README
Helix Pingdom Status
Report status for OpenWhisk Microservices for Pingdom (and others) Uptime (HTTP) checks
Status
Problem
You have a microservice that is deployed as an OpenWhisk HTTP action or even a number of these microservices and you want to establish monitoring of service uptime using Pingdom.
In case the service is down, you want to quickly understand if it is a problem with
- the OpenWhisk runtime, which may be unreachable or overloaded
- one of your backend API providers which might be unreachable
- your own service which could be broken (for instance due to a deployment change)
Finally, you know that there are Uptime (HTTP) Checks in Pingdom, and similar services such as New Relic Synthetics but you do not want to keep repeating the same code for returning a status check in each of your micro services.
Solution
helix-pingdom-status
is:
- a micro service (running as an OpenWhisk HTTP action) that responds to Pingdom Uptime (HTTP) Checks (and similar)
- a library that allows you to wrap your own actions to get a standardized monitoring response
Helix Pingdom Status (as a Service)
Usage
The service is installed and available for Adobe I/O Runtime at https://adobeioruntime.net/api/v1/web/helix/helix-services/pingdom-status@latest
.
curl https://adobeioruntime.net/api/v1/web/helix/helix-services/pingdom-status@latest/_status_check/pingdom.xml
curl https://adobeioruntime.net/api/v1/web/helix/helix-services/pingdom-status@latest/_status_check/healthcheck.json
If you want to monitor the availability of Adobe I/O Runtime, just add a new Uptime (HTTP) Check in Pingdom, using the https://
protocol, and adobeioruntime.net/api/v1/web/helix/helix-services/pingdom-status@latest/_status_check/pingdom.xml
as the URL.
Deployment in your own Namespace
If you want to use the service in your own namespace or an OpenWhisk instance that is not Adobe I/O Runtime, make sure your ~/.wskprops
is set up correctly and run:
$ npm install
$ npm run build
$ npm run deploy
Helix Pingdom Status (as a Library)
Installation
$ npm install -S @adobe/helix-pingdom-status
Usage
In the entry point of your action, add
const { wrap } = require('@adobe/helix-pingdom-status');
to the top of your file and override the module.exports.main
with:
module.exports.main = wrap(main);
All GET /_status_check/pingdom.xml
requests to your service will now respond with an XML response similar to below:
<pingdom_http_custom_check>
<status>OK</status>
<response_time>0</response_time>
</pingdom_http_custom_check
Note: While the XML response format is similar to the one described in Pingdom Custom HTTP Check the
/_status_check/pingdom.xml
request is intented to be used for standard Pingdom UPTIME Checks only. It's not suitable for Custom HTTP Checks which expect an HTTP Status 200 XML response whereas UPTIME Checks determine the status of a service (UP/DOWN) based on the HTTP Status code of the response. For more information see #21 and here.
You can also specify a list of checks to run by passing second argument to wrap
:
module.exports.main = wrap(main, { example: 'http://www.example.com'})
you will then see results like this:
<pingdom_http_custom_check>
<status>OK</status>
<response_time>181</response_time>
<example>176</example>
</pingdom_http_custom_check>
It is a good idea to use URLs that are representative of the API endpoints your service is calling in normal operation as checks.
Usage with New Relics Synthetics
New Relic Synthetics is a service that is similar to Pingdom, but more capable. It can be used with helix-pingdom-status
by creating an API Check script like this:
const assert = require('assert');
// replace the URL with your check URL
$http.get('https://adobeioruntime.net/api/v1/web/helix/helix-services/pingdom-status@v3/_status_check/heathcheck.json',
// Callback
function (err, response, body) {
assert.equal(response.statusCode, 200, 'Expected a 200 OK response');
const health = JSON.parse(body);
assert.equal(health.status, 'OK', 'Expected an OK health check status');
for (const v in health) {
if (['status', 'process', 'version'].indexOf(v)===-1) {
$util.insights.set(v, parseInt(health[v]));
}
}
for (const h in ['x-openwhisk-activation-id', 'x-request-id', 'x-version']) {
$util.insights.set(h, response.headers[h]);
}
}
);
Development
Deploying Helix Pingdom Status
Deploying Helix Pingdom Status requires the wsk
command line client, authenticated to a namespace of your choice. For Project Helix, we use the helix
namespace.
All commits to master that pass the testing will be deployed automatically. All commits to branches that will pass the testing will get commited as /helix-services/pingdom-status@ci<num>
and tagged with the CI build number.