Monitoring Synology DSM Infrastructure

Synology DSM is a custom build of Linux using Upstart. Follow the tarball assisted install for the New Relic Infrastructure Agent on Synology to start monitoring Synology devices without Docker.

In this example, I use a Synology DS214play device (32-bit Intel Processor) with DSM 6.2 installed.

Summary for Intel Atom Devices

Start by enabling SSH on your Synology device:

1. Control Panel
2. Terminal & SNMP
3. Terminal > Enable SSH Service > Apply

Next, open your terminal and enter ssh user@synology. You may get an error message saying your home directory does not exist and will start at the root directory /.

1. Download New Relic Infrastructure Agent. In this case, my Synology DS214play uses an Intel Atom CE5335 processor which is 32-bit only (ARM and ARM64 variants of the New Relic Infrastructure agent are also available here):
   sudo curl https://download.newrelic.com/infrastructure_agent/binaries/linux/386/newrelic-infra_linux_1.20.4_386.tar.gz --output newrelic-infra_linux_1.20.4_386.tar.gz

2. Extract:
   sudo tar -xf newrelic-infra_linux_1.20.4_386.tar.gz

3. Append your New Relic license key (or edit in vi):
   echo "license_key=\"a1b2c3d4e5f6g6h7i7j8k9l0m9n8o7p6q5r4NRAL\"" | sudo tee -a /etc/newrelic-infra/config_defaults.sh

4. Run installer script:
   sudo /etc/newrelic-infra/installer.sh

5. Check if service is running:
   sudo initctl status newrelic-infra

6. If service is not running, try restarting:
   sudo initctl restart newrelic-infra

Infrastructure Data Captured

1. System
   • CPU %
   • Load Average
   • Memory Free %
2. Network
   • Transmit Bytes per Second
   • Receive Bytes per Second
   • Errors per Second
3. Processes: Not reported by default.
   • To enable, echo "enable_process_metrics: true" | sudo tee -a /etc/newrelic-infra.yml and restart service
4. Storage:
   • Disk Used %
   • Total Utilization %
   • Read/Write Bytes per Second
5. Events

Dashboards

Here are some useful dashboards and their NRQL query.

CPU %

SELECT average(cpuPercent), min(cpuPercent), max(cpuPercent) FROM SystemSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' timeseries

Average Load

SELECT average(loadAverageFifteenMinute), average(loadAverageFiveMinute), average(loadAverageOneMinute) FROM SystemSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' TIMESERIES

Memory % Free

SELECT average(memoryUsedBytes), average(memoryCachedBytes), average(memorySharedBytes), average(memorySlabBytes) FROM SystemSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' TIMESERIES

Disk % Usage

SELECT average(diskUsedPercent) FROM StorageSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' FACET entityAndMountPoint TIMESERIES

Disk I/O

SELECT average(readWriteBytesPerSecond OR readBytesPerSecond+writeBytesPerSecond) FROM StorageSample WHERE hostname = 'DATACRUNCH' FACET entityAndMountPoint TIMESERIES

Network I/O

SELECT average(transmitBytesPerSecond), average(receiveBytesPerSecond), average(receiveErrorsPerSecond) FROM NetworkSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' TIMESERIES

Events

SELECT changedPath, summary, changeType, source FROM InfrastructureEvent WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' SINCE 72 HOURS AGO

Processes

SELECT max(cpuPercent) FROM ProcessSample WHERE entityName = 'DATACRUNCH' AND processDisplayName != 'newrelic-infra' FACET processDisplayName TIMESERIES

Cost Summary

After enabling the infrastructure agent for 2 days, only 100 MB of data was ingested per day. This works out to about 3GB per month ingested, far below the 100GB included in the free-tier account.