Top @Docker Metrics to Watch | @DevOpsSummit #APM #DevOps

Monitoring of Docker environments is challenging. Why? Because each container typically runs a single process, has its own environment, utilizes virtual networks, or has various methods of managing storage. Traditional monitoring solutions take metrics from each server and applications they run. These servers and applications running on them are typically very static, with very long uptimes. Docker deployments are different: a set of containers may run many applications, all sharing the resources of one or more underlying hosts. It's not uncommon for Docker servers to run thousands of short-term containers (e.g., for batch jobs) while a set of permanent services runs in parallel. Traditional monitoring tools not used to such dynamic environments are not suited for such deployments. On the other hand, some modern monitoring solutions (e.g. SPM from Sematext) were built with such dynamic systems in mind and even have out of the box reporting for docker monitoring. Moreover, container resource sharing calls for stricter enforcement of resource usage limits, an additional issue you must watch carefully. To make appropriate adjustments for resource quotas you need good visibility into any limits containers have reached or errors they have caused. We recommend using alerts according to defined limits; this way you can adjust limits or resource usage even before errors start happening.

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