Configure Meridian to Use Newts

This section describes how to configure your Meridian instance to use Newts.

Setup

Follow these steps to set up Newts on your Meridian instance:

Create a configuration file with the time series storage settings

sudo vi etc/opennms.properties.d/timeseries.properties

Configure Newts as the time series strategy

# Configure storage strategy
org.opennms.rrd.storeByForeignSource=true(1)
org.opennms.timeseries.strategy=newts(2)

# One year in seconds
org.opennms.newts.config.ttl=31540000(3)

# Seven days in seconds
org.opennms.newts.config.resource_shard=604800(4)

# Configure Newts time series storage connection
org.opennms.newts.config.driver_settings_file=/opt/opennms/etc/cassandra-driver.conf(5)

1	Associate time series data by the foreign ID instead of the database-generated Node-ID.
2	Set time series strategy to use `newts`.
3	Retention rate for the time series data.
4	Shard metrics every 7 days.
5	The path to your driver configuration file

Create a configuration file with the time series storage settings

sudo vi etc/cassandra-driver.conf

Configure the Cassandra driver settings

datastax-java-driver {
  basic.contact-points = [ "example-node1:9042", "example-node2:9042" ](1)
  session-keyspace = "newts"(2)
  basic.load-balancing-policy {
    local-datacenter = datacenter1(3)
  }
  advanced.auth-provider {
    class = PlainTextAuthProvider (4)
    username = cassandra
    password = cassandra
  }
}

1	`Hostname:port` or `IP address:port` of one or more Cassandra cluster nodes.
2	Name of the keyspace which is initialized and used.
3	The local datacenter as defined by your Cassandra configuration
4	The authentication provider to use with the supplied credentials

(Optional) If your Meridian data collection or polling intervals have been modified, set the query minimum and heartbeat rates:

org.opennms.newts.query.minimum_step=30000 (1)
org.opennms.newts.query.heartbeat=450000 (2)

1	The shortest collection interval configured for any collectable or pollable service, in milliseconds (in this case, 30 seconds).
2	The communication interval for the Newts service, in milliseconds. Should be set to 1.5 times the `maximum` value of the collection interval configured for any collectable or pollable service, in milliseconds (in this case, 450 seconds).

Initialize the Newts schema in Cassandra:

bin/newts init

Connect to Cassandra using the CQL shell:

cd ${CASSANDRA_HOME}/bin
./cqlsh

Verify setup

After you have set the time series database to Newts and configured its settings, you must verify your setup and restart Meridian:

Verify keyspace initialization:

use newts;
describe table terms;
describe table samples;

Restart Meridian to apply your changes and verify your configuration:

systemctl restart opennms

After it restarts, Meridian will begin to persist metrics using the Newts engine. You can go to the Node Detail page for any SNMP-managed device to verify your setup; you should see response time graphs for the node’s ICMP and node-level performance data.

Only metrics stored in Newts are displayed in graphs. If you have data stored in RRD or JRB files, it will not be displayed unless it is migrated to Newts.