Monitoring the Charmed Apache Spark cluster
By default, Apache Spark stores the logs of drivers and executors as pod logs in the local file system, which are lost once the pods are deleted. Apache Spark provides us with the ability to store these logs in a persistent object storage system, like S3, so that they can later be retrieved and visualised by a component called the Spark History Server.
Charmed Apache Spark provides native support and integration for these monitoring systems:
- Using the Spark History Server, which is a UI that most Spark users are accustomed to, to analyze their jobs, at the application level (e.g. jobs separated by the different steps and so on).
- Using Canonical Observability Stack (COS), which is more oriented to cluster administrators, allowing them to set up alerts and dashboarding based on resource utilisation.
Let’s explore each one of these options.
Monitoring with the Apache Spark History Server
The Spark History Server is a user interface to monitor the metrics and performance of completed and running Spark applications. The Spark History Server is offered as a charm in the Charmed Apache Spark solution, which can be deployed via Juju.
Let’s create a fresh Juju model for some experiments with the Spark History server.
juju add-model history-server
To enable monitoring via the Spark History server, we must first create a service account with the necessary configuration for Spark jobs to be able to store logs in an S3 bucket. We then need to deploy the Spark History Server with Juju and configure it to read from the same S3 bucket that our Spark jobs write logs to.
Since Juju has already created the namespace history-server, let’s create a new service account in this namespace. We’ll reuse the configuration options from the existing spark service account and add a few more configuration parameters in order to tell Apache Spark where to store and retrieve the logs.
# Get config from old service account and store in a file
spark-client.service-account-registry get-config \
--username spark --namespace spark > properties.conf
# Add a few more config options for the storage of event logs
echo "spark.eventLog.enabled=true" >> properties.conf
echo "spark.eventLog.dir=s3a://spark-tutorial/spark-events/" >> properties.conf
echo "spark.history.fs.logDirectory=s3a://spark-tutorial/spark-events/" >> properties.conf
# Create a new service account and load configurations from the file
spark-client.service-account-registry create \
--username spark --namespace history-server \
--properties-file properties.conf
We’ve configured Apache Spark to write logs to the spark-events path in the spark-tutorial bucket. However, that path doesn’t exist yet. Let’s create that path in S3. (Note that the / at the end is required.)
aws s3api put-object --bucket spark-tutorial --key spark-events/
Now, let’s deploy the spark-history-server-k8s charm into our Juju model.
juju deploy spark-history-server-k8s -n1 --channel 3.4/stable
The Spark History Server needs to connect to the S3 bucket for it to be able to read the logs. This integration is provided to the Spark History Server charm by the s3-integrator charm. Let’s deploy the s3-integrator charm, configure it and integrate it with our spark-history-server-k8s deployment.
# Deploy s3-integrator
juju deploy s3-integrator -n1 --channel edge
# Configure s3-integrator with correct bucket name, directory path and endpoint
juju config s3-integrator bucket=spark-tutorial path="spark-events" endpoint=http://$S3_ENDPOINT
# Sync S3 credentials with s3-integrator
juju run s3-integrator/leader sync-s3-credentials \
access-key=$ACCESS_KEY secret-key=$SECRET_KEY
# Integrate s3-integrator with Spark History Server
juju integrate s3-integrator spark-history-server-k8s
Let’s view the status of the Juju model now with the command juju status --watch 1s --relations. Once deployment and integration have been completed for the charms, the status should look similar to the following:
Model Controller Cloud/Region Version SLA Timestamp
history-server spark-tutorial microk8s/localhost 3.1.7 unsupported 07:29:35Z
App Version Status Scale Charm Channel Rev Address Exposed Message
s3-integrator active 1 s3-integrator edge 14 10.152.183.87 no
spark-history-server-k8s active 1 spark-history-server-k8s 3.4/stable 15 10.152.183.111 no
Unit Workload Agent Address Ports Message
s3-integrator/0* active idle 10.1.29.167
spark-history-server-k8s/0* active idle 10.1.29.169
Integration provider Requirer Interface Type Message
s3-integrator:s3-credentials spark-history-server-k8s:s3-credentials s3 regular
s3-integrator:s3-integrator-peers s3-integrator:s3-integrator-peers s3-integrator-peers peer
The Spark History Server is now successfully configured to read logs from the S3 bucket. Let’s run a simple job so that Apache Spark can generate some logs. We’re going to use the same count_vowels.py example we used earlier, which already exists in the spark-tutorial bucket.
spark-client.spark-submit \
--username spark --namespace history-server \
--deploy-mode cluster \
s3a://spark-tutorial/count_vowels.py
The Spark History Server comes with a Web UI for us to view and monitor the Spark jobs submitted to our cluster. The web UI can be accessed at port 18080 of the IP address of the spark-history-server-k8s/0 unit. However, it’s good practice to access it via a Kubernetes Ingress rather than directly accessing the unit’s IP address. Using an Ingress will allow us to have a common entrypoint to the applications running in the Juju model. We can add an Ingress by deploying and integrating the traefik-k8s charm with our spark-history-server-k8s deployment.
# Deploy traefik charm
juju deploy traefik-k8s --channel latest/stable --trust
# Integrate traefik with spark-history-server-k8s
juju integrate traefik-k8s spark-history-server-k8s
Now that Traefik has been deployed and configured, we can fetch the Ingress URL of the Spark History Server by running the show-proxied-endpoints action on the Traefik charm.
juju run traefik-k8s/0 show-proxied-endpoints
#
# proxied-endpoints: '{"spark-history-server-k8s": {"url": "http://172.31.19.156/history-server-spark-history-server-k8s"}}'
Let’s open a web browser and then browse to this URL in order to see the Spark History Server UI, which should be similar to the one shown below.
When you click on the application ID, you can see the event timeline for the particular Spark job and information about completed jobs, as shown in the picture below.
In a similar way, you can view information about various stages in the job by navigating to the “Stages” menu. The values of the different properties used to run the job can be viewed on the “Environment” page. Finally, you can also view statistics about the individual executors on the “Executors” page.
Spend some time exploring the various pages. You might like to submit additional sample jobs and view their status.
Monitoring with Canonical Observability Stack
The Charmed Apache Spark solution comes with the spark-metrics exporter embedded in the Charmed Apache Spark OCI image which is used as a base image for driver and executor pods. The exporter is designed to push metrics to the Prometheus Pushgateway, which in turn is integrated with the Canonical Observability Stack.
To enable observability on Charmed Apache Spark, two steps are necessary:
- Deploy the COS (Canonical Observability Stack) bundle with Juju
- Configure the Apache Spark service account to use the Prometheus sink
Let’s begin by setting up the COS bundle. Let’s start by creating a fresh Juju model with the name cos:
juju add-model cos
Now, let’s deploy the cos-lite charm bundle:
juju deploy cos-lite --trust
When you deploy cos-lite, it deploys several charms like Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, etc. that together build up the Canonical Observability Stack. You can view the list of charms that have been deployed and their relations with juju status --relations. The output is similar to the following (note that it may take some time for the status to be active for each charm):
Model Controller Cloud/Region Version SLA Timestamp
cos k8s microk8s/localhost 3.1.7 unsupported 15:41:53+05:45
App Version Status Scale Charm Channel Rev Address Exposed Message
alertmanager 0.25.0 active 1 alertmanager-k8s stable 96 10.152.183.249 no
catalogue active 1 catalogue-k8s stable 33 10.152.183.165 no
grafana 9.2.1 active 1 grafana-k8s stable 93 10.152.183.124 no
loki 2.7.4 active 1 loki-k8s stable 105 10.152.183.145 no
prometheus 2.47.2 active 1 prometheus-k8s stable 159 10.152.183.129 no
traefik 2.10.4 active 1 traefik-k8s stable 166 192.168.10.120 no
Unit Workload Agent Address Ports Message
alertmanager/0* active idle 10.1.139.112
catalogue/0* active idle 10.1.139.82
grafana/0* active idle 10.1.139.115
loki/0* active idle 10.1.139.110
prometheus/0* active idle 10.1.139.95
traefik/0* active idle 10.1.139.114
Integration provider Requirer Interface Type Message
alertmanager:alerting loki:alertmanager alertmanager_dispatch regular
alertmanager:alerting prometheus:alertmanager alertmanager_dispatch regular
alertmanager:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
alertmanager:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
alertmanager:replicas alertmanager:replicas alertmanager_replica peer
alertmanager:self-metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
catalogue:catalogue alertmanager:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:catalogue grafana:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:catalogue prometheus:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:replicas catalogue:replicas catalogue_replica peer
grafana:grafana grafana:grafana grafana_peers peer
grafana:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
grafana:replicas grafana:replicas grafana_replicas peer
loki:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
loki:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
loki:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
loki:replicas loki:replicas loki_replica peer
prometheus:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
prometheus:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
prometheus:prometheus-peers prometheus:prometheus-peers prometheus_peers peer
traefik:ingress alertmanager:ingress ingress regular
traefik:ingress catalogue:ingress ingress regular
traefik:ingress-per-unit loki:ingress ingress_per_unit regular
traefik:ingress-per-unit prometheus:ingress ingress_per_unit regular
traefik:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
traefik:peers traefik:peers traefik_peers peer
traefik:traefik-route grafana:ingress traefik_route regular
At this point, the observability stack has been deployed, but Charmed Apache Spark is not yet wired up to it. Generally, Prometheus collects metrics of services by regularly scraping dedicated endpoints.
However, Spark jobs can be ephemeral processes that may not last so long and are not really appropriate to be scraped. Moreover, the IPs/hostnames of pods are likely to change between runs, therefore requiring a more complex self-discoverable automation. For these reasons, we opted to have jobs run with Charmed Apache Spark push metrics (rather than having Prometheus pulling them) to a dedicated service, called Prometheus Pushgateway, which caches the metrics and exposes them to Prometheus for regular scraping, even when the Spark job has finished.
Therefore, to wire Spark jobs up with the observability stack, we need to deploy a Prometheus Pushgateway and then add Apache Spark configuration parameters to be able to connect to it. The Prometheus Pushgateway in turn will then be integrated with Prometheus. Let’s deploy the prometheus-pushgateway-k8s charm and integrate it with the prometheus charm:
juju deploy prometheus-pushgateway-k8s --channel edge
juju integrate prometheus-pushgateway-k8s prometheus
Now, for Apache Spark to be able to access the Prometheus gateway, we need the gateway address and port. Let’s export them as environment variables so that they can be used later:
# Get prometheus gateway IP
export PROMETHEUS_GATEWAY=$(juju status --format=json | jq -r '.applications."prometheus-pushgateway-k8s".address')
export PROMETHEUS_PORT=9091
Now that we have the Prometheus gateway IP address and port, let’s create a new service account in the cos namespace with all the configuration options that the spark service account in the spark namespace has, plus a few additional configuration options related to the Prometheus Pushgateway:
# Get config from old service account and store in a file
spark-client.service-account-registry get-config \
--username spark --namespace spark > properties.conf
# Create a new service account and load configurations from the file
spark-client.service-account-registry create \
--username spark --namespace cos \
--properties-file properties.conf
# Add configuration options related to Prometheus
spark-client.service-account-registry add-config \
--username spark --namespace cos \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.pushgateway-address=$PROMETHEUS_GATEWAY:$PROMETHEUS_PORT \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.class=org.apache.spark.banzaicloud.metrics.sink.PrometheusSink \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.enable-dropwizard-collector=true \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.period=5 \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.metrics-name-capture-regex='([a-z0-9]*_[a-z0-9]*_[a-z0-9]*_)(.+)' \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.driver.sink.prometheus.metrics-name-replacement=\$2 \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.pushgateway-address=$PROMETHEUS_GATEWAY:$PROMETHEUS_PORT \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.class=org.apache.spark.banzaicloud.metrics.sink.PrometheusSink \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.enable-dropwizard-collector=true \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.period=5 \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.metrics-name-capture-regex='([a-z0-9]*_[a-z0-9]*_[a-z0-9]*_)(.+)' \
--conf spark.metrics.conf.executor.sink.prometheus.metrics-name-replacement=\$2
Now that Prometheus is configured, let’s move on to configuring Grafana. For this tutorial, we are going to use a basic Grafana dashboard, which is available here. We’re going to use the cos-configuration-k8s charm to specify this dashboard is to be used by Grafana, and then integrate it with the grafana charm.
# Deploy cos configuration charm to import the grafana dashboard
juju deploy cos-configuration-k8s \
--config git_repo=https://github.com/canonical/charmed-spark-rock \
--config git_branch=dashboard \
--config git_depth=1 \
--config grafana_dashboards_path=dashboards/prod/grafana/
# integrate cos-configration charm to import grafana dashboard
juju integrate cos-configuration-k8s grafana
Once deployed and integrated, we can check the status of the juju model with the command juju status --relations, which should be similar to the following:
Model Controller Cloud/Region Version SLA Timestamp
cos k8s microk8s/localhost 3.1.7 unsupported 17:44:56+05:45
App Version Status Scale Charm Channel Rev Address Exposed Message
alertmanager 0.25.0 active 1 alertmanager-k8s stable 96 10.152.183.249 no
catalogue active 1 catalogue-k8s stable 33 10.152.183.165 no
cos-configuration-k8s 3.5.0 active 1 cos-configuration-k8s stable 42 10.152.183.106 no
grafana 9.2.1 active 1 grafana-k8s stable 93 10.152.183.124 no
loki 2.7.4 active 1 loki-k8s stable 105 10.152.183.145 no
prometheus 2.47.2 active 1 prometheus-k8s stable 159 10.152.183.129 no
prometheus-pushgateway-k8s 1.6.2 active 1 prometheus-pushgateway-k8s edge 7 10.152.183.36 no
traefik 2.10.4 active 1 traefik-k8s stable 166 192.168.10.120 no
Unit Workload Agent Address Ports Message
alertmanager/0* active idle 10.1.139.74
catalogue/0* active idle 10.1.139.100
cos-configuration-k8s/0* active idle 10.1.139.114
grafana/0* active idle 10.1.139.85
loki/0* active idle 10.1.139.106
prometheus-pushgateway-k8s/0* active idle 10.1.139.119
prometheus/0* active idle 10.1.139.99
traefik/0* active idle 10.1.139.84
Integration provider Requirer Interface Type Message
alertmanager:alerting loki:alertmanager alertmanager_dispatch regular
alertmanager:alerting prometheus:alertmanager alertmanager_dispatch regular
alertmanager:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
alertmanager:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
alertmanager:replicas alertmanager:replicas alertmanager_replica peer
alertmanager:self-metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
catalogue:catalogue alertmanager:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:catalogue grafana:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:catalogue prometheus:catalogue catalogue regular
catalogue:replicas catalogue:replicas catalogue_replica peer
cos-configuration-k8s:grafana-dashboards grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
cos-configuration-k8s:replicas cos-configuration-k8s:replicas cos_configuration_replica peer
grafana:grafana grafana:grafana grafana_peers peer
grafana:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
grafana:replicas grafana:replicas grafana_replicas peer
loki:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
loki:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
loki:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
loki:replicas loki:replicas loki_replica peer
prometheus-pushgateway-k8s:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
prometheus-pushgateway-k8s:pushgateway-peers prometheus-pushgateway-k8s:pushgateway-peers pushgateway_peers peer
prometheus:grafana-dashboard grafana:grafana-dashboard grafana_dashboard regular
prometheus:grafana-source grafana:grafana-source grafana_datasource regular
prometheus:prometheus-peers prometheus:prometheus-peers prometheus_peers peer
traefik:ingress alertmanager:ingress ingress regular
traefik:ingress catalogue:ingress ingress regular
traefik:ingress-per-unit loki:ingress ingress_per_unit regular
traefik:ingress-per-unit prometheus:ingress ingress_per_unit regular
traefik:metrics-endpoint prometheus:metrics-endpoint prometheus_scrape regular
traefik:peers traefik:peers traefik_peers peer
traefik:traefik-route grafana:ingress traefik_route regular
Now that we have the observability stack up and running, let’s run a simple Spark job so that the metric logs are pushed to the Prometheus gateway. For simplicity, we’re going to use the same count_vowels.py script that we prepared in the earlier sections:
spark-client.spark-submit \
--username spark --namespace cos \
--deploy-mode cluster \
s3a://spark-tutorial/count_vowels.py
Once the job is completed, let’s try to open the Grafana web UI and see some metrics. The credentials for the built-in admin user and the URL to the web UI can be grabbed using the get-admin-password action exposed by grafana charm:
juju run grafana/leader get-admin-password
# ...
# admin-password: w5lk07PIW5U0
# url: http://192.168.10.120/cos-grafana
Open the URL in a web browser. Log in using admin as the username and the password that we just fetched in the earlier command. We should see the Grafana web UI, similar to the screenshot below.
In the navigation menu on the left, select “Dashboards” and then “Browse”. There you should see the “Spark Dashboard” listed. You’ll see a dashboard similar to the one in the picture below. This is the dashboard we configured earlier with cos-configuration-k8s charm.
Play around the dashboard and observe the various metrics like Block Manager memory, JVM Executor Memory, etc. You can also reduce the time range to further zoom into the time graph.
In the next section, we are going to wrap up the tutorial and clean up all the resources we created.