https://github.com/ekho/nginx-metrix

Description

Nginx out-of-the-box has not the most complete status page provided by status module. It is worth noting that in Nginx Plus, this module provides more information.

But using lua module can get much more information. This is the purpose nginx-metrix.

Metrix entirely written in lua.

Base features of Metrix:

• OpenSource (MIT licence)
• modularity
• extensibility (in future)
• complete code coverage

Requirements

• nginx >= 1.6.0, but recommended >= 1.9.0
• lua-nginx-module >= 0.9.17
• luarocks >= 2.0

Usage

Nginx with lua-nginx-module should be installed using their instructions.

Install nginx metrix module

There are two ways to install: globally and locally.

Global installation

luarocks install nginx-metrix

Local installation

luarocks install nginx-metrix --local

There is a little trick that allows you to setup into an arbitrary folder – specify the HOME environment variable when running luarocks install

Configure nginx

1. Put into http section

lua_shared_dict metrix 16m; # creating metrix storage in nginx shared memory. Usually 16 megabytes should be enough

#lua_package_path '/home/user/.luarocks/share/lua/5.1/?.lua;;'; # Needs only if metrix installed locally
#lua_package_cpath '/home/user/.luarocks/lib/lua/5.1/?.so;;';   # Needs only if metrix installed locally

# init metrix
# In vhosts parameter you can (but not necessary) list all the primary server_name of virtual hosts
init_by_lua_block {
  metrix = require 'nginx-metrix.main'({
    shared_dict = 'metrix',
    vhosts = {'mydomain1', 'mydomain2', ...},
    window_size = 10,
  })
}

# init aggregating scheduler on workers
init_worker_by_lua_block {
    metrix.init_scheduler()
}

2. Put into every server section

log_by_lua_block {
    metrix.handle_ngx_phase()
}

3. There are two ways to output collected stats

    1. Special location in the existing server section.

location /metrix/ {
  default_type 'text/plain';
  content_by_lua_block {
    metrix.show()
  }
}

    2. Separate virtual host (server):

server {
    listen 81;
    server_name metrix;

    location / {
        default_type 'text/plain';
        content_by_lua_block {
          metrix.show({vhosts_filter='.*'})
        }
    }
}

NOTE 1: You should to take care of security. For example to use the allow/deny rules or authorization.

NOTE 2: You can use both methods together.

See or collect stats

Stats can be found at http://mydomain/metrix/ in case of special location. Or at http://metrix:81/ in case of separate server configuration.

Statistics can be viewed in the browser or obtain using various tools.

Supported output formats: text(default), html and json. Format determines by Accept http header or by formatparameter.

By default statistics shows for current virtual host. But you can specify vhosts_filter parameter (list of strings or lua string pattern). List of affected virtual hosts can be obtained by list_vhosts query string parameter. If vhosts_filterspecified and you want to see stats about only one of vhosts you should pass parameter vhost=yourdomain.com in query string.

Bundled metrics

1. request
   1. rps – number of requests per second
   2. internal_rps – number of internal requests per second
   3. https_rps – number of https requests per second
   4. time_ps – average time of request processing
   5. length_ps – average length of request
2. status – number of requests per second grouped by response status (200, 301, 302, 404, 500, etc).
3. upstream
   1. rps – number of requests sent to an upstreams per second
   2. connect_time – average time of connection to upstreams
   3. header_time – average time of http header transfers
   4. response_time – average time of upstream response