.py template installed in 'n' number of servers will create 'n' number of MySQL plugin monitors

100+ Plugin Integrations

Site24x7 provides ready-to-install 100+ plugin integrations including MySQL, WebLogic, GlassFish, Tomcat, Apache, and Nagios to monitor your applications, databases, load balancers, message brokers, caches and more.

If you don't find what you're looking for, build your own plugin.

Build your Own Plugin

You can also build your own plugin using Python or Shell for Linux and Batch, PowerShell, VB, and DLL for Windows.

Checks before you start building your own plugin:

Ensure the executed plugin script returns a valid JSON data.
Make sure the required dependency modules are installed. Know what modules have to be installed for each plugin.
Check if the plugin is placed rightly under the agent's plugin directory.
Make sure the name of the file and the folder name, both are identical.
Ensure the plugin version is incremented for every new plugin template created. Under what conditions should I change my plugin version?

Learn more.

Inventory Dashboard

You can view the installation status of your plugins, their associated server monitors, poll interval, versions, and more in the Inventory Dashboard. Go to Server > Plugin Integrations > Inventory Dashboard to view all your plugin monitors in one place.

Set Thresholds

Once a plugin monitor is added, associate a threshold and availability profile to help the alarms engine decide if a specific resource has to be declared critical or down.

AppLogs integration

In order to analyze your application logs and identify the exact root cause of the issues, you can make configuration changes by adding logs_enabled, log_type_name, and log_file_path to the plugin configuration file.

A log_type_name defines the format in which an application writes logs. Site24x7 supports more than 30 different log types. Additionally, you can also create custom log types.

Example:

logs_enabled ="true"
log_type_name="MySQL Error"
log_file_path="/var/mysql/log/error.txt"

In the plugin script, add logs_enabled, log_type_name, log_file_path under the dictionary name "applog" as:

"applog": {
logs_enabled ="true"
log_type_name="MySQL Error"
log_file_path="/var/mysql/log/error.txt"
}

Note that you need to enable the AppLogs at account and server levels to perform these changes.

Steps to enable AppLogs:

Log in to Site24x7.
To enable AppLogs at account level, go to Admin > AppLogs > Settings. Configure Yes to collect the application logs from the servers using AppLogs.
To enable AppLogs at server level, go to Server > Server Monitor > Servers. Select the Server Monitor, navigate to the AppLogs tab, and click on Enable AppLogs.

Licensing

The first plugin added for a server monitor is free. After that, each plugin monitor is considered as a basic monitor. Each plugin can have upto 50 attributes.

Troubleshooting Tips

For the complete list of articles, refer our knowledge base for plugin integrations.