Skip to main content

What gets monitored

The agent collects several layers, from always-on base metrics to opt-in deep APM. Most of it activates by matching, not configuration: the agent reports host facts, the server pushes the definitions that match, and those probes start.

Base host metrics (always on)

CPU, memory, disk, load, network, and uptime, on every platform. These come from platform sources chosen at startup by OS and need no privilege beyond reading /proc (or the equivalent WinAPI and macOS calls). Collection interval is server-controlled, typically 60 seconds in production.

The layers

  • Auto-discovery. Processes, ports, packages, units, init system, cron jobs. This is the fact base everything else matches against. See Discovery.
  • Service probes. The catalog: nginx, Apache, databases, mail, DNS, queues, load balancers, virtualization, Windows IIS and MSSQL, and more. See Service catalog.
  • APM. Per-transaction traces and CPU flamegraphs for PHP and .NET, in three depths. See APM.
  • SNMP and network. Agentless polling of routers, switches, UPS and other devices through a collector role. See SNMP and network.
  • Host security. SSH brute-force rate, file integrity monitoring, open ports. See Host security.
  • Patch, backup, cron. Pending updates and CVEs, backup freshness, scheduled job health. See Patch, backup, cron.

Metric naming

Metric names follow a fixed scheme. Dimensions go into tags, never into the name.

  • host.* for base host metrics,
  • svc.<service>.* for service probes,
  • ext.* for external and synthetic checks,
  • dev.* for SNMP devices.

On-agent anomalies

The agent scores each metric series against a local baseline (an exponentially weighted moving average and variance) and raises an anomaly event when a series deviates strongly and stays there. This runs on the agent, so it works even on the free baseline tier with no server cost.

Offline buffering

If the server is unreachable, the agent spools metrics to a disk-backed ring buffer, bounded by size and age, and replays them on reconnect. A dead link is detected within about 30 seconds by a WebSocket ping before each heartbeat, so a silently blackholed connection does not lose data quietly.