Often, users of Circonus will add the first few checks by hand in the UI. The web interface is great for seeing all available check types at a glance and easily modifying various aspects of a new check. However, once you have an idea of what you'd like to create, you need to scale that out to your entire infrastructure. Typically, our customers will use one of the following options:
- Templates - Circonus templates are great if you have lots of checks that are going to be exactly the same, such as DNS or database checks. Rulesets on the master check can also be synced to the child checks, making it easy to apply lots of checks across your infrastructure.
- API - If you're going to have slight modifications to each check, or need a little more logic built into the check creation, then the API is for you. The extensive Circonus REST API will allow you to create and modify a lot of checks at once while reading from your CMDB or configuration repository. If you plan on scanning your network for all devices that are available, the API can help you create checks as you find new devices, based on which ports are open and what is listening on those ports.
- Chef, Puppet, or Ansible - If you've got a configuration management system already in place, you can utilize the Circonus API to create checks, graphs, and rulesets as a part of your provisioning process. This is great for dynamic environments, as you can bring up new checks when the server first comes online, while utilizing tags to help organize your systems.
- Node agent auto-registration - If you're using nad as your agent to get system information from your servers, there is a command-line flag for registering that server's checks and graphs. This allows you to set the configuration for your servers ahead of time, then have each register itself when nad is ready.
-kjohnson