Monitoring Node.js applications in Kubernetes environment

Before you monitor Node.js applications in IBM Cloud Private or OpenShift, you must connect the data collector to the server by creating a secret. Then you update your application deployment to monitor the Node.js applications.

Before you begin

If your service account doesn't have access to Kubernetes resources, see Authorizing the data collector to access Kubernetes resources.

Check that you downloaded the configuration package to obtain the server information, for more information, see Obtaining the server configuration information.

Ensure that you installed the data collector, for more information, see Installing the Node.js data collector.

About this task

You can create a secret for the global.environment file and the keyfiles that are extracted from the Monitoring configuration package. Then, you mount this secret when you deploy the application as a Kubernetes deployment.

Procedure

Go to the ibm-cloud-apm-dc-configpack directory where you extract the configuration package in Obtaining the server configuration information, and run the following command to create a secret to connect to the server, for example, name it as icam-server-secret.
```
kubectl -n my_namespace create secret generic icam-server-secret \
--from-file=keyfiles/keyfile.p12 \
--from-file=global.environment
```
Where my_namespace is the namespace where you want to create the secret.
Update the Docker file of your Node.js application to get the write access to the work directory by adding the following line:
```
RUN chmod 777 nodejs_dir
```
Where nodejs_dir is the home directory of your Node.js application, for example, /var/apps/acmeair-nodejs.
Build and tag the new docker image of the application and push the new image to the private registry. For example, in the directory where the Docker is located, run the following command:
```
docker build -t <application image name>:<image tag>
```

To update the application yaml file to mount the secret, complete the following steps:

Add the volume mount information to the Containers: object in the application deployment yaml file as shown here:
```
volumeMounts:
         - mountPath: /opt/ibm/apm/serverconfig
           name: serverconfig
```

Add the volume information to the Spec: object in the application deployment yaml file as shown here:

volumes:
     - name: global-environment
       secret:
         secretName: icam-server-secret
         optional: true

Example of a yaml file that is updated:

apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
 kind: Deployment
 metadata:
 name: acmeair
 labels:
     app: acmeair
 spec:
 selector:
     matchLabels:
     app: acmeair
     pod: acmeair
 replicas: 1
 template:
     metadata:
     name: acmeair
     labels:
         app: acmeair
         pod: acmeair
     spec:
     containers:
     - name: acmeair
         image: mycluster.icp:8500/default/acmeair:v1
         imagePullPolicy: Always
         ports:
         - containerPort: 3000
         protocol: TCP
         env:        
         - name: KNJ_LOG_TO_FILE
         value: "true"
         - name: KNJ_LOG_LEVEL
         value: "debug"
         - name: APPLICATION_NAME
         value: "acmeair"
         volumeMounts:
         - name: serverconfig
         mountPath: /opt/ibm/apm/serverconfig
     volumes:
     - name: global-environment
       secret:
         secretName: icam-server-secret
         optional: true

Update the application yaml file to use the new docker image.