In order to maintain a constant memory footprint, Babl exports metrics to memory-mapped files that can be processed by external programs. This means reporting of metrics remains fast, and prevents allocation occurring due to 3rd-party monitoring libraries.

The recommended approach is to read and interpret the exported monitoring data, and push to a metrics back-end for processing.

Supported customers can benefit from integration with popular metrics backends (e.g. Influx, Prometheus), and pre-prepared charts formatted for the Grafana charting system. See Support for more information.

Exported Metrics

Server Statistics

Records server-wide statistics, contained in the server mark-file ${SERVER_DIR}/babl-server.mark.

Can be read using the program com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.ServerStatisticsPrinter:

$ java -cp babl-0.10.0-all.jar \
    com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.ServerStatisticsPrinter \
    $SERVER_DIR
Timestamp: 2021-03-14T15:32:05.358Z
Bytes Read:                       42826384
Bytes Written:                    42621246
Active Sessions:                       176
Back Pressure Events:                    2
Invalid Opcode Events:                   0
Max Event Loop Ms    :                   1

• Timestamp - written by the server event-loop on each iteration; can be used as a liveness check
• Bytes Read - total number of bytes read from sockets
• Bytes Written - total number of bytes written to sockets
• Active Sessions - number of web-socket sessions currently connected
• Back Pressure Events - number of times the user Application could not keep up with incoming message rates
• Invalid Opcode Events - number of invalid web-socket frames received
• Max Event Loop Ms - max time (in milliseconds) spent processing all connected sessions

Session Statistics

Records per-session statistics, contained in files named ${SERVER_DIR}/babl-session-statistics-N.data.

Can be read using the program com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.SessionStatisticsPrinter:

$ java -cp babl-0.10.0-all.jar \
    com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.SessionStatisticsPrinter \
    $SERVER_DIR
Session ID:                                 711
Session State:                        CONNECTED
Bytes Read:                              433878
Bytes Written:                           433397
Frames Decoded:                            1271
Frames Encoded:                            2043
Messages Received:                         1090
Messages Sent:                             2043
Receive Buffered Bytes:                       0
Send Buffered Bytes:                          0
Invalid Messages Received:                    0
Invalid Pings Received:                       0
Send Back Pressure Events:                    0

• Session ID - server-assigned ID of the session
• Session State - current state of the session
• Bytes Read - total number of bytes read from session's socket
• Bytes Written - total number of bytes written to session's socket
• Frames Decoded - total number of web-socket frames decoded
• Frames Encoded - total number of web-socket frames encoded
• Messages Received - total number of complete messages received
• Messages Sent - total number of complete messages sent
• Receive Buffered Bytes - snapshot of the number of bytes currently queued for processing
• Send Buffered Bytes - snapshot of the number of bytes currently queued for sending
• Invalid Messages Received - total number of invalid messages received on the session
• Invalid Pings Received - total number of invalid pings received on the session
• Send Back Pressure Events - number of times the server has been unable to write data to the remote peer

Errors

Any exceptions are logged to an ErrorBuffer for efficient reporting, and can be viewed using the program com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.ErrorPrinter:

$ java -cp babl-0.10.0-all.jar \
    com.aitusoftware.babl.monitoring.ErrorPrinter \
    $SERVER_DIR
No errors reported.

Docker

If running Babl in the supplied docker container, utility scripts are provided for viewing monitoring data:

• /babl/bin/babl_print_server_stats.sh
• /babl/bin/babl_print_session_stats.sh
• /babl/bin/babl_print_errors.sh

If running the server in DETACHED mode, Aeron statistics can be displayed with:

• /babl/bin/babl_aeron_stat.sh