Instructions on how to set up monitoring stack for your cosmos validator

Prerequisites

Install exporters on validator node

First of all you will have to install exporters on validator node. For that you can use one-liner below

wget -O install_exporters.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vchain-zone/cosmos_node_monitoring/master/install_exporters.sh && chmod +x install_exporters.sh && ./install_exporters.sh

KEY	VALUE
bond_denom	Denominated token name, for example, ubld for Agoric. You can find it in genesis file
bench_prefix	Prefix for chain addresses, for example, agoric for Agoric. You can find it in public addresses like this agoricvaloper1zyyz4m9ytdf60fn9yaafx7uy7h463n7alv2ete
rpc_port	Your validator rpc port that is defined in config.toml file. Default value for aura is 26657
grpc_port	Your validator grpc port that is defined in app.toml file. Default value for aura is 9090

make sure prometheus is enabled in validator config.toml file

make sure following ports are open:

• 9100 (node-exporter)
• 9300 (cosmos-exporter)
• 26660 (validator prometheus)

Deployment

Monitoring stack needs to be deployed on seperate machine to be able to notify in case if validator goes down! To run monitoring stack you dont need beastly server with multiple cores. It will be more than enough to run it on smallest available vps

System requirements

Ubuntu 20.04 / 1 VCPU / 2 GB RAM / 20 GB SSD

Install monitoring stack

To install monitirng stack you can use one-liner below

wget -O install_monitoring.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kj89/cosmos_node_monitoring/master/install_monitoring.sh && chmod +x install_monitoring.sh && ./install_monitoring.sh

Copy .env.example into .env

cp $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/config/.env.example $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/config/.env

Update values in .env file

vim $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/config/.env

KEY	VALUE
TELEGRAM_ADMIN	Your user id you can get from @userinfobot. The bot will only reply to messages sent from the user. All other messages are dropped and logged on the bot's console
TELEGRAM_TOKEN	Your telegram bot access token you can get from @botfather. To generate new token just follow a few simple steps described here

Export .env file values into .bash_profile

echo "export $(xargs < $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/config/.env)" > $HOME/.bash_profile
source $HOME/.bash_profile

Add validator into prometheus configuration file

To add validator use command with specified VALIDATOR_IP, PROM_PORT, VALOPER_ADDRESS, WALLET_ADDRESS and PROJECT_NAME

$HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/add_validator.sh VALIDATOR_IP PROM_PORT VALOPER_ADDRESS WALLET_ADDRESS PROJECT_NAME

example: $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring/add_validator.sh 1.2.3.4 26660 cosmosvaloper1s9rtstp8amx9vgsekhf3rk4rdr7qvg8dlxuy8v cosmos1s9rtstp8amx9vgsekhf3rk4rdr7qvg8d6jg3tl cosmos

To add more validators just run command above with validator values

Run docker-compose

Deploy the monitoring stack

cd $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring && docker-compose up -d

ports used:

• 8080 (alertmanager-bot)
• 9090 (prometheus)
• 9093 (alertmanager)
• 9999 (grafana)

Configuration

Configure Grafana

1. Open Grafana in your web browser. It should be available on port 9999

2. Login using defaults admin/admin and change password

3. Import custom dashboard

3.1. Press "+" icon on the left panel and then choose "Import"

3.2. Input grafana.com dashboard id 15991 and press "Load"

3.3. Select Prometheus data source and press "Import"

4. Change your chain explorer url

4.1. Edit "Top validators missing blocks panel"

4.2. Go to "Overrides" and edit "Data links"

4.3 Change url to your chain data explorer and hit "Save"

4.4. Hit "Save" button on the left top corner to save changes to dashboard

5. Congratulations you have successfully configured Cosmos Validator Dashboard

Configrure Telegram alerting

1. Open conversation with your Telegram bot you created with @botfather and type /start to activate bot

2. Now you are all set! If you want see other commands type /help

If you want learn more about alermanager-bot please visit their github repo

Testing

Test alerts

1. For simple test you can stop node-exporter service for 5 minutes. It should trigger alert

systemctl stop node_exporter

2. You will see message from bot firing

3. Now you can start node-exporter service back

systemctl start node_exporter

4. You will get confirmation from bot that issue is resolved

Dashboard contents

Grafana dashboard is devided into 4 sections:

• Validator health - main stats for validator health. connected peers and missed blocks

• Chain health - summary of chain health stats and list of top validators missing blocks

• Validator stats - information about validator such as rank, bounded tokens, comission, delegations and rewards

• Hardware health - system hardware metrics. cpu, ram, network usage

Cleanup all container data

cd $HOME/cosmos_node_monitoring
docker-compose down
docker volume prune -f

Reference list

Resources I used in this project:

• Grafana Validator stats Cosmos Validator by freak12techno
• Grafana Hardware health AgoricTools by Chainode
• Stack of monitoring tools, docker configuration node_tooling by Xiphiar
• Alertmanager telegram bot alertmanager-bot by metalmatze