Bosun Getting started with Bosun Sample Alert

Example

Bosun alerts are defined in the config file using a custom DSL. They use functions to evaluate time series data and will generate alerts when the warn or crit expressions are non-zero. Alerts use templates to include additional information in the notifications, which are usually an email message and/or HTTP POST request.

template sample.alert {
    body = `<p>Alert: {{.Alert.Name}} triggered on {{.Group.host}}
    <hr>
    <p><strong>Computation</strong>
    <table>
        {{range .Computations}}
            <tr><td><a href="{{$.Expr .Text}}">{{.Text}}</a></td><td>{{.Value}}</td></tr>
        {{end}}
    </table>
    <hr>
    {{ .Graph .Alert.Vars.metric }}`

    subject = {{.Last.Status}}: {{.Alert.Name}} cpu idle at {{.Alert.Vars.q | .E}}% on {{.Group.host}}
}

notification sample.notification {
    email = [email protected]
}

alert sample.alert {
    template = sample.template
    $q = avg(q("sum:rate:linux.cpu{host=*,type=idle}", "1m"))
    crit = $q < 40
    notification = sample.notification
}

The alert would send an email with the subject Critical: sample.alert cpu idle at 25% on hostname for any host who's Idle CPU usage has averaged less than 40% over the last 1 minute. This example is a "host scoped" alert, but Bosun also supports cluster, datacenter, or globally scoped alerts (see the fundamentals video series for more details).