Docs » Available host and application monitors » Configure application receivers for hosts and servers » Docker Containers

Docker Containers 🔗

Description 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector deploys this integration as the docker-container-stats monitor type for the Smart Agent Receiver. This monitor reads container stats from a Docker API server. The monitor does not currently support CPU share/quota metrics.

This integration is available for Kubernetes, Linux, and Windows.

Benefits 🔗

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

  • View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Observability Cloud.

  • View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring navigators.

  • Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Use the Metric Finder.

Installation 🔗

This monitor is provided by the Smart Agent and is available for the Smart Agent Receiver in the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

To install this integration:

  1. Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform.

  2. If using this monitor with the default Docker daemon domain socket, you might need to add the splunk-otel-collector user to the docker group to have permission to access the Docker API. If running with the Smart Agent use the signalfx-agent user instead.

    usermod -aG docker splunk-otel-collector

  3. Configure the monitor, as described in the next section.

Configuration 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector allows embedding a Smart Agent monitor configuration in an associated Smart Agent Receiver instance.

Note: Providing a docker-container-stats monitor entry in your Collector or Smart Agent (deprecated) configuration is required for its use. Use the appropriate form for your agent type.

Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector 🔗

To activate this monitor in the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector, add the following code to your agent configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/docker-container-stats:
    type: docker-container-stats
    ...  # Additional config

To complete the monitor activation, you must also include the smartagent/docker-container-stats receiver item in a metrics pipeline. To do this, add the receiver item to the service > pipelines > metrics > receivers section of your configuration file.

See configuration examples for specific use cases that show how the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector can integrate and complement existing environments.

Smart Agent 🔗

To activate this monitor in the Smart Agent, add the following to your agent configuration:

monitors:  # All monitor config goes under this key
 - type: docker-container-stats
   ...  # Additional config

See Docker agent.yaml for an example configuration file, with default values where applicable. See Docker Deployment for a link to the Docker image.

Configuration settings 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for this monitor:

Option

Required

Type

Description

enableExtraBlockIOMetrics

no

bool

Sends all extra block IO metrics. The default value is false

enableExtraCPUMetrics

no

bool

Sends all extra CPU metrics. The default value is false

enableExtraMemoryMetrics

no

bool

Sends all extra memory metrics. The default value is false

enableExtraNetworkMetrics

no

bool

Sends all extra network metrics. The default value is false

dockerURL

no

string

The URL of the docker server. The default value is unix:///var/run/docker.sock. For Windows, set it to npipe:////.//pipe//docker_engine.

timeoutSeconds

no

integer

The maximum amount of time to wait for docker API requests. The default value is 5

cacheSyncInterval

no

integer

The time to wait before resyncing the list of containers the monitor maintains through the docker event listener. An example is cacheSyncInterval: "20m" The default value is 60m

labelsToDimensions

no

map of strings

A mapping of container label names to dimension names. The corresponding label values become the dimension value for the mapped name. For example, io.kubernetes.container.name: container_spec_name results in a dimension called container_spec_name that has the value of the io.kubernetes.container.name container label.

envToDimensions

no

map of strings

A mapping of container environment variable names to dimension names. The corresponding env var values become the dimension values on the emitted metrics. For example, APP_VERSION: version results in data points having a dimension called version whose value is the value of the APP_VERSION envvar configured for that particular container, if present.

excludedImages

no

list of strings

A list of filters of images to exclude. Supports literals, globs, and regex.

Metrics 🔗

The following metrics are available for this integration:

Troubleshooting 🔗

Protocol not available error 🔗

If you get the following error message when configuring the monitor on a Windows host:

Error: Error initializing Docker client: protocol not available

edit the configuration and replace unix:///var/run/docker.sock with npipe:////.//pipe//docker_engine.

Get help 🔗

If you are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, try these tips:

To learn about even more support options, see Splunk Customer Success.