Serverless Plugin ALERTING

This Plugin adds Cloudwatch Alarms with SNS notifications for your Lambda functions.

Note: This plugin supports Serverless 0.5.* (Please use previous releases for other sls-versions)

Installation

• make sure that aws and serverless are installed

• @see http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/installing.html

• @see http://www.serverless.com/

• install this plugin to your project

• (adds the plugin to your node_modules folder)

cd projectfolder
npm install serverless-plugin-alerting

• add the plugin to your s-project.json file

"plugins": [
    "serverless-plugin-alerting"
]

• place the alerting.json file next to your s-function.json in the directory of the function for which you want to configure alerting
• AND/OR place a global-alerting.json file next to your s-project.json file in the projects root folder
• feel free to modify it as required

Run the Plugin

• the plugin uses a hook that is called after each deployment of a function
• you only have to deploy your function as usual sls function deploy

Singe configuration for all functions (global-alerting.json)

• copy the file global-alerting.json into your projects root folder
• the provided alerts will be created for every deployed function automatically
• same structure as alerting.json
• these alerts were appended to the alerts defined in alerting.json

Special configuration for every function (alerting.json)

• copy the file alerting.json into your functions folder
• these alerts were appended to the alerts defined in global-alerting.json

Structure

• array of alerting definition objects

• you can add multiple alerts as an array of alerting-objects

• you can add multiple mertic filters as in array of metricfilter-objects

• you can add multiple subscription filters as in array of subscritionfilter-objects

• use-case:

  • alert1: submit normal notifications immediately to instant messenger (Example: Threshold: Errors >= 1 for 1 minute)
  • alert2: submit notification to statuspage of your service to notify the customers about a problem (Example: Threshold: Duration >= 500 for 5 minutes)

• required changes for multiple alerts

[
    {
        "notificationTopicStageMapping": { ... },
        "metricFilters":  { ... },
        "subscriptionFilters": { ... },
        "alerts": { ... }
    },
    {
        "notificationTopicStageMapping": { ... },
        "metricFilters":  { ... },
        "subscriptionFilters": { ... },
        "alerts": { ... }
    }
]

Notification-Topics

• Here you have to define a mapping between a staging environment name and a SNS Topic that receives Messages
• make sure that the staging environment exists: sls variables list
  • Serverless shows you all stages to show the variables from
  • select one stage and press enter or press ctrl + c (the output of this function is not important now)

Serverless: Select a stage:
  1) dev
  2) live
> 3) staging
  4) testing

• create the stages, if required: sls stage create
• The mapped SNS Topics will be created automatically if they don't exist
• NEW 0.5.10: You can now use global SNS-Topics that receive events from multiple Accounts: Enter the full ARN if you use another accounts SNS-Topics
• What to do next:
  • As soon as these alerts have been created, they automatically submit notifications to these SNS-Topics
  • If you want to react on these alarms you can subscribe Lambda-Functions to these Topics (For example Push a notification to a messaging system like slack, send a email or push data to any Rest-Api.)
  • @see https://github.com/martinlindenberg/serverless-plugin-sns :)

Metric Filters

• key: name of the metric filter that needs to be created
• the values were used to fill up a aws-cli command
• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/logs/put-metric-filter.html

Subscription Filters

• key: name of the subscription filter that needs to be created
• the values were used to fill up a aws-cli command
• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/logs/put-subscription-filter.html

Alerts

• key: name of the metric that needs to be checked
• the values were used to fill up a aws-cli command
• http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/cloudwatch/put-metric-alarm.html
• 0.5.8: you can define your own MetricName and Dimensions

[
    {
        ...
        "alerts": {
            "Duration": {
                ...
                "metricName": "myOwnMetricName",
                "dimensions": [
                    {
                        Name: "Resource", Value: "myResourceName"
                    },
                    {
                        Name: "FunctionName", Value: "myFunctionName"
                    }
                ]
            }
        }
        ...
    }
]

• 0.5.11: per default the alarm triggers sns-events on all actions: InsufficientData, OK and Alarm
• you can define the used actions with the following attribute

[
    {
        ...
        "alerts": {
            "Duration": {
                ...
                "assignedActions": [
                    'InsufficientData',
                    'OK',
                    'Alarm'
                ],
                ...
            }
        }
        ...
    }
]