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About the Cloud Monitoring Agent

  • Article ID: 3192
  • Last updated on May 17, 2013
  • Authored by: Susan Million
  • (2 Comments)

Using the Cloud Monitoring Agent, you can monitor the internals of your Cloud Server by running checks that are installed on your server locally instead of launching checks from one or more of the Rackspace data centers. Since the agent is installed locally, it's immediately aware of any system resource changes to your Cloud Server. The agent records any updated or changed information and forwards it to the Cloud Monitoring system. 

The agent is capable of monitoring the following system information:

  • Load Average
  • Filesystem
  • Memory
  • CPU
  • Network

Using the Monitoring Agent

The first step to using the Monitoring Agent is installing it on your Cloud Server. If you are a Rackspace Managed Cloud customer the agent is automatically installed on all new Cloud Servers. All other Rackspace customers can install the agent on a Cloud Server by following these directions. Once the agent is installed on your Cloud Server, it immediately provides CPU, Filesystem, and Memory metrics. You can manage the agent using either the Monitoring Agent API  or the Cloud Control Panel. 

Live Host Statistics in the Control Panel

You can view the host statistics of a Cloud Server provided by the agent on the Server Details page of the Control Panel:

Agent Details

Related Information

Install the Monitoring Agent

Troubleshoot the Monitoring Agent



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2 Comments

Just went through the process of creating and validating a Rackspace account with the sole purpose of trying out Rackspace Cloud Monitoring for my existing server farms. Unfortunately, despite what this KB article and the marketing docs say, Rackspace Cloud Support has confirmed that Control Panel based monitoring is only available for Rackspace hosted servers. If the server is outside the Rackspace environment, then only API monitoring is available. This is a real shame, especially as when the agent comes out, a Control Panel view of the metrics is critical - otherwise they all have to be monitored by alarms, or by a custom-built UI based off the API.

Rackspace, if this is true, please update these docs to reflect this fact so others don't waste the day that I did setting this up. If it's not true, then please update your support team!
By Toby on Dec. 17, 2012

Toby,

I reached out to you earlier, but for the benefit of anyone else reading this, you are correct: although Cloud Monitoring is capable of monitoring non-Rackspace servers, the control panel currently only shows monitoring of Rackspace Cloud Servers. We'll be sure to get our docs and website updated to clarify that point.

Thanks for your feedback!
By russell.haering on Dec. 18, 2012

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