IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig is a cloud-native, and container-intelligence management system that you can include as part of your IBM Cloud architecture. Use it to gain operational visibility into the performance and health of your applications, services, and platforms. It offers administrators, DevOps teams and developers full stack telemetry with advanced features to monitor and troubleshoot, define alerts, and design custom dashboards. In architectures that are focused on container and microservices, you can use Sysdig Secure to protect, monitor, and enhance forensic analysis of your pipeline and runtime components. IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig is operated by Sysdig in partnership with IBM.

The following figure shows the components overview for the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service that is running on IBM Cloud:

To add monitoring features with IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig in the IBM Cloud, you must provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service.

Before you provision an instance, consider the following information:

• The account owner can create, view, and delete an instance of a service in the IBM Cloud. This user can also grant permissions to other users to work with the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service.
• Other IBM Cloud users with administrator or editor permissions can manage the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service in the IBM Cloud. These users must also have platform permissions to create resources within the context of the resource group where they plan to provision the instance.

You provision an instance within the context of a resource group. You use a resource group to organize your services for access control and billing purposes. You can provision the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig instance in the default resource group or in a custom resource group.

When you provision an instance, you automatically get an ingestion key, known as the Sysdig access key.

After you provision an instance, you must configure metric sources, enable platform metrics, or both.

• A metric source is any resource that you want to monitor and control its performance and health through a Sysdig instance.

• You can configure a Sysdig agent to collect metrics from a source. For example, you can configure a Sysdig agent for a Kubernetes cluster. You use the access key to configure the Sysdig agent that is responsible for collecting and forwarding metric data to the instance.

  The Sysdig agent can be configured to push metrics to Sysdig via the public or private endpoints by using the appropriate ingestion URL. Details can found in the Sysdig endpoints section.

  After the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig agent is deployed in a metric source, collection and forwarding of metrics to the instance is automatic. The IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig agent automatically collects and reports on pre-defined metrics. You can configure which metrics to monitor in an environment.

• You can enable platform metrics to monitor IBM Cloud services. You can only configure 1 Sysdig instance in a region to collect automatically platform metrics. Learn more.

You can monitor, and manage data through the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig Web UI.

Notice that there is a delay showing metric data for new time series. Data is not ready until the initial indexing of a new metric source is completed. Therefore, new sources such as clusters, platform metrics, or systems that you configure, all take some time to become visible through the Sysdig UI.

Features

Accelerate the diagnosis and resolution of performance incidents.

IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig offers deep visibility into your infrastructure and applications with the ability to troubleshoot from service level all the way down to the system level. Pre-defined dashboards and alerts simplify identification of potential threats or problems. By using IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig, developers and DevOps teams monitor and troubleshoot performance issues in real-time, identify the source of errors, and eliminate problems.

Control the cost of your monitoring infrastructure.

IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig includes functionality that help you control the cost of your monitoring infrastructure in the IBM Cloud. You can configure the metric sources for which you want to monitor their performance. You can enable a pre-defined alert to warn you of usage changes that will impact your billing.

Explore and visualize easily your entire environment.

IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig makes it easy to visually explore your environment. Dynamic topology maps provide a view of dependencies between services. Multi-dimensional queries across high churn, high cardinality, high frequency metrics accelerate troubleshooting. Customizable dashboards allow you to visualize what matters most.

Get critical Kubernetes and container insights for dynamic microservice monitoring.

IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig auto-discovers Kubernetes environments providing out-of-the-box dashboards and alerts for clusters, nodes, namespaces, services, deployments, pods and more. A single agent per node dynamically discovers all microservices and auto-collects metrics and events from various sources including Kubernetes, hosts, networks, containers, processes, applications and custom metrics like Prometheus, JMX, and StatsD.

Mitigate the impact of abnormal situations with proactive notifications.

IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig includes alerts and multi-channel notifications that you can use to reduce the impact on your day to day operations and accelerate your reaction and response time to anomalies, downtime, and performance degradation. Notification channels that you can easily configure include email, slack, PagerDuty, Webhooks, OpsGenie, and VictorOps.

Before you begin

You must have a user ID that is a member or an owner of an IBM Cloud account. To get an IBM Cloud user ID, go to: Registration.

Check the regions where the service is available. Learn more.

You can complete the getting started steps in any of the supported regions.

Step 1. Manage user access

Every user that accesses the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service in your account must be assigned an access policy with an IAM user role defined. The policy determines what actions the user can perform within the context of the service or instance you select. The allowable actions are customized and defined as operations that are allowed to be performed on the service. The actions are then mapped to IAM user roles. See Managing user access in the IBM Cloud.

When a user is granted permissions in the IBM Cloud to work with the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service, the user is automatically granted a Sysdig role. This role determines the actions that a user has permissions to run. Valid roles are Sysdig admin and Sysdig user. See Controlling access through IAM.

Before you can provision an instance, consider the following information:

• The account owner can create, view, and delete an instance of a service in the IBM Cloud, and can grant permissions to other users to work with the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service.
• You must have permissions to create resources in the Default resource group.
• Other IBM Cloud users with administrator or editor permissions can manage the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service in the IBM Cloud. These users must also have platform permissions to create resources within the context of the resource group where they plan to provision the instance.

To grant a user administrator role for the service and to manage instances within a resource group in the account, the user must have an IAM policy for the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service with the platform role Administrator within the context of the resource group.

Complete the following steps to assign a user administrator role to the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service within the context of a resource group:

1. From the menu bar, click Manage > Access (IAM), and then select Users.
2. From the row for the user that you want to assign access, select the Actions menu, and then click Assign access.
3. Select Assign access within a resource group.
4. Select a resource group.

5. If the user does not have a role already granted for the selected resource group, choose a role for the Assign access to a resource group field.

   Depending on the role that you select, the user can view the resource group on their dashboard, edit the resource group name, or manage user access to the group.

   You can select No access, if you want the user to only have access to the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service in the resource group.

6. Select IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig.

7. Select the platform role Administrator.
8. Click Assign.

Step 2. Provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service

To add monitoring features with IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig in the IBM Cloud, you must provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service.

You provision an instance within the context of a resource group. A resource group lets you organize your services for access control and billing purposes. You can provision the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig instance in the default resource group or in a custom resource group.

When you provision an instance, you automatically get an ingestion key, known as the Sysdig access key.

To provision an instance of through the IBM Cloud UI, complete the following steps:

1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.

   Click IBM Cloud dashboard to launch the IBM Cloud dashboard.

   After you log in with your user ID and password, the IBM Cloud UI opens.

2. Click Catalog. The list of the services that are available in IBM Cloud opens.

3. To filter the list of services that is displayed, select the Logging and Monitorings category.

4. Click the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig tile.

5. Select the region.

6. Select a service plan.

   To provision an instance that only includes the Monitor component, select the plan Graduated Tier.

   To provision an instance that include the Monitor and the Secure components, select the plan Graduated Tier - Sysdig Secure + Monitor.

   For more information about the service plans, see Service plans.

7. Enter a service name.

8. Select a resource group. By default, the Default resource group is set.

9. Set on automatic collection of platform metrics by clicking Enable.

10. Click Create to provision an instance.

The service UI opens.

To provision an instance of Sysdig through the CLI, see Provisioning Sysdig through the IBM Cloud CLI.

Step 3. Configure platform metrics

Platform metrics are metrics that are exposed by enabled-Sysdig services and the platform in IBM Cloud. You must configure a Sysdig instance in a region to monitor these metrics. Learn more.

To see the list of enabled-Sysdig services, see Cloud services.

For example, to configure platform metrics in a region, complete the following steps:

1. From theIBM Cloud dashboard, go to the menu icon > Observability to access the Observability dashboard.

2. Select Monitoring > Configure platform metrics.

3. Select a region.

4. Choose the Sysdig instance that will collect metrics from enabled services on that location.

5. Click Save.

The main Observability page opens.

The instance that you choose to receive metrics shows the flag Platform metrics.

Step 4. Configure a Sysdig agent

After you provision an instance, you must configure a Sysdig agent for each host that you want to monitor. For example, a host can be a cloud resource that you want to monitor and control its performance and health such as a Kubernetes cluster. You may also monitor hosts outside the IBM Cloud.

The Sysdig agent automatically collects and reports on pre-defined metrics. You use the Sysdig access key to configure the Sysdig agent that is responsible for collecting and forwarding metric data to the instance. For more information, see Working with access keys.

Data is stored in IBM Cloud.

You can configure a Sysdig agent for different environments. For example, to configure your Kubernetes cluster to send metrics to your Sysdig instance, install a sysdig-agent pod on each node of the cluster. The Sysdig agent collects data from the pod where it is installed, and forwards it to your Sysdig instance.

Complete one of the following tutorials to learn how to deploy a Sysdig agent:

Tutorial
Monitoring an Ubuntu Linux VPC server instance
Monitoring a Linux bare metal server
Monitoring a Windows environment
Monitorting a Kubernetes cluster

See Configuring a Sysdig agent and Removing a Sysdig agent.

After the Sysdig agent is deployed, collection and forwarding of metrics to the instance is automatic. The Sysdig agent automatically collects and reports on pre-defined metrics. You can also configure which metrics to monitor in an environment. Data for custom metrics is also automatically collected.

Step 5. Launch the web UI

After you provision an instance of the IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig service in the IBM Cloud, and configure a Sysdig agent for your node, you can view, monitor, and manage data through the service's web UI.

You launch the web UI within the context of the Sysdig instance, from the IBM Cloud UI.

Complete the following steps to launch the Sysdig web UI:

1. Log in to your IBM Cloud account.

   Click IBM Cloud dashboard to launch the IBM Cloud dashboard.

   After you log in with your user ID and password, the IBM Cloud Dashboard opens.

2. In the navigation menu, select Observability.

3. Select Monitoring.

   The list of monitoring instances that are available on IBM Cloud is displayed.

4. Select one instance. Then, click View Sysdig.

The IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig Web UI opens. By default, the Explore tab is displayed.

By default, users are automatically added as members of the Monitor Operations team that is predefined for each IBM Cloud Monitoring with Sysdig instance. Users have full permissions to see all the data in the web UI. Note: An administrator can restrict access to data by managing users in teams and controlling what data is visible. For example, to restrict users viewing permissions, an administrator can create a default team with limited scope and visibility. Then, manually assign users to other teams. See Working with teams.

Step 6. Get started with Monitor and Secure

• See Getting sarted with Monitor.
• See Getting started with Secure.

Step 7. Monitor usage

To monitor the usage and costs of your service, see Viewing your usage.