Announcements

#mackerelio

Enabled getting the Virtual Machines VM availability metric with Azure integration, and more

Hello. Mackerel team CRE Sudo (id:do-su-0805) here. These are the details of the latest update.

We enabled getting the Virtual Machines VM availability metric with Azure integration.

With Azure integration, it is now possible to get the VM availability metric when linked with Virtual Machines. Monitoring the metric will allow you to detect drops in VM availability even in environments where it is not possible to install mackerel-agent.

This metric is treated as a preview by Microsoft Azure, which is the reference source, so behavior may change due to changes in specifications, etc.

For information on the VM availability metric in Virtual Machines, please consult the following documentation for Microsoft Azure.
Reference: Monitoring Azure virtual machine data - Azure Virtual Machines | Microsoft Learn

The VM availability metric displays 1 during normal operation, or 0 when there is a malfunction
Image of the VM availability metric display

We made it easier to check the alert status of each organization from the sidebar and organization selection menu.

We made it easier to check the alert reporting status for affiliated organizations from the Alerts category on the sidebar displayed when Opening organizations, or from the Switch Organization menu at the top of the sidebar.

The display for each will appear in red if there is a CRITICAL alert, in yellow if there is a WARNING alert, or in gray if there is an UNKNOWN alert. The total number of alerts will now also be displayed in the same colors.

The order of the colors used is in CRITICAL > WARNING > UNKNOWN alert order, and the color used will be color for the highest existing level of alert for the organization.

If there are no CRITICAL alerts reported, and 1 WARNING alert reported, the display will look like the image below.

The number 1 is displayed in yellow over the logo in the organization display area
Example of the organization display with 1 WARNING alert reported

We made accessibility improvements.

  • We changed the alt text for the icon images of associated services to empty strings on various integration screens. This means that the name of the target service will no longer be read twice.
  • It is now possible to add the graph title to the iframe code generated when sharing a graph from the dashboard or graph board as the title attribute. If it is an image, it will be added to the alt attribute.
    • When sharing function-based graphs, it will contain the contents of the function, not the title you set.
    • The text added will be in the format of “Metrics of (Graph title you select) from 14 Aug 2023 12:09:40 to 14 Aug 2023 12:26:17 (Units: (Units for the graph displayed))”.
  • The focus sequence for the widgets on the custom dashboard is now in the order that it appears to be.
  • When reading the alert status widget on the custom dashboard, the host ID will not be read, only the host name and alert status. When reading the top entry, it will also read whether or not the alarm status widget is displayed for each entry.

We ended support for Amazon Linux AMI (also known as Amazon Linux 1).

Amazon Linux AMI (also known as Amazon Linux 1) will reach EoL (End of Life) at the end of December 2023. This was originally scheduled for the end of June 2023, but was postponed just before the deadline. Based on user behavior, etc., up to this point, Mackerel has decided not to go along with the decision to postpone, and to end support.
Alongside the end of support, we will also be ending releases on the yum repository for Amazon Linux AMI.

It will no longer be subject to technical support from our team, so we recommend those who utilize it migrate to a new OS.

Please be assured that support and releases for Amazon Linux 2 and Amazon Linux 2023 will continue after this announcement.

Added the “--description-file” option to mkr annotations that takes the description from a file.

When creating or updating graph annotations using “mkr annotations create” or “mkr annotations update” it was necessary to pass the content to be displayed directly to the “--description” option, but we added the “--description-file” option that will take the content to be displayed from a file. This makes it possible to specify content with multiple lines easily.

The example below would be used if you wanted to save the “df-h” results as result.txt and use the contents as graph annotations.

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/xvda1      8.0G  5.4G  2.7G  67% /

Until now, it was necessary to use workarounds such as following “mkr annotations” with “--description $(cat result.txt)” or using “$'string'” syntax like “--description $'Filesystem Size (omitted) on\n/dev/xvda1 8.0G 5.4G 2.7G 67% /'” to specify a new line.

With this update, it is now possible to load the file directly by specifying “--description-file result.txt”.

Additionally, specifying “-” for the “--description-file” option allows it to take it from standard inputs like “df -h / | mkr annotations create --description-file -”.

This feature will be available in mkr v0.52.0 and later.

About closure of the support desk during the Obon holiday

The Mackerel official support desk, which handles inquiries via the Contact the Support Team button displayed at the top right of the header when you are logged into Mackerel, and to inquiries sent to support@mackerel.io) will be closed for vacation during the following period.

Holiday Period: August 11, 2023 (Fri.) - August 16, 2023 (Wed.)

Inquiries we receive during this period will be handled in the order they were received when the desk reopens on August 17, 2023 (Thu.). Thank you for your understanding.

About the impact of Typetalk’s forced rewriting of tokens via unauthorized access

Typetalk forcibly rewrote some users' tokens to protect against information leakage due to unauthorized access. As a result, notifications from Mackerel to Typetalk may have stopped. In this case, please replace the tokens included in URLs with new tokens from the notification channel settings.

Please consult the article below for details.

mackerel.io