Enable Metrics

Learn how to enable and use metrics for NGINX Management Suite API Connectivity Manager.

Overview

This guide walks through setting up and using metrics in API Connectivity Manager.

Important:
The configuration presented in this guide is for demonstration purposes only. Securely configuring environments and proxies in API Connectivity Manager is not in scope for this tutorial but should be given full attention when planning for production use.

Currently, only the following metric is available:

Count of proxies in an environment

As we add new metrics, we’ll let you know in the API Connectivity Manager release notes and update this topic accordingly.

Before You Begin

To complete the instructions in this guide, you need the following:

Access to a virtual environment

Four virtual hosts with Linux installed — this guide uses Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.

Supported Linux distributions

The NGINX Management Suite gateway supports the following Linux distributions:

Distribution	Version	Architecture	Instance Manager	API Connectivity Manager	App Delivery Manager	NGINX App Protect
Amazon Linux	2 LTS	x86_64	Supported	Supported	Supported	Not supported
CentOS	7.4 and later in the 7.x family	x86_64	Supported	Supported	Supported	Supported
Debian	10 11	x86_64 x86_64	Supported Supported	Supported Supported	Not supported Supported	Not supported Supported
Oracle Linux	7.4 and later in the 7.x family 8.0 and later in the 8.0.x family	x86_64 x86_64	Supported Supported on 2.6.0+	Supported Supported on 1.3.0+	Supported Supported	Supported Supported
RHEL	7.4 and later in the 7.x family 8.x and later in the 8.x family 9.x and later in the 9.x family	x86_64 x86_64 x86_64	Supported Supported Supported on 2.6.0+	Supported Supported Supported on 1.3.0+	Supported Supported Supported	Supported Supported Not supported
Ubuntu	18.04 20.04 22.04	x86_64 x86_64 x86_64	Supported Supported Supported on 2.3.0+	Supported Supported Supported	Supported Supported Supported	Supported Supported Not supported

The “+” symbol indicates support for the given version and all higher versions.

Host Setup

This section configures the hosts used in this tutorial. In the following table, you’ll find the details of the test environment used in this tutorial’s examples. The options presented are the minimum host requirements for running a fully functional test environment. Remember that production environments may need more resources and incur greater costs.

Hosts	Virtual Cores	Memory	Storage	IP Address	Hostname
NGINX Management Suite Host	2 vCPUs	4GB	100GB	`192.0.2.2`	`acm-ctrl`
Data Plane Host	1 vCPU	1GB	10GB	`192.0.2.3`	`data-host`
Echo Server	1 vCPU	1GB	10GB	`192.0.2.4`	`echo-host`

Install NGINX Management Suite & API Connectivity Manager

Follow the steps in the Installation Guide to set up NGINX Management Suite and API Connectivity Manager. You do not need to configure a Developer Portal for this tutorial.

Enable Metrics for API Connectivity Manager

In /etc/nms/acm.conf, uncomment and set the enable_metrics property to true.

# set to true to enable metrics markers from the acm code
enable_metrics = true

Run the following command to restart the API Connectivity Manager service:

sudo systemctl restart nms-acm

Install NGINX Agent on Data Plane Host

Run the following commands to install the NGINX Agent on the data plane host, create a new Instance Group called test-ig, and add the host to it:

curl --insecure https://192.0.2.2/install/nginx-agent > install.sh \
&& sudo sh install.sh -g test-ig \
&& sudo systemctl start nginx-agent

To ensure that the advanced metrics modules are installed across all data plane hosts, please follow the steps in the Install NGINX Plus Metrics Module guide.

Install Echo Server

Note:
The server is designed for testing HTTP proxies and clients. It echoes information about HTTP request headers and bodies back to the client.

Download and install the latest version of Go by following the instructions on the official Go website.

Run the following commands to install and start Echo Server:

go env -w GO111MODULE=off
go get -u github.com/jmalloc/echo-server/...
PORT=10000 LOG_HTTP_BODY=true LOG_HTTP_HEADERS=true echo-server

Configure API Connectivity Manager

In this section, we use the API Connectivity Manager REST API to set up a proxy in API Connectivity Manager. You need to pass the NGINX Management Suite user credentials in the Basic Authentication header for each REST request.

Create Workspaces & Environment

To create an Infrastructure Workspace with a minimum configuration, send the following JSON request to the /infrastructure/workspaces endpoint:
```
POST https://192.0.2.2/api/acm/v1/infrastructure/workspaces
```
JSON Request
```
{
   "name": "infra-ws"
}
```
To create an environment with a minimum configuration, send the following JSON request to the /infrastructure/workspaces/infra-ws/environments endpoint. The proxyClusterName: test-ig is the name of the Instance Group that the data plane host was added to when you installed the NGINX Agent above. The hostnames array should contain the hostname of the data plane host.
```
POST https://192.0.2.2/api/acm/v1/infrastructure/workspaces/infra-ws/environments
```
JSON Request
```
{
   "name": "demo-env",
   "proxies": [
      {
         "proxyClusterName": "test-ig",
         "hostnames": [
            "data-host"
         ]
      }
   ]
}
```
To create a Service Workspace with a minimum configuration, send the following JSON request to the /services/workspaces endpoint.
```
POST https://192.0.2.2/api/acm/v1/services/workspaces
```
JSON Request
```
{
   "name": "service-ws"
}
```

Create a Basic API Proxy

To create an API proxy with a minimum configuration and the default policies, send the following JSON request to the /services/workspaces/service-ws/proxies endpoint. The Proxy service target is our Echo Server.

POST https://192.0.2.2/api/acm/v1/services/workspaces/service-ws/proxies

JSON Request

{
   "name": "test-proxy",
   "version": "v1",
   "proxyConfig": {
      "hostname": "data-host",
      "ingress": {
         "basePath": "/",
         "basePathVersionAppendRule": "NONE"
      },
      "backends": [
         {
            "serviceName": "backend-echo-svc",
            "serviceTargets": [
               {
                  "hostname": "192.0.2.4",
                  "listener": {
                     "enableTLS": false,
                     "port": 10000,
                     "transportProtocol": "HTTP"
                  }
               }
            ]
         }
      ]
   }
}

To test whether the API Proxy and backend Echo Server are working correctly, send a custom header and dummy JSON body to show these proxied values in the Echo Server response:

POST https://192.0.2.4/my/test/api
HEADERS:
   X-NGINX-Test: true

JSON Request

{
   "testKey": "testValue"
}

Verification

If everything is configured correctly in API Connectivity Manager and the Echo Server, the response should be similar to the following example:

Request served by echo-host

HTTP/1.0 POST /my/test/api

Host: 192.0.2.4
Accept: */*
Cache-Control: no-cache
Content-Length: 30
Content-Type: application/json
X-Correlation-Id: c241b72519e71cf7bce9262910ffbe40
X-Real-Ip: 192.0.2.1
X-NGINX-Test: true

{"testKey": "testValue"}

Get Count of Proxies in an Environment

To get the count of active proxies, send the following REST request to the /infrastructure/workspaces/infra-ws/environments/demo-env/api-count endpoint:

GET https://192.0.2.2/api/acm/v1/infrastructure/workspaces/infra-ws/environments/demo-env/api-count

If you’ve successfully configured a proxy the following count is returned.

Response

View Environment Metrics

On the left menu, select Infrastructure.
Select a workspace from the table.
Select the Actions menu (represented by an ellipsis, ...) next to your environment on the Actions column.
Select Metrics.
Update the start and end time of the metrics with the time range selection on the dashboard overview.
To view metrics broken down by cluster in the environment, select the API Gateway Clusters tab.

View Proxy Metrics

On the left menu, select Services.
Select a workspace from the table.
Select the Actions menu (represented by an ellipsis, ...) next to your environment on the Actions column.
Select Metrics.
Update the start and end time of the metrics with the time range selection on the dashboard overview.
Filter by advanced routes with the advanced route selection on the dashboard overview.
To view metrics broken down by status code in the proxy, select the API Gateway Clusters tab.