147 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
147 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "Simple cron monitoring with HealthChecks"
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author = ["Elia el Lazkani"]
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date = 2020-02-09
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lastmod = 2020-02-09
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tags = ["healthchecks", "cron"]
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categories = ["monitoring"]
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draft = false
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+++
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In a previous post entitled "[Automating Borg]({{< relref "automating-borg" >}})", I showed you how you can automate your **borg** backups with **borgmatic**.
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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.
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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.
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I need something simple. I need something I can deploy myself.
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<!--more-->
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## Choosing a monitoring system {#choosing-a-monitoring-system}
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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.
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I went through the list of hooks that **borgmatic** offers out of the box and checked each project.
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I came across [HealthChecks](https://healthchecks.io/).
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## HealthChecks {#healthchecks}
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The [HealthChecks](https://healthchecks.io/) project works in a simple manner.
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It simply offers syou an endpoint which you need to ping within a certain period, otherwise you get paged.
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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.
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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.
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## Deploy {#deploy}
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Let's create a docker-compose service configuration that looks like the
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following:
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```yaml
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healthchecks:
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container_name: healthchecks
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image: linuxserver/healthchecks:v1.12.0-ls48
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restart: unless-stopped
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ports:
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- "127.0.0.1:8000:8000"
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volumes:
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- "./healthchecks/data:/config"
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environment:
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PUID: "5000"
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PGID: "5000"
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SECRET_KEY: "super-secret-key"
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ALLOWED_HOSTS: '["*"]'
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DEBUG: "False"
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DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL: "noreply@healthchecks.example.com"
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USE_PAYMENTS: "False"
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REGISTRATION_OPEN: "False"
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EMAIL_HOST: "smtp.example.com"
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EMAIL_PORT: "587"
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EMAIL_HOST_USER: "smtp@healthchecks.example.com"
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EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD: "super-secret-password"
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EMAIL_USE_TLS: "True"
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SITE_ROOT: "https://healthchecks.example.com"
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SITE_NAME: "HealthChecks"
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MASTER_BADGE_LABEL: "HealthChecks"
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PING_ENDPOINT: "https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/"
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PING_EMAIL_DOMAIN: "healthchecks.example.com"
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TWILIO_ACCOUNT: "None"
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TWILIO_AUTH: "None"
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TWILIO_FROM: "None"
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PD_VENDOR_KEY: "None"
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TRELLO_APP_KEY: "None"
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```
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This will create a docker container exposing it locally on `127.0.0.1:8000`.
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Let's point nginx to it and expose it using something similar to the following.
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```text
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server {
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listen 443 ssl;
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server_name healthchecks.example.com;
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ssl_certificate /path/to/the/fullchain.pem;
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ssl_certificate_key /path/to/the/privkey.pem;
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location / {
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proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
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add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;
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add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
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proxy_redirect off;
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proxy_buffering off;
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proxy_set_header Host $host;
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proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
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proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
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proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
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proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port $server_port;
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proxy_read_timeout 90;
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}
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}
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```
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This should do nicely.
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## Usage {#usage}
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Now it's a simple matter of creating a checks.
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{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/borgbackup-healthchecks.png" caption="Figure 1: HealthChecks monitoring for BorgBackup" target="_blank" link="/ox-hugo/borgbackup-healthchecks.png" >}}
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This will give you a link that looks like the following
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```text
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https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/84b2a834-02f5-524f-4c27-a2f24562b219
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```
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Let's feed it to **borgmatic**.
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```yaml
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hooks:
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healthchecks: https://healthchecks.example.com/ping/84b2a834-02f5-524f-4c27-a2f24562b219
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```
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After you configure the **borgmatic** hook to keep _HealthChecks_ in the know of what's going on.
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We can take a look at the log to see what happened and when.
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{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/borgbackup-healthchecks-logs.png" caption="Figure 2: HealthChecks monitoring for BorgBackup" target="_blank" link="/ox-hugo/borgbackup-healthchecks-logs.png" >}}
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## Conclusion {#conclusion}
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As we saw in the blog post, now I am always in the know about my backups.
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If my backup fails, I get an email to notify me of a failure.
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I can also monitor how much time it takes my backups to run.
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This is a very important feature for me to have.
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The question of deploying one's own monitoring system is a personal choice.
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After all, one can use free third party services if they would like.
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The correct answer though is to always monitor.
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