Monitoring Configuration
System and per-user resources
Posit Workbench monitors the use of resources (CPU, memory, etc.) on both a per-user and system wide basis. By default, monitoring data is written to a set of RRD files and can be viewed using the Administrative dashboard.
The storage of system monitoring data requires about 20MB of disk space and the storage of user monitoring data requires about 3.5MB per user. This data is stored by default at /var/lib/rstudio-server/monitor. If you have a large number of users you may wish to specify an alternate volume for monitoring data. You can do this using the monitor-data-path setting. For example:
# /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
monitor-data-path=/monitor-dataWhen Posit Workbench starts, it will change the ownership of this folder and its children to be owned by the server-user that is configured in /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf, as described in Server permissions. If it is unable to change the ownership on this directory, it may be unable to write monitoring logs and data under it.
When running Posit Workbench in a Load Balanced cluster (see Load balancing for more details), the monitor-data-path should be distinct for each instance of Posit Workbench to prevent the servers from overwriting each others’ data.
When running Posit Workbench with the Job Launcher configured, the per session RRD files will not be produced, meaning the historical record of session resource use will not be shown in the admin dashboard, and may produce errors in the logs with the form ERROR Rrd dump error: ERROR: opening '<RRD File Name>': No such file or directory. These errors may be safely ignored. The admin dashboard will still show the CPU and memory usage for currently active sessions.
You also might wish to disable monitoring with RRD entirely. You can do this using the monitor-rrd-enabled setting. For example:
# /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
monitor-rrd-enabled=0Note that changes to the configuration will not take effect until the server is restarted.
Analyzing RRD files
The RRD files powering RStudio’s Administrative Dashboard are available for your own analysis, too. You can find them in /var/lib/rstudio-server/monitor/rrd (unless you’ve changed monitor-data-path as described above); they store all the metrics you can see on the dashboard, so you can use the information for your own reports and insights.
More information on how to read and visualize RRD data from R is available in the following blog post:
Using Graphite
If you are managing several servers it might be convenient to send server monitoring data to a centralized database and graphing facility as opposed to local RRD files. You can do this by configuring the server to send monitoring data to Graphite (or any other engine compatible with the Carbon protocol). This can be done in addition to or entirely in place of RRD.
There are four settings that control interaction with Graphite:
monitor-graphite-enabled |
Write monitoring data to Graphite (defaults to 0) |
monitor-graphite-host |
Host running Graphite (defaults to 127.0.0.1) |
monitor-graphite-port |
Port Graphite is listening on (defaults to 2003) |
monitor-graphite-client-id |
Optional client ID for sender |
For example, to enable Graphite monitoring on a remote host with the default Graphite port you would use these settings:
# /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
monitor-graphite-enabled=1
monitor-graphite-host=134.47.22.6If you are using a service like hosted graphite.com that requires that you provide an API key as part of reporting metrics you can use the monitor-graphite-client-id setting. For example:
# /etc/rstudio/rserver.conf
monitor-graphite-enabled=1
monitor-graphite-host=carbon.hostedgraphite.com
monitor-graphite-client-id=490662a4-1d8c-11e5-b06d-000c298f3d04Note that changes to the configuration will not take effect until the server is restarted.