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Alerta API on Google Cloud

Alerta is a monitoring tool used for alert consolidation, de-duplication and correlation.

To deploy Alerta API to Google Cloud use the Google App Engine Flexible Environment with Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL for a fully managed service.

Note: The following steps will incur costs. See https://cloud.google.com/sql/pricing#pg-pricing

Installation

Run the Alerta API in Google Cloud by cloning this repo, creating a Cloud SQL instance and deploying the application to Google App Engine.

To create an PostgreSQL instance either use the Google Cloud Console or install the gcloud SDK and run: $ gcloud config set project [PROJECT_NUMBER]

$ gcloud sql instances create [INSTANCE_NAME] \
--database-version=POSTGRES_11 --storage-type=SSD --tier=db-f1-micro --region "us-central"

$ gcloud sql users set-password postgres \
--instance [INSTANCE_NAME] --password [PASSWORD]

Note: Change the --storage-type, --tier and --region as appropriate.

Log in to psql to create a database using GCloud Shell or gcloud (you will be prompted for the password set above):

$ gcloud sql connect [INSTANCE_NAME] --user postgres

Password for user postgres:
*******
psql (9.6.2, server 9.6.1)
SSL connection (protocol: TLSv1.2, cipher: ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256, bits: 128, compression: off)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=> CREATE DATABASE monitoring;
CREATE DATABASE

Configuration

Copy the app.yaml.example file to app.yaml and set the DATABASE_URL and beta_settings for the PostgreSQL instance using the INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME generated above:

env_variables:
  DATABASE_URL: postgres://USER:PASSWORD@/DATABASE?host=/cloudsql/INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME
  CORS_ORIGINS: [
    'http://localhost',
    'http://localhost:8000'
    ]

beta_settings:
    cloud_sql_instances: INSTANCE_CONNECTION_NAME

Example

env_variables:
  DATABASE_URL: postgres://postgres:p0stgr3s@/monitoring?host=/cloudsql/alerta5:europe-west2:monitoring
  CORS_ORIGINS: [
    'http://localhost',
    'http://localhost:8000',
    'https://myaltertagui.com'
    ]

beta_settings:
    cloud_sql_instances: alerta5:europe-west2:monitoring

Deploy

To deploy the Alerta API and lauch a browser to view the API index page run:

$ gcloud app deploy
$ gcloud app browse

Note: Add --verbosity=info to any gcloud command to get more verbose logging.

Add the service account of your flex app to the Cloud SQL Client role https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/mysql/connect-app-engine

Housekeeping

An App Engine Cron schedule can be configured to run a housekeeping job every minute which expires alerts which have timed-out and deletes expired and closed alerts.

To enable the cron job run:

$ gcloud app deploy cron.yaml

Scaling Down

To scale down the app deploy using --version dev then it can be stopped and started easily:

$ gcloud app deploy --version dev
$ gcloud app versions stop dev
$ gcloud app versions start dev

Testing

Create a Service Account for remote access and download the Cloud SQL Proxy.

$ cloud_sql_proxy ...

TBC

Troubleshooting

All gcloud commands take --verbosity which can be used to output more verbose logging like so:

$ gcloud app deploy --verbosity=info

To tail the application logs run:

$ gcloud app logs tail -s default

2017-09-23 10:57:59 default[20170923t115438]  2017/09/23 10:57:59 Ready for new connections
2017-09-23 10:57:59 default[20170923t115438]  2017/09/23 10:57:59 errors parsing config:
2017-09-23 10:57:59 default[20170923t115438]  	googleapi: Error 403: Access Not Configured.
Cloud SQL Administration API has not been used in project 465218335446 before or it is disabled.
Enable it by visiting https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/sqladmin.googleapis.com/overview?project=465218335446
then retry. If you enabled this API recently, wait a few minutes for the action to propagate
to our systems and retry., accessNotConfigured

To connect to the database instance using psql run:

$ gcloud sql connect [INSTANCE_NAME] --user postgres

References

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Nick Satterly. Available under the MIT License.