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blog.lazkani.io-20200902-hi.../posts/monitoring/simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks.org

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#+BEGIN_COMMENT
.. title: Simple cron monitoring with HealthChecks
.. date: 2020-02-09
.. slug: simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks
.. updated: 2020-02-09
.. status: published
.. tags: monitoring, healthchecks, cron
.. category: monitoring
.. authors: Elia el Lazkani
.. description: Ever needed to monitor simple things ? Well, HealthChecks seems perfect for that.
.. type: text
#+END_COMMENT
In a previous post entitled "{{% doc %}}automating-borg{{% /doc %}}", I showed you how you can automate your *borg* backups with *borgmatic*.
After I started using *borgmatic* for my backups and hooked it to a /cron/ running every 2 hours, I got interested into knowing what's happening to my backups at all times.
My experience comes handy in here, I know I need a monitoring system. I also know that traditional monitoring systems are too complex for my use case.
I need something simple. I need something I can deploy myself.
{{{TEASER_END}}}
* Choosing a monitoring system
I already know I don't want a traditional monitoring system like /nagios/ or /sensu/ or /prometheus/. It is not needed, it's an overkill.
I went through the list of hooks that *borgmatic* offers out of the box and checked each project.
I came across [[https://healthchecks.io/][HealthChecks]].
* HealthChecks
The [[https://healthchecks.io/][HealthChecks]] project works in a simple manner.
It simply offers syou an endpoint which you need to ping within a certain period, otherwise you get paged.
It has a lot of integrations from simple emails to other third party services that will call or message you or even trigger push notifications to your phone.
In my case, a simple email is enough. After all, they are simply backups and if they failed now, they will work when cron runs again in 2 hours.
* Deploy
Let's create a docker-compose service configuration that looks like the
following:
#+BEGIN_SRC yaml
healthchecks:
container_name: healthchecks
image: linuxserver/healthchecks:v1.12.0-ls48
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- "127.0.0.1:8000:8000"
volumes:
- "./healthchecks/data:/config"
environment:
PUID: "5000"
PGID: "5000"
SECRET_KEY: "super-secret-key"
ALLOWED_HOSTS: '["*"]'
DEBUG: "False"
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL: "noreply@healthchecks.example.com"
USE_PAYMENTS: "False"
REGISTRATION_OPEN: "False"
EMAIL_HOST: "smtp.example.com"
EMAIL_PORT: "587"
EMAIL_HOST_USER: "smtp@healthchecks.example.com"
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: "super-secret-password"
EMAIL_USE_TLS: "True"
SITE_ROOT: "https://healthchecks.example.com"
SITE_NAME: "HealthChecks"
MASTER_BADGE_LABEL: "HealthChecks"
PING_ENDPOINT: "https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/"
PING_EMAIL_DOMAIN: "healthchecks.example.com"
TWILIO_ACCOUNT: "None"
TWILIO_AUTH: "None"
TWILIO_FROM: "None"
PD_VENDOR_KEY: "None"
TRELLO_APP_KEY: "None"
#+END_SRC
This will create a docker container exposing it locally on =127.0.0.1:8000=.
Let's point nginx to it and expose it using something similar to the following.
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name healthchecks.example.com;
ssl_certificate /path/to/the/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /path/to/the/privkey.pem;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_buffering off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port $server_port;
proxy_read_timeout 90;
}
}
#+END_EXAMPLE
This should do nicely.
* Usage
Now it's a simple matter of creating a checks.
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
<a class="reference" href="/images/simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks/borgbackup-healthchecks.png" alt="HealthChecks monitoring for BorgBackup" algin="center">
<img src="/images/simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks/borgbackup-healthchecks.thumbnail.png">
#+END_EXPORT
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
</a>
#+END_EXPORT
This will give you a link that looks like the following
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/84b2a834-02f5-524f-4c27-a2f24562b219
#+END_EXAMPLE
Let's feed it to *borgmatic*.
#+BEGIN_SRC yaml
hooks:
healthchecks: https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/84b2a834-02f5-524f-4c27-a2f24562b219
#+END_SRC
After you configure the *borgmatic* hook to keep /HealthChecks/ in the know of what's going on.
We can take a look at the log to see what happened and when.
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
<a class="reference" href="/images/simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks/borgbackup-healthchecks-logs.png" alt="HealthChecks monitoring log for BorgBackup" algin="center">
<img src="/images/simple-cron-monitoring-with-healthchecks/borgbackup-healthchecks-logs.thumbnail.png">
#+END_EXPORT
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
</a>
#+END_EXPORT
* Conclusion
As we saw in the blog post, now I am always in the know about my backups.
If my backup fails, I get an email to notify me of a failure.
I can also monitor how much time it takes my backups to run.
This is a very important feature for me to have.
The question of deploying one's own monitoring system is a personal choice.
After all, one can use free third party services if they would like.
The correct answer though is to always monitor.