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Monitoring operational metrics

Monitoring operational metrics

As a security officer, auditor, or manager, you can use the IBM Cloud Monitoring service to measure how users and applications interact with IBM Cloud® Secrets Manager.

IBM Cloud Monitoring records data on the operations that occur inside of IBM Cloud. This service allows you to gain operational visibility into the performance and health of your applications, services, and platforms. You can use its advanced features to monitor and troubleshoot, define alerts based on API response codes, and design custom dashboards.

For more information regarding the Monitoring service, check out Getting started.

Enabling Secrets Manager service metrics adds new metrics to your Monitoring instance. For information on Monitoring pricing, check out Pricing.

What metrics are available?

You can use Monitoring to track the type of API requests being made in your service instance as well as the latency of the requests. The dashboard includes:

  • Total requests being made in your Secrets Manager instance, categorized by API type.
  • Failed API requests categorized by error type.
  • API request latency over time, including the average latency, highest latency, and lowest latency.
  • Total amount of secrets and secret groups in the instance.

Before you begin

Configure a Monitoring instance for metrics

Other IBM Cloud users with administrator or editor permissions can manage the Monitoring service in the IBM Cloud. These users must also have platform permissions to create resources within the context of the resource group where they plan to provision the instance.

To enable platform metrics in a region, complete the following steps:

  1. Provision an instance of Monitoring in the region of the Secrets Manager instance.

  2. Go to the Monitoring dashboard.

  3. Click on Configure platform metrics.

  4. Select the region where the Secrets Manager instance was created.

  5. Select the Monitoring instance in which you would like to receive metrics.

  6. Click Configure.

You can also reach this location by clicking on the Actions dropdown in your Secrets Manager instance, followed by clicking on Add monitoring.

Secrets Manager metrics details

You can use the metrics in your monitoring instance dashboard to measure the types of requests being made in your service instance as well as the latency of the requests.

Resource count

The total amount of secrets and secret groups in the instance

Table 1. Describes the API Hits metrics.
Metric Name Description Metric Type Value Type
ibm_sm_secrets_count Total amount of secrets Gauge None
ibm_sm_secret_groups_count Total amount of secret groups Gauge None

Total requests

The type and amount of API requests being made to your Secrets Manager instance. For example, you can track how many API requests have been made for read, write, or delete actions.

Table 1. Describes the API Hits metrics.
Metric Name Description Metric Type Value Type
ibm_sm_delete_private_requests_count Total amount of delete requests in private network Gauge None
ibm_sm_delete_public_requests_count Total amount of delete requests in public network Gauge None
ibm_sm_read_private_requests_count Total amount of read requests in private network Gauge None
ibm_sm_read_public_requests_count Total amount of read requests in public network Gauge None
ibm_sm_write_private_requests_count Total amount of write requests in private network Gauge None
ibm_sm_write_public_requests_count Total amount of write requests in public network Gauge None

Error count

This metric gathers the number of 4xx and 5xx errors encountered from all APIs.

Table 1. Describes the API Hits metrics.
Metric Name Description Metric Type Value Type
ibm_sm_4xx_errors_count Total amount of 4xx errors Gauge None
ibm_sm_5xx_errors_count Total amount of 5xx errors Gauge None

Latency

This metric tracks amount of time it takes Secrets Manager to receive an API request and respond to it.

The latency is calculated by getting the average of all requests of the same type that occur within 60 seconds.

Table 2. Describes the Latency metrics.
Metric Name Description Metric Type Value Type
ibm_sm_latency_delete_avg_ms Delete operation average response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_delete_max_ms Delete operation maximum response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_delete_min_ms Delete operation minimum response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_read_avg_ms Read operation average response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_read_max_ms Read operation maximum response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_read_min_ms Read operation minimum response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_write_avg_ms Write operation average response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_write_max_ms Write operation maximum response time Gauge Milliseconds
ibm_sm_latency_write_min_ms Write operation minimum response time Gauge Milliseconds

Attributes for segmentation

You can filter your metrics by using segmentation attributes.

Table 3. Describes the attributes use for segmenting metrics.
Attribute Name Description
ibm_ctype public, dedicated, or local.
ibm_location Location of the Secrets Manager service instance.
ibm_scope The account, organization, or space GUID associated with the metric.
ibm_service_instance Secrets Manager service instance ID.
ibm_service_name secrets-manager.

Metrics filter attributes

You can scope down your metrics by using scope filters, which are more granular than the segmentation filters.

Table 4. Describes the scope filters for Secrets Manager metrics.
Attribute Name Description
ibm_scope The account, organization, or space GUID associated with the metric.
ibm_location The location of the instance.
ibm_service_instance The service instance id associated with the metric.

Default dashboards

How to find the Monitoring dashboard for Secrets Manager using the Observability page

After configuring your Monitoring instance to receive platform metrics, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Monitoring dashboard and find your monitoring instance that is configured to receive platform metrics.
  2. Click on the View Monitoring button in the View Dashboard column of the monitoring instance.
  3. Once you are in the Monitoring platform, click Dashboards to open up the side menu.
  4. Select Secrets Manager under the IBM section to view the dashboard.

To see metrics for one or more instances, select from the ibm_service_instance dropdown in the Secrets Manager dashboard.

Opening the Monitoring dashboard from Secrets Manager

After configuring your Monitoring instance to receive platform metrics, you can open the dashboard directly from your Secrets Manager instance.

  1. Click on the Actions menu Actions icon
  2. Click on the Monitoring option to open the dashboard

Setting alerts

You can set alerts on your Monitoring dashboard to notify you of certain metrics. To setup a metric:

  1. Click Alerts on the side menu.
  2. Click Add Alert at the top of the page.
  3. Select Metric as the alert type.
  4. Select the aggregation and the appropriate metric.
  5. Select the scope filter, if applicable.
  6. Set the metric and time requirements for the alert to trigger.
  7. Configure the notification channel and notification interval.
  8. Click Create.