Metrics Reporting

Solr includes a developer API and instrumentation for the collection of detailed performance-oriented metrics throughout the life-cycle of Solr service and its various components.

Internally this feature uses the Dropwizard Metrics API, which uses the following classes of meters to measure events:

  • counters - simply count events. They provide a single long value, e.g., the number of requests.

  • meters - additionally compute rates of events. Provide a count (as above) and 1-, 5-, and 15-minute exponentially decaying rates, similar to the Unix system load average.

  • histograms - calculate approximate distribution of events according to their values. Provide the following approximate statistics, with a similar exponential decay as above: mean (arithmetic average), median, maximum, minimum, standard deviation, and 75th, 95th, 98th, 99th and 999th percentiles.

  • timers - measure the number and duration of events. They provide a count and histogram of timings.

  • gauges - offer instantaneous reading of a current value, e.g., current queue depth, current number of active connections, free heap size.

Some of these meters may be missing or empty for any number of valid reasons. In these cases, missing values of any type will be returned as null by default so empty values won’t impact averages or histograms. This is configurable for several types of missing values; see the The <metrics> <missingValues> Element section below.

Each group of related metrics with unique names is managed in a metric registry. Solr maintains several such registries, each corresponding to a high-level group such as: jvm, jetty, node, and core (see Metric Registries below).

For each group (and/or for each registry) there can be several reporters, which are components responsible for communication of metrics from selected registries to external systems. Currently implemented reporters support emitting metrics via JMX, Ganglia, Graphite and SLF4J.

There is also a dedicated /admin/metrics handler that can be queried to report all or a subset of the current metrics from multiple registries.

Metric Registries

Solr includes multiple metric registries, which group related metrics.

Metrics are maintained and accumulated through all lifecycles of components from the start of the process until its shutdown - e.g., metrics for a particular SolrCore are tracked through possibly several load, unload and/or rename operations, and are deleted only when a core is explicitly deleted. However, metrics are not persisted across process restarts; restarting Solr will discard all collected metrics.

These are the major groups of metrics that are collected:

JVM Registry

This registry is returned at solr.jvm and includes the following information. When making requests with the Metrics API, you can specify &group=jvm to limit to only these metrics.

  • direct and mapped buffer pools

  • class loading / unloading

  • OS memory, CPU time, file descriptors, swap, system load

  • GC count and time

  • heap, non-heap memory and GC pools

  • number of threads, their states and deadlocks

  • System properties such as Java information, various installation directory paths, ports, and similar information. You can control what appears here by modifying solr.xml.

Overseer Registry

This registry is returned at solr.overseer when run in SolrCloud mode and includes the following information. When making requests with the Metrics API, you can specify &group=overseer to limit to only these metrics.

  • size of the Overseer queues (collection work queue and cluster state update queue)

Node / CoreContainer Registry

This registry is returned at solr.node and includes the following information. When making requests with the Metrics API, you can specify &group=node to limit to only these metrics.

  • handler requests (count, timing): collections, info, admin, configsets, etc.

  • number of cores (loaded, lazy, unloaded)

Core (SolrCore) Registry

The Core (SolrCore) Registry includes solr.core.<collection>, one for each core. When making requests with the Metrics API, you can specify &group=core to limit to only these metrics.

  • all common RequestHandlers report: request timers / counters, timeouts, errors. Handlers that support process distributed shard requests also report shardRequests sub-counters for each type of distributed request.

  • index-level events: meters for minor / major merges, number of merged docs, number of deleted docs, gauges for currently running merges and their size.

  • shard replication and transaction log replay on replicas,

  • open / available / pending connections for shard handler and update handler.

RequestHandlers can be configured to roll up core level metrics to the node level in addition to reporting them per core. This is useful if you have a large number of cores per node and are interested in aggregate metrics per node. This is configured by adding <bool name="aggregateNodeLevelMetricsEnabled">true</bool> to a RequestHandler configuration in your solrconfig.xml, for example:

<requestHandler name="/select" class="solr.SearchHandler">
    <!-- default values for query parameters can be specified, these
         will be overridden by parameters in the request
      -->
    <lst name="defaults">
        <str name="echoParams">explicit</str>
        <int name="rows">10</int>
    </lst>

    <bool name="aggregateNodeLevelMetricsEnabled">true</bool>
</requestHandler>

Jetty Registry

This registry is returned at solr.jetty and includes the following information. When making requests with the Metrics API, you can specify &group=jetty to limit to only these metrics.

  • threads and pools,

  • connection and request timers,

  • meters for responses by HTTP class (1xx, 2xx, etc.)

Metrics Configuration

The metrics available in your system can be customized by modifying the <metrics> element in solr.xml.

See also the section Configuring solr.xml for more information about the solr.xml file, where to find it, and how to edit it.

Disabling the Metrics Collection

The <metrics> element in solr.xml supports one attribute enabled, which takes a boolean value, for example <metrics enabled="true">.

The default value of this attribute is true, meaning that metrics are being collected, processed and reported by Solr according to the configured metric reporters. They are also available from the metrics APIs.

The false value of this attribute (<metrics enabled="false">) turns off metrics collection and processing. Internally, all metrics suppliers are replaced by singleton no-op implementations, which effectively removes nearly all overheads related to metrics collection. All reporter configurations are skipped, and the metrics APIs stop reporting any metrics and only return an <error> element in their responses.

The <metrics> <hiddenSysProps> Element

This section of solr.xml allows you to define the system properties which are considered system-sensitive and should not be exposed via the Metrics API.

If this section is not defined, the following default configuration is used which hides password and authentication information:

<metrics>
  <hiddenSysProps>
    <str>javax.net.ssl.keyStorePassword</str>
    <str>javax.net.ssl.trustStorePassword</str>
    <str>basicauth</str>
    <str>zkDigestPassword</str>
    <str>zkDigestReadonlyPassword</str>
  </hiddenSysProps>
</metrics>

The <metrics> <reporters> Element

Reporters consume the metrics data generated by Solr. See the section Reporters below for more details on how to configure custom reporters.

The <metrics> <suppliers> Element

Suppliers help Solr generate metrics data. The <metrics><suppliers> section of solr.xml allows you to define your own implementations of metrics and configure parameters for them.

Implementation of a custom metrics supplier is beyond the scope of this guide, but there are other customizations possible with the default implementation, via the elements described below.

<counter>

This element defines the implementation and configuration of a Counter supplier. The default implementation does not support any configuration.

<meter>

This element defines the implementation of a Meter supplier. The default implementation supports an additional parameter:

<str name="clock">

Optional

Default: user

The type of clock to use for calculating EWMA rates. The supported values are: * user, which uses System.nanoTime() * cpu, which uses the current thread’s CPU time

<histogram>

This element defines the implementation of a Histogram supplier. This element also supports the clock parameter shown above with the meter element, and also:

<str name="reservoir">

Optional

Default: com.codahale.metrics.ExponentiallyDecayingReservoir

The fully-qualified class name of the Reservoir implementation to use. The default is com.codahale.metrics.ExponentiallyDecayingReservoir but there are other options available with the Codahale Metrics library that Solr uses.

<int name="size">

Optional

Default: 1028

The reservoir size.

<double name="alpha">

Optional

Default: 0.015

The decay parameter. This is only valid for the ExponentiallyDecayingReservoir.

<long name="window">

Optional

Default: 300 seconds

The window size, in seconds, and only valid for the SlidingTimeWindowReservoir.

<timer>

This element defines an implementation of a Timer supplier. The default implementation supports the clock and reservoir parameters described above.

As an example of a section of solr.xml that defines some of these custom parameters, the following defines the default Meter supplier with a non-default clock and the default Timer is used with a non-default reservoir:

<metrics>
  <suppliers>
    <meter>
      <str name="clock">cpu</str>
    </meter>
    <timer>
      <str name="reservoir">com.codahale.metrics.SlidingTimeWindowReservoir</str>
      <long name="window">600</long>
    </timer>
  </suppliers>
</metrics>

The <metrics> <missingValues> Element

Long-lived metrics values are still reported when the underlying value is unavailable (e.g., "INDEX.sizeInBytes" when IndexReader is closed). Short-lived transient metrics (such as cache entries) that are properties of complex gauges (internally represented as MetricsMap) are simply skipped when not available, and neither their names nor values appear in registries (or in /admin/metrics reports).

When a missing value is encountered by default it’s reported as null value, regardless of the metrics type. This can be configured in the solr.xml:/solr/metrics/missingValues element, which recognizes the following child elements (for string elements a JSON payload is supported):

nullNumber

Optional

Default: none

The value to use when a missing (null) numeric metrics value is encountered.

notANumber

Optional

Default: none

The value to use when an invalid numeric value is encountered.

nullString

Optional

Default: none

The value to use when a missing (null) string metrics is encountered.

nullObject

Optional

Default: none

The value to use when a missing (null) complex object is encountered.

Example configuration that returns null for missing numbers, -1 for invalid numeric values, empty string for missing strings, and a Map for missing complex objects:

<metrics>
  <missingValues>
    <null name="nullNumber"/>
    <int name="notANumber">-1</int>
    <str name="nullString"></str>
    <str name="nullObject">{"value":"missing"}</str>
  </missingValues>
</metrics>

Reporters

Reporter configurations are specified in solr.xml file in <metrics><reporter> sections, for example:

<solr>
 <metrics>
  <reporter name="graphite" group="node, jvm" class="org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrGraphiteReporter">
    <str name="host">graphite-server</str>
    <int name="port">9999</int>
    <int name="period">60</int>
  </reporter>
    <reporter name="log_metrics" group="core" class="org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrSlf4jReporter">
      <int name="period">60</int>
      <str name="filter">QUERY./select.requestTimes</str>
      <str name="filter">QUERY./get.requestTimes</str>
      <str name="filter">UPDATE./update.requestTimes</str>
      <str name="filter">UPDATE./update.clientErrors</str>
      <str name="filter">UPDATE./update.errors</str>
      <str name="filter">SEARCHER.new.time</str>
      <str name="filter">SEARCHER.new.warmup</str>
      <str name="logger">org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrSlf4jReporter</str>
    </reporter>
  </metrics>
...
</solr>

This example configures two reporters: Graphite and SLF4J. See below for more details on how to configure reporters.

Reporter Arguments

Reporter plugins use the following arguments:

name

Required

Default: none

The unique name of the reporter plugin.

class

Required

Default: none

The fully-qualified implementation class of the plugin, which must extend SolrMetricReporter.

group

Optional

Default: none

One or more of the predefined groups (see above).

registry

Optional

Default: none

One or more of valid fully-qualified registry names.

If both group and registry attributes are specified only the group attribute is considered. If neither attribute is specified then the plugin will be used for all groups and registries. Multiple group or registry names can be specified, separated by comma and/or space.

Additionally, several implementation-specific initialization arguments can be specified in nested elements. There are some arguments that are common to SLF4J, Ganglia and Graphite reporters:

period

Optional

Default: 60 seconds

The period in seconds between reports.

prefix

Optional

Default: empty string

A prefix to be added to metric names, which may be helpful in logical grouping of related Solr instances, e.g., machine name or cluster name. Default is empty string, i.e., just the registry name and metric name will be used to form a fully-qualified metric name.

filter

Optional

Default: none

If not empty then only metric names that start with this value will be reported. Default is no filtering, i.e., all metrics from the selected registry will be reported.

Reporters are instantiated for every group and registry that they were configured for, at the time when the respective components are initialized (e.g., on JVM startup or SolrCore load).

When reporters are created their configuration is validated (and e.g., necessary connections are established). Uncaught errors at this initialization stage cause the reporter to be discarded from the running configuration.

Reporters are closed when the corresponding component is being closed (e.g., on SolrCore close, or JVM shutdown) but metrics that they reported are still maintained in respective registries, as explained in the previous section.

The following sections provide information on implementation-specific arguments. All implementation classes provided with Solr can be found under org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.

JMX Reporter

The JMX Reporter uses the org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrJmxReporter class.

It takes the following arguments:

domain

Optional

Default: none

The JMX domain name. If not specified then the registry name will be used.

serviceUrl

Optional

Default: none

The service URL for a JMX server. If not specified, Solr will attempt to discover if the JVM has an MBean server and will use that address. See below for additional information on this.

agentId

Optional

Default: none

The agent ID for a JMX server. Note either serviceUrl or agentId can be specified but not both. If both are specified then the default MBean server will be used.

Object names created by this reporter are hierarchical, dot-separated but also properly structured to form corresponding hierarchies in e.g., JConsole. This hierarchy consists of the following elements in the top-down order:

  • registry name (e.g., solr.core.collection1.shard1.replica1). Dot-separated registry names are also split into ObjectName hierarchy levels, so that metrics for this registry will be shown under /solr/core/collection1/shard1/replica1 in JConsole, with each domain part being assigned to dom1, dom2, …​ domN property.

  • reporter name (the value of reporter’s name attribute)

  • category, scope and name for request handlers

  • or additional name1, name2, …​ nameN elements for metrics from other components.

The JMX Reporter replaces the JMX functionality available in Solr versions before 7.0. If you have upgraded from an earlier version and have an MBean Server running when Solr starts, Solr will automatically discover the location of the local MBean server and use a default configuration for the SolrJmxReporter.

You can start a local MBean server with a system property at startup by adding -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote to your start command. This will not add the reporter configuration to solr.xml, so if you enable it with a system property, you must always start Solr with the system property or JMX will not be enabled in subsequent starts.

SLF4J Reporter

The SLF4J Reporter uses the org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrSlf4jReporter class.

It takes the following arguments, in addition to common arguments described above.

logger

Optional

Default: none

The name of the logger to use. Default is empty, in which case the group (or the initial part of the registry name that identifies a metrics group) will be used if specified in the plugin configuration.

Users can specify logger name (and the corresponding logger configuration in e.g., Log4j configuration) to output metrics-related logging to separate file(s), which can then be processed by external applications. Here is an example for configuring the default log4j2.xml which ships in Solr. This can be used in conjunction with the solr.xml example provided earlier in this page to configure the SolrSlf4jReporter:

<Configuration>
  <Appenders>
  ...
    <RollingFile
        name="MetricsFile"
        fileName="${sys:solr.log.dir}/solr_metrics.log"
        filePattern="${sys:solr.log.dir}/solr_metrics.log.%i" >
      <PatternLayout>
        <Pattern>
          %d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS} %-5p (%t) [%X{node_name} %X{collection} %X{shard} %X{replica} %X{core} %X{trace_id}] %m%n
        </Pattern>
      </PatternLayout>
      <Policies>
        <OnStartupTriggeringPolicy />
        <SizeBasedTriggeringPolicy size="32 MB"/>
      </Policies>
      <DefaultRolloverStrategy max="10"/>
    </RollingFile>
  ...
  </Appenders>

  <Loggers>
  ...
    <Logger name="org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrSlf4jReporter" level="info" additivity="false">
      <AppenderRef ref="MetricsFile"/>
    </Logger>
  ...
  </Loggers>
</Configuration>

Each log line produced by this reporter consists of configuration-specific fields, and a message that follows this format:

type=COUNTER, name={}, count={}

type=GAUGE, name={}, value={}

type=TIMER, name={}, count={}, min={}, max={}, mean={}, stddev={}, median={}, p75={}, p95={}, p98={}, p99={}, p999={}, mean_rate={}, m1={}, m5={}, m15={}, rate_unit={}, duration_unit={}

type=METER, name={}, count={}, mean_rate={}, m1={}, m5={}, m15={}, rate_unit={}

type=HISTOGRAM, name={}, count={}, min={}, max={}, mean={}, stddev={}, median={}, p75={}, p95={}, p98={}, p99={}, p999={}

(curly braces added here only as placeholders for actual values).

Additionally, the following MDC context properties are passed to the logger and can be used in log formats:

node_name

Solr node name (for SolrCloud deployments, otherwise null), prefixed with n:.

registry

Metric registry name, prefixed with m:.

For reporters that are specific to a SolrCore also the following properties are available:

collection

Collection name, prefixed with c:.

shard

Shard name, prefixed with s:.

replica

Replica name (core node name), prefixed with r:.

core

SolrCore name, prefixed with x:.

tag

Reporter instance tag, prefixed with t:.

Graphite Reporter

The Graphite Reporter uses the org.apache.solr.metrics.reporters.SolrGraphiteReporter) class.

It takes the following attributes, in addition to the common attributes above.

host

Required

Default: none

The host name where Graphite server is running.

port

Required

Default: none

The port number for the server.

pickled

Required

Default: false

If true, use "pickled" Graphite protocol which may be more efficient.

When plain-text protocol is used (pickled==false) it’s possible to use this reporter to integrate with systems other than Graphite, if they can accept space-separated and line-oriented input over network in the following format:

dot.separated.metric.name[.and.attribute] value epochTimestamp

For example:

example.solr.node.cores.lazy 0 1482932097
example.solr.node.cores.loaded 1 1482932097
example.solr.jetty.org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler.2xx-responses.count 21 1482932097
example.solr.jetty.org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler.2xx-responses.m1_rate 2.5474287707930614 1482932097
example.solr.jetty.org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler.2xx-responses.m5_rate 3.8003171557510305 1482932097
example.solr.jetty.org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler.2xx-responses.m15_rate 4.0623076220244245 1482932097
example.solr.jetty.org.eclipse.jetty.server.handler.DefaultHandler.2xx-responses.mean_rate 0.5698031798408144 1482932097

Core Level Metrics

These metrics are available only on a per-core basis. Metrics can be aggregated across cores using Shard and Cluster reporters.

Index Merge Metrics

These metrics are collected in respective registries for each core (e.g., solr.core.collection1…​.), under the INDEX category.

Metrics collection is controlled by boolean parameters in the <metrics> section of solrconfig.xml:

Basic metrics:

<config>
  ...
  <indexConfig>
    <metrics>
      <long name="majorMergeDocs">524288</long>
      <bool name="merge">true</bool>
    </metrics>
    ...
  </indexConfig>
...
</config>

Detailed metrics:

<config>
  ...
  <indexConfig>
    <metrics>
      <long name="majorMergeDocs">524288</long>
      <bool name="mergeDetails">true</bool>
    </metrics>
    ...
  </indexConfig>
...
</config>

The following metrics are collected:

  • INDEX.merge.major - timer for merge operations that include at least "majorMergeDocs" (default value for this parameter is 512k documents).

  • INDEX.merge.minor - timer for merge operations that include less than "majorMergeDocs".

  • INDEX.merge.errors - counter for merge errors.

  • INDEX.flush - meter for index flush operations.

Additionally, the following gauges are reported, which help to monitor the momentary state of index merge operations:

  • INDEX.merge.major.running - number of running major merge operations (depending on the implementation of MergeScheduler that is used there can be several concurrently running merge operations).

  • INDEX.merge.minor.running - as above, for minor merge operations.

  • INDEX.merge.major.running.docs - total number of documents in the segments being currently merged in major merge operations.

  • INDEX.merge.minor.running.docs - as above, for minor merge operations.

  • INDEX.merge.major.running.segments - number of segments being currently merged in major merge operations.

  • INDEX.merge.minor.running.segments - as above, for minor merge operations.

If the boolean flag mergeDetails is true then the following additional metrics are collected:

  • INDEX.merge.major.docs - meter for the number of documents merged in major merge operations

  • INDEX.merge.major.deletedDocs - meter for the number of deleted documents expunged in major merge operations

Metrics API

The admin/metrics endpoint provides access to all the metrics for all metric groups.

A few query parameters are available to limit your request to only certain metrics:

group

Optional

Default: all

The metric group to retrieve. The value all retrieves all metrics for all groups. Other possible values are: jvm, jetty, node, and core. More than one group can be specified in a request; multiple group names should be separated by a comma.

type

Optional

Default: all

The type of metric to retrieve. The value all retrieves all metric types. Other possible values are counter, gauge, histogram, meter, and timer. More than one type can be specified in a request; multiple types should be separated by a comma.

prefix

Optional

Default: none

The first characters of metric name that will filter the metrics returned to those starting with the provided string. It can be combined with group and/or type parameters. More than one prefix can be specified in a request; multiple prefixes should be separated by a comma. Prefix matching is also case-sensitive.

regex

Optional

Default: none

A regular expression matching metric names. Note: dot separators in metric names must be escaped, e.g., QUERY\./select\..* is a valid regex that matches all metrics with the QUERY./select. prefix.

property

Optional

Default: none

Allows requesting only this metric from any compound metric. Multiple property parameters can be combined to act as an OR request. For example, to only get the 99th and 999th percentile values from all metric types and groups, you can add &property=p99_ms&property=p999_ms to your request. This can be combined with group, type, and prefix as necessary.

key

Optional

Default: none

The fully-qualified metric name, which specifies one concrete metric instance (parameter can be specified multiple times to retrieve multiple concrete metrics).

Fully-qualified name consists of registry name, colon and metric name, with optional colon and metric property. Colons in names can be escaped using backslash (\) character. Examples:

  • key=solr.node:CONTAINER.fs.totalSpace

  • key=solr.core.collection1:QUERY./select.requestTimes:max_ms

  • key=solr.jvm:system.properties:user.name

NOTE: when this parameter is used, any other selection methods are ignored.

expr

Optional

Default: none

Extended notation of the key selection criteria, which supports regular expressions for each of the parts supported by the key selector. This parameter can be specified multiple times to retrieve metrics that match any expression. The API guarantees that the output will consist only of unique metric names even if multiple expressions match the same metric name. Note: the order of multiple expr parameters matters here - only the first value of the first matching expression will be recorded, subsequent values for the same metric name produced by matching other expressions will be skipped.

Fully-qualified expression consists of at least two and at most three regex patterns separated by colons: a registry pattern, colon, a metric pattern, and then an optional colon and metric property pattern. Colons and other regex meta-characters in names and in regular expressions MUST be escaped using backslash (\) character.

Examples:

  • expr=solr\.core\..:QUERY\..\.requestTimes:max_ms

  • expr=solr\.jvm:system\.properties:user\..*

NOTE: when this parameter is used, any other selection methods are ignored.

compact

Optional

Default: true

When false, a more verbose format of the response will be returned. Instead of a response like this:

{"metrics": [
    "solr.core.gettingstarted",
    {
      "CORE.aliases": {
        "value": ["gettingstarted"]
      },
      "CORE.coreName": {
        "value": "gettingstarted"
      },
      "CORE.indexDir": {
        "value": "/solr/example/schemaless/solr/gettingstarted/data/index/"
      },
      "CORE.instanceDir": {
        "value": "/solr/example/schemaless/solr/gettingstarted"
      },
      "CORE.refCount": {
        "value": 1
      },
      "CORE.startTime": {
        "value": "2017-03-14T11:43:23.822Z"
      }
    }
  ]}

The response will look like this:

{"metrics": [
    "solr.core.gettingstarted",
    {
      "CORE.aliases": [
        "gettingstarted"
      ],
      "CORE.coreName": "gettingstarted",
      "CORE.indexDir": "/solr/example/schemaless/solr/gettingstarted/data/index/",
      "CORE.instanceDir": "/solr/example/schemaless/solr/gettingstarted",
      "CORE.refCount": 1,
      "CORE.startTime": "2017-03-14T11:43:23.822Z"
    }
  ]}

Like other request handlers, the Metrics API can also take the wt parameter to define the output format.

Examples

Request only "counter" type metrics in the "core" group, returned in JSON:

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/metrics?type=counter&group=core

Request only "core" group metrics that start with "INDEX", returned in XML:

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/metrics?wt=xml&prefix=INDEX&group=core

Request only "core" group metrics that end with ".requests":

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/metrics?regex=.*\.requests&group=core

Request only "user.name" property of "system.properties" metric from registry "solr.jvm":

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/metrics?wt=xml&key=solr.jvm:system.properties:user.name

Request query rates (but not histograms) from any core in any collection in any QUERY handler:

http://localhost:8983/solr/admin/metrics?expr=solr\.core\..*:QUERY\..*\.requestTimes:.*Rate