This topic provides an overview of Healthwatch™ for VMware Tanzu (Healthwatch) features and functionality. For information about new features and breaking changes, see Healthwatch Release Notes.

Tanzu Application Service is now called Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry. The current version of Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry is 10.0.

Healthwatch allows you to monitor metrics related to the functionality of your Tanzu Operations Manager platform.

A complete Healthwatch installation includes the Healthwatch tile, as well as at least one Healthwatch Exporter tile. There are Healthwatch Exporter tiles for both the VMware Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry and VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition (TKGI) runtimes.

You must install a Healthwatch Exporter tile on each Tanzu Operations Manager foundation you want to monitor. You can install the Healthwatch tile on the same foundation or on a different foundation, depending on your desired monitoring configuration.

You can also configure the Healthwatch Exporter tiles to expose metrics to a service or database located outside your Tanzu Operations Manager foundation, such as an external time-series database (TSDB) or an installation of the Healthwatch tile on a separate Tanzu Operations Manager foundation. This does not require you to install the Healthwatch tile on the same Tanzu Operations Manager foundation as the Healthwatch Exporter tiles.

For a detailed explanation of the Healthwatch architecture, a list of open ports required for each component, and possible configurations for monitoring metrics with Tanzu Operations Manager or an external service or database, see Reference Architecture.

Product Snapshot

The following table provides version and version support information about Healthwatch:

Only supported versions are listed in the table.
Tanzu Operations Manager 2.10 is compatible, but is out of support.
TAS for VMs v5.0 is compatible, but is out of support.

Overview of the Healthwatch Tile

The Healthwatch tile monitors metrics from one or more Tanzu Operations Manager foundations by scraping them from Healthwatch Exporter tiles installed on each foundation.

Healthwatch deploys instances of Prometheus and Grafana. The Prometheus instance scrapes and stores metrics from the Healthwatch Exporter tiles and allows you to configure alerts with Alertmanager.

Healthwatch then exports the collected metrics to dashboards in the Grafana UI, allowing you to visualize the data with charts and graphs and create customized dashboards for long-term monitoring and troubleshooting.

Healthwatch includes the following features:

• Prometheus:

  • Scrapes /metrics endpoints for Healthwatch Exporter tiles, collecting metrics related to the functionality of platform- and runtime-level components that include the following:
    • Service level indicators (SLIs) for the BOSH Director
    • SLIs for Tanzu Platform for CF components
    • SLIs for TKGI components
    • When Tanzu Operations Manager certificates are due to expire
    • Canary URL tests for Tanzu Platform for CF apps
    • Counter, gauge, and container metrics for Tanzu Platform for CF from the Loggregator Firehose
    • Super value metrics (SVMs)
    • BOSH system metrics for TKGI
    • VMs deployed by Healthwatch Exporter tiles
  • Stores metrics for up to six weeks
  • Can write to remote storage in addition to its local TSDB

• Grafana: Allows you to visualize the collected metrics data in charts and graphs, as well as create customized dashboards for easier monitoring and troubleshooting

• Alertmanager: Manages and sends alerts according to the alerting rules you configure

Overview of the Healthwatch Exporter tile for Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry

The Healthwatch Exporter tile for Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry deploys metric exporter VMs to generate each type of metric related to the health of your Tanzu Platform for CF deployment.

Healthwatch Exporter sends metrics through the Loggregator Firehose to a Prometheus exposition endpoint on the associated metric exporter VMs. The Prometheus instance that exists within your metrics monitoring system then scrapes the exposition endpoints on the metric exporter VMs and imports those metrics into your monitoring system.

Healthwatch Exporter for Tanzu Platform for CF exposes the following metrics related to the functionality of Tanzu Platform for CF components, Tanzu Platform for CF apps, and the Healthwatch Exporter tile:

• SLIs for Tanzu Platform for CF components

• Canary URL tests for Tanzu Platform for CF apps

• Counter, gauge, and container metrics for Tanzu Platform for CF from the Loggregator Firehose

• SVMs

• VMs deployed by Healthwatch Exporter for Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry

Overview of the Healthwatch Exporter for TKGI Tile

The Healthwatch Exporter for TKGI tile deploys metric exporter VMs to generate SLIs related to the health of your TKGI deployment.

The Prometheus instance that exists within your metrics monitoring system then scrapes the Prometheus exposition endpoints on the metric exporter VMs and imports those metrics into your monitoring system.

Healthwatch Exporter for TKGI exposes the following metrics related to the functionality of TKGI components and the Healthwatch Exporter for TKGI tile:

• SLIs for TKGI components

• BOSH system metrics for TKGI

• VMs deployed by Healthwatch Exporter for TKGI

Product Snapshot

The following table provides version and version support information about Healthwatch:

Healthwatch v2.3 Limitations

Healthwatch v2.3 has the following limitation:

• Currently the OpenTelemetry Collector is co-located on the Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry VMs defined within the Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry tile, which means that it can only collect metrics from VMs running within the Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry tile. As a result, metrics from other service tiles are not available in Healthwatch when you enable the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Assumed Risks of Using Healthwatch v2.3

The following problem can arise when using Healthwatch v2.3:

• With Healthwatch v2.3 you can collect metrics using an OpenTelemetry Collector but be aware that the OpenTelemetry Collector used in Tanzu Platform for Cloud Foundry is the Beta version.