Overview

Canary checker is a kubernetes-native platform for monitoring health across application and infrastructure using both passive and active (synthetic) mechanisms.

Features

• Batteries Included - 35+ built-in check types
• Kubernetes Native - Health checks (or canaries) are CRD's that reflect health via the status field, making them compatible with GitOps, Flux Health Checks, Argo, Helm, etc..
• Secret Management - Leverage K8S secrets and configmaps for authentication and connection details
• Prometheus - Prometheus compatible metrics are exposed at /metrics. A Grafana Dashboard is also available.
• Dependency Free - Runs an embedded postgres instance by default, can also be configured to use an external database.
• JUnit Export (CI/CD) - Export health check results to JUnit format for integration into CI/CD pipelines
• JUnit Import (k6/newman/puppeter/etc) - Use any container that creates JUnit test results
• Scriptable - Go templates, Javascript and Expr can be used to:
  • Evaluate whether a check is passing and severity to use when failing
  • Extract a user friendly error message
  • Transform and filter check responses into individual check results
• Multi-Modal - While designed as a Kubernetes Operator, canary checker can also run as a CLI and a server without K8s

Use Cases

• Synthetic Monitoring

• Unified Alerting

Getting Started

1. Install canary checker:

helm repo add flanksource https://flanksource.github.io/charts
helm repo update
helm install canary-checker

1. Create a new check:

canary.yaml

apiVersion: canaries.flanksource.com/v1
kind: Canary
metadata:
  name: http-check
spec:
  interval: 30
  http:
    - name: basic-check
      url: https://httpbin.demo.aws.flanksource.com/status/200
    - name: failing-check
      url: https://httpbin.demo.aws.flanksource.com/status/500

2a. Run the check locally (Optional)

canary-checker run canary.yaml

shell kubectl apply -f canary.yaml

1. Check the status of the health check:

kubectl get canary

Getting Help

If you have any questions about canary checker:

• Read the docs
• Invite yourself to the CNCF community slackand join the #canary-checker channel.
• Check out the Youtube Playlist.
• File an issue - (We do provide user support via Github Issues, so don't worry if your issue a real bug or not)

Your feedback is always welcome!

License

Canary Checker core (the code in this repository) is licensed under Apache 2.0 and accepts contributions via GitHub pull requests after signing a CLA.

The UI (Dashboard) is free to use with canary checker under a license exception of Flanksource UI

Check Types

Protocol	Status	Checks
HTTP(s)	GA	Response body, headers and duration
DNS	GA	Response and duration
Ping/ICMP	GA	Duration and packet loss
TCP	GA	Port is open and connectable
Data Sources
SQL (MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server)	GA	Ability to login, results, duration, health exposed via stored procedures
LDAP	GA	Ability to login, response time
ElasticSearch / Opensearch	GA	Ability to login, response time, size of search results
Mongo	Beta	Ability to login, results, duration,
Redis	GA	Ability to login, results, duration,
Prometheus	GA	Ability to login, results, duration,
Alerts		Prometheus
Prometheus Alert Manager	GA	Pending and firing alerts
AWS Cloudwatch Alarms	GA	Pending and firing alarms
Dynatrace Problems	Beta	Problems deteced
DevOps
Git	GA	Query Git and Github repositories via SQL
Azure Devops
Integration Testing
JMeter	Beta	Runs and checks the result of a JMeter test
JUnit / BYO	Beta	Run a pod that saves Junit test results
File Systems / Batch
Local Disk / NFS	GA	Check folders for files that are: too few/many, too old/new, too small/large
S3	GA	Check contents of AWS S3 Buckets
GCS	GA	Check contents of Google Cloud Storage Buckets
SFTP	GA	Check contents of folders over SFTP
SMB / CIFS	GA	Check contents of folders over SMB/CIFS
Config
AWS Config	GA	Query AWS config using SQL
AWS Config Rule	GA	AWS Config Rules that are firing, Custom AWS Config queries
Config DB	GA	Custom config queries for Mission Control Config D
Kubernetes Resources	GA	Kubernetes resources that are missing or are in a non-ready state
Backups
GCP Databases	GA	Backup freshness
Restic	Beta	Backup freshness and integrity
Infrastructure
EC2	GA	Ability to launch new EC2 instances
Kubernetes Ingress	GA	Ability to schedule and then route traffic via an ingress to a pod
Docker/Containerd	Deprecated	Ability to push and pull containers via docker/containerd
Helm	Deprecated	Ability to push and pull helm charts
S3 Protocol	GA	Ability to read/write/list objects on an S3 compatible object store