Memcached is a free and open-source, general purpose distributed memory caching system. Analyze the performance of your Memcached server and take informed troubleshooting descisions by keeping track of critical metrics.
This document details how to configure the Memcached plugin and the monitoring metrics for providing in-depth visibility into the performance, availability, and usage stats of Memcached servers.
Performance Monitoring Metrics
Bytes
bytes
metric counts and records the total number of bytes currently used by the server to store items. I.e., the number of bytes currently used for caching items.
Bytes read
bytes_read
metric counts and records the total number of bytes read by the server from network.
Bytes written
The total number of bytes sent over the network by the server is recorded using the metric bytes_written
. It has no bearing or connection on the total size of the data you're storing.
Current connections
The metric connections_current
records the total number of connected clients. If this value is very high or low, then the chances of system failure are high. Ideally, the number of open connections to the Memcached server should be the same value on all servers.
Total connections
The metric connections_total
records the total number of connections opened since the server started running. Ideally, the total number of connections should be lesser than the total number of get/set commands.
Threads
Get the total number of worker threads requested with the metric threads
. This metric represents the total number of threads used to process incoming requests. Ideally, this should'nt be higher than the totala number of CPU cores on the server.
Evictions
Use the metric evictions
and get the total number of evictions made in your Memcached server. An eviction occurs when an object that has time to live is removed from the cache because a brand new item needs to be allocated.
Limit maximum bytes
The total number of bytes the server is permitted to use for storage is recorded using the metric limit_maxbytes
.
Prerequisites
- Ensure the 'python-memcached' module is installed to get the performance metrics from the Memcached server. The Site24x7 Linux monitoring agent will automatically install the 'python-memcached' module. If the installation fails, refer the following section to install it manually.
- Our Linux server monitoring agent should be installed in the server where you plan to run the plugin.
- While adding a plugin, the plugin name and its folder name should be identical.
- Execute the following command in your server to install the python requests module
sudo pip install python-memcached
Installing pip:
- Use "pip" to install requests module
Note: pip is a package management system that is used to install and manage software packages written in Python.
- For CentOS, Fedora, RHEL: yum install python-develyum install python-pip (or)easy_install pip
- For Debian, Ubuntu: apt-get -y install python-pip
Plugin Installation
- Download and install the latest version of the Site24x7 Linux agent in the server where you plan to run the plugin. If it is installed successfully, you will see a Linux server monitor in the Site24x7 Control Panel. This confirms that the agent is able to communicate with our data center.
- Download the file memcached.py file from our GitHub repository. wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/memcached/memcached.py
- By default, the plugin will monitor the Memcached instance that is configured on 'localhost'. To change the configuration, edit the "#Config Section:" in 'memcached.py' file. #Config Section:MEMCACHE_HOST='127.0.0.1'MEMCACHE_PORT=11211
- Create a folder with the name 'memcached', under Site24x7 Linux agent plugin directory - '/opt/site24x7/monagent/plugins/' and place the 'memcached.py' under '/opt/site24x7/monagent/plugins/memcached/'
View Data in the Site24x7 Web Client
- Log in to Site24x7 and go to Server > Plugins > Name of Plugin Monitor.
- You will be able to view the performance charts on the various metrics for your Memcached server.
Plugin Contribution
Feel free to contribute to our existing plugin and come up with suggestions or feedback on our Community.
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