Boosting check_haproxy monitoring plugin to ignore backend(s), add bytes in/out to performance data

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 2 comments

Published on September 17th 2019 - last updated on December 8th 2021 - Listed in HAProxy Monitoring

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The monitoring plugin check_haproxy (the one written in Perl by Stéphane Urbanovski) is a very important helper to monitor a dynamic and scalable (web-) infrastructure. I have been using HAProxy for at least 6 years and a couple dozen HAProxies run across multiple environments, architectures, customers, etc. HAProxy is not only very powerful, it also gives great live statistics. These statistics are read from check_haproxy.

Today I came across a "problem" when a backend, configured for a test environment only, reported the backend server down:

# /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_haproxy.pl -u "http://myhaproxy.example.com:8099/;csv"
HAPROXY CRITICAL - Active service 'testserver01' is DOWN on 'app-test-out' proxy ! | t=0.036252s;2;10;0; monitoring-out=0;;;0;0 bigdata-out=0;;;0;0 dks-out=0;;;0;0 icingaweb2-out=1;;;0;0 direct-https-out=0;;;0;0 direct-http-out=0;;;0;0 app-test-out=0;;;0;0

But for that test environment alerts are not really needed. What if the plugin could simply ignore some backends?

Well, that's what I just did: I added a -i/--ignore-backends parameter to ignore one or more backends (comma-separated list).

Additionally to this, the performance data output was adjusted to correctly interpret the maximum number of concurrent sessions on the backends and added bytes in/out to the performance data. The output of the plugin now looks like this:

 # ./check_haproxy.pl -u "http://inf-lbi01-p.nzzmg.local:8099/;csv" -i app-test-out
HAPROXY OK -  monitoring-out (Active: 2/2) icingaweb2-out (Active: 1/1 , Backup: 1/1) direct-https-out (Active: 2/2) indesign-out (Active: 16/16) direct-http-out (Active: 2/2) dks-out (Active: 1/1 , Backup: 1/1) bigdata-out (Active: 4/4) | t=0.038859s;2;10;0; sess_monitoring-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_monitoring-out=3296950B;;;0; bytes_out_monitoring-out=71611346B;;;0; sess_icingaweb2-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_icingaweb2-out=743271171B;;;0; bytes_out_icingaweb2-out=2325993950B;;;0; sess_direct-https-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_direct-https-out=2523470B;;;0; bytes_out_direct-https-out=14888444B;;;0; sess_direct-http-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_direct-http-out=434659463B;;;0; bytes_out_direct-http-out=2458654176B;;;0; sess_dks-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_dks-out=425243B;;;0; bytes_out_dks-out=44848551B;;;0; sess_bigdata-out=0;;;0;200 bytes_in_bigdata-out=7677834B;;;0; bytes_out_bigdata-out=278220925B;;;0;

Unfortunately I could not find an original repository for the original plugin by Stéphane to commit to the "upstream" code. For now this version of check_haproxy can be found on my check_haproxy repository on GitHub.

Update: Changes are available upstream

Updated August 14th 2020: The plugin's original author, Stéphane Urbanovski, created a public repository for check_haproxy. As he is the original author, I'm more than happy to contribute the changes to the original script and therefore "upstream". So please download check_haproxy.pl from the official repo on GitHub from now on.

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Comments (newest first)

Claudio Kuenzler from Switzerland wrote on Dec 8th, 2021:

Thanks someone. I updated the link in the article.

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someone from wrote on Dec 8th, 2021:

The linked "official repo" does not contain the haproxy check.
You may need to clarify the updated part of this post

cheers

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