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Monitoring and logging

Red Hat Developer Hub 1.9

Tracking performance and capturing insights with monitoring and logging tools in Red Hat Developer Hub

Red Hat Customer Content Services

Abstract

Monitor performance and gather insights from Developer Hub by configuring log levels, enabling metrics on OpenShift Container Platform, and integrating with cloud monitoring services on AWS and AKS.

Preface
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Monitor performance and gather insights from Developer Hub by configuring log levels, enabling metrics on OpenShift Container Platform, and integrating with cloud monitoring services on AWS and AKS.

Chapter 1. Log levels
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Control the amount and type of information that Developer Hub writes to its logs by configuring the LOG_LEVEL environment variable using the Operator or Helm chart.

Configure the application log level through the LOG_LEVEL environment variable by using the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator to control the minimum severity level of events that your application logs.

Prerequisites

  • You have access to the Backstage custom resource (CR) used to deploy the application.

Procedure

  • Include the environment variable LOG_LEVEL in your Backstage CR. For example: 

    spec:
  # Other fields omitted
  application:
    extraEnvs:
      envs:
        - name: LOG_LEVEL
          value: debug

    You can use any of the values in the following table.

    Expand
    Table 1.1. LOG_LEVEL values in order of increasing severity
    ValueDescription

    debug

    Detailed information, typically useful only when troubleshooting.

    info

    General information about the operation of the application. This is the default level.

    warn

    Potential issues or situations that might require attention.

    error

    Errors that occurred during the operation but are not critical.

    critical

    Unrecoverable errors that must be addressed immediately to restore functionality.

Configure the application log level through the LOG_LEVEL environment variable by using the Red Hat Developer Hub Helm chart to control the minimum severity level of events that your application logs.

Prerequisites

  • You have installed Red Hat Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform using the Helm chart.

Procedure

  • Add LOG_LEVEL to your Helm chart values.yaml file. For example: 

    upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- Truncated ---
    extraEnvVars:
      - name: LOG_LEVEL
        value: debug

    You can use any of the values in the following table.

    Expand
    Table 1.2. LOG_LEVEL values in order of increasing severity
    ValueDescription

    debug

    Detailed information, typically useful only when troubleshooting.

    info

    General information about the operation of the application. This is the default level.

    warn

    Potential issues or situations that might require attention.

    error

    Errors that occurred during the operation but are not critical.

    critical

    Unrecoverable errors that must be addressed immediately to restore functionality.

Enable metrics monitoring for Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform by creating a ServiceMonitor custom resource (CR) to scrape metrics from the /metrics service endpoint.

Enable and view metrics for an Operator-installed Red Hat Developer Hub instance from the OpenShift Container Platform web console by setting the spec.monitoring.enabled field in your custom resource (CR).

Prerequisites

  • Your OpenShift Container Platform cluster has monitoring for user-defined projects enabled.
  • You have installed Red Hat Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform using the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator.
  • You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

  1. Use the OpenShift CLI (oc) to edit your existing Red Hat Developer Hub CR. 

    $ oc edit Backstage <instance_name>

  2. In the CR, locate the spec field and add the monitoring configuration block. 

    spec:
  monitoring:
    enabled: true

  3. Save the RHDH CR. The RHDH Operator detects the configuration and automatically creates the corresponding ServiceMonitor custom resource (CR).

    Note

    The Operator automatically configures the ServiceMonitor with the correct labels (app.kubernetes.io/instance and app.kubernetes.io/name) that match your Backstage CR. The ServiceMonitor will be named metrics-<cr_name>. No additional label configuration is required.

Verification

  1. From the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Observe view.
  2. Click the Metrics tab to view metrics for Red Hat Developer Hub pods.
  3. From the OpenShift Container Platform web console, click Project > Services and verify the labels for backstage-developer-hub.

Enable and view metrics for a Red Hat Developer Hub Helm deployment from the OpenShift Container Platform web console by configuring metrics monitoring during a chart upgrade.

Prerequisites

  • Your OpenShift Container Platform cluster has monitoring for user-defined projects enabled.
  • You have installed Red Hat Developer Hub on OpenShift Container Platform using the Helm chart.

Procedure

  1. From the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Topology view.

  2. Click the overflow menu of the Red Hat Developer Hub Helm chart, and select Upgrade.

    Helm chart overflow menu showing the Upgrade option

  3. On the Upgrade Helm Release page, select the YAML view option in Configure via, then configure the metrics section in the YAML, as shown in the following example: 

    upstream:
# ...
  metrics:
    serviceMonitor:
      enabled: true
      path: /metrics
      port: http-metrics
# ...
    YAML view showing the metrics configuration section
  4. Click Upgrade.

Verification

  1. From the OpenShift Container Platform web console, select the Observe view.
  2. Click the Metrics tab to view metrics for Red Hat Developer Hub pods.

Configure Developer Hub to use Amazon Prometheus for metrics monitoring and Amazon CloudWatch for logging when hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure.

3.1. Monitor with Amazon Prometheus
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Configure Developer Hub to use Amazon Prometheus for metrics monitoring by setting the required pod annotations.

Configure the required pod annotations by using the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator to enable monitoring with Amazon Prometheus.

Prerequisites

  • You have configured Prometheus for your Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters.
  • You have created an Amazon managed service for the Prometheus workspace.
  • You have configured Prometheus to import the Developer Hub metrics.
  • You have ingested Prometheus metrics into the created workspace.

Procedure

  1. As an administrator of the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator, edit the default configuration to add Prometheus annotations as follows: 

    # Update OPERATOR_NS accordingly
$ OPERATOR_NS=rhdh-operator
$ kubectl edit configmap backstage-default-config -n "${OPERATOR_NS}"

  2. Find the deployment.yaml key in the config map and add the annotations to the spec.template.metadata.annotations field as follows: 

    deployment.yaml: |-
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  # --- truncated ---
  spec:
    template:
      # --- truncated ---
      metadata:
        labels:
         rhdh.redhat.com/app:  # placeholder for 'backstage-<cr_name>'
        # --- truncated ---
        annotations:
          prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
          prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
          prometheus.io/port: '9464'
          prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
  # --- truncated ---
  3. Save your changes.

Verification

To verify if the scraping works:

  1. Use kubectl to port-forward the Prometheus console to your local machine as follows: 

    $ kubectl --namespace=prometheus port-forward deploy/prometheus-server 9090
  2. Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:9090 to access the Prometheus console.
  3. Monitor relevant metrics, such as process_cpu_user_seconds_total.

Additional resources

Configure the required pod annotations by using the Red Hat Developer Hub Helm chart to enable monitoring with Amazon Prometheus.

Prerequisites

  • You have configured Prometheus for your Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters.
  • You have created an Amazon managed service for the Prometheus workspace.
  • You have configured Prometheus to import the Developer Hub metrics.
  • You have ingested Prometheus metrics into the created workspace.

Procedure

  • To annotate the backstage pod for monitoring, update your values.yaml file as follows: 

    upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- TRUNCATED ---
    podAnnotations:
      prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
      prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
      prometheus.io/port: '9464'
      prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'

Verification

To verify if the scraping works:

  1. Use kubectl to port-forward the Prometheus console to your local machine as follows: 

    $ kubectl --namespace=prometheus port-forward deploy/prometheus-server 9090
  2. Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:9090 to access the Prometheus console.
  3. Monitor relevant metrics, such as process_cpu_user_seconds_total.

Additional resources

3.2. Log with Amazon CloudWatch
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Retrieve and query Developer Hub logs by using Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights and the WinstonJS logging library.

3.2.1. Retrieve logs from Amazon CloudWatch
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Retrieve and query logs from your Developer Hub instance by using Amazon CloudWatch Container Insights and Logs Insights.

Prerequisites

  • CloudWatch Container Insights is used to capture logs and metrics for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service. For more information, see Logging for Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service documentation.
  • To capture the logs and metrics, install the Amazon CloudWatch Observability EKS add-on in your cluster. Following the setup of Container Insights, you can access container logs using Logs Insights or Live Tail views.

  • CloudWatch names the log group where all container logs are consolidated in the following manner: 

    /aws/containerinsights/<cluster_name>/application

Procedure

  • To retrieve logs from the Developer Hub instance, run a query such as: 

    fields @timestamp, @message, kubernetes.container_name
| filter kubernetes.container_name in ["install-dynamic-plugins", "backstage-backend"]

Monitor resource utilization, diagnose issues, and collect logs for Developer Hub on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by using Managed Prometheus Monitoring and Azure Monitor.

4.1. Enable Azure Monitor metrics
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Enable managed Prometheus monitoring for your Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster to collect metrics and monitor Developer Hub performance through Azure Monitor.

Prerequisites

  • You have an AKS cluster.
  • You have the Azure CLI installed.

Procedure

  • To enable managed Prometheus monitoring, use the --enable-azure-monitor-metrics option with either the az aks create or az aks update command: 

    $ az aks create/update --resource-group <your_resource_group> --name <your_cluster> --enable-azure-monitor-metrics

    This command installs the metrics add-on, which gathers Prometheus metrics.

Verification

Configure the pod annotations for monitoring Developer Hub specific metrics on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by using the Red Hat Developer Hub Operator.

Procedure

  1. As an administrator of the Operator, edit the default configuration to add Prometheus annotations: 

    # Update OPERATOR_NS accordingly
OPERATOR_NS=rhdh-operator
$ kubectl edit configmap backstage-default-config -n "${OPERATOR_NS}"

  2. Find the deployment.yaml key in the ConfigMap and add the annotations to the spec.template.metadata.annotations field: 

    deployment.yaml: |-
  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  # --- truncated ---
  spec:
    template:
      # --- truncated ---
      metadata:
        labels:
         rhdh.redhat.com/app:  # placeholder for 'backstage-<cr_name>'
        # --- truncated ---
        annotations:
          prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
          prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
          prometheus.io/port: '9464'
          prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'
  # --- truncated ---
  3. Save your changes.

Verification

  • Navigate to the corresponding Azure Monitor Workspace and view the metrics under Monitoring → Metrics.

Configure the pod annotations for monitoring Developer Hub specific metrics on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) by using the Helm chart.

Procedure

  • Update your values.yaml file to annotate the backstage pod for monitoring: 

    upstream:
  backstage:
    # --- TRUNCATED ---
    podAnnotations:
      prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
      prometheus.io/path: '/metrics'
      prometheus.io/port: '9464'
      prometheus.io/scheme: 'http'

Verification

  • Navigate to the corresponding Azure Monitor Workspace and view the metrics under Monitoring → Metrics.

Access live data logs generated by Kubernetes objects for your Developer Hub instance on AKS.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed Developer Hub on AKS.

For more information, see Installing Red Hat Developer Hub on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Azure Portal.
  2. Search for the resource group <your_resource_group> and locate your AKS cluster <your_cluster>.
  3. Select Kubernetes resources → Workloads from the menu.
  4. Select the <your_rhdh_cr>-developer-hub (in case of Helm Chart installation) or <your_rhdh_cr>-backstage (in case of Operator-backed installation) deployment.
  5. Click Live Logs in the left menu.

  6. Select the pod.

    Note

    There must be only single pod.

Verification

  • Live log data is collected and displayed.

View real-time log data from the Container Engine for your Developer Hub instance on AKS.

Prerequisites

  • You have deployed Developer Hub on AKS.

For more information, see Installing Red Hat Developer Hub on Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).

Procedure

  1. Navigate to the Azure Portal.
  2. Search for the resource group <your_resource_group> and locate your AKS cluster <your_cluster>.
  3. Select Monitoring → Insights from the menu.
  4. Go to the Containers tab.
  5. Find the backend-backstage container and click it to view real-time log data as it is generated by the Container Engine.

Legal Notice
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Except as otherwise noted below, the text of and illustrations in this documentation are licensed by Red Hat under the Creative Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported license . If you distribute this document or an adaptation of it, you must provide the URL for the original version.
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