Monitor Transfer Appliance

You can use the data copy status and appliance status metrics for better observability.

Monitor online copy status

If you've enabled online transfer, you can monitor the progress of online transfers from Transfer Appliance to Cloud Storage in the Transfer Appliance page of the Google Cloud console.

Go to Transfer Appliance | Monitor

Monitor offline copy status

While you're transferring data, you can monitor the progress of your transfer.

To monitor the progress of Transfer Appliance, connect to the appliance and run the following command:

ta status --verbose

Enable Cloud Monitoring

Transfer Appliance uses Cloud Monitoring to report on a wide range of appliance metrics.

The steps to enable Cloud Monitoring depend on whether you've set up online transfer:

  • If you've set up online transfer, and granted the Monitoring Metric Writer role to the service account, no further configuration is required.

  • If you've set up online transfer, but didn't add the Monitoring Metric Writer role, add the role to your user-managed service account at the project level. You do not need to regenerate the service account key after adding or changing roles.

  • If you haven't set up online transfer, follow the instructions to create and configure a user-managed service account. Only the Monitoring Metric Writer role is required for Cloud Monitoring.

Once you've completed the required steps:

  1. Connect to the appliance.
  2. Make sure the appliance has been configured.
  3. From the appliance command line, run ta metrics start.

Supported metrics

Metrics Name Collect Interval Supported Appliances Description
appliance/storage/stored_bytes 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the current number of bytes stored in the storage buffer of the appliance.
appliance/transfer/health 60s TA7 Checks if on-prem transfer software is currently running.
appliance/network/bytes_received 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the amount of bytes received per interface.
appliance/network/bytes_sent 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the amount of bytes sent per interface.
appliance/network/packets_received 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the amount of packets received per interface.
appliance/network/packets_sent 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the amount of packets sent per interface.
appliance/disk/partition/used_bytes 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 The used space of each disk partition.
appliance/disk/partition/total_bytes 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 The total space of each disk partition.
appliance/cpu/load_average 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 CPU load average over the past sample period.
appliance/service/state 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the running status of the service.
appliance/network/connectivity 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports if the interface network is reachable.
appliance/network/dns_health 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports if the DNS configuration works well.
appliance/disk/health 1h TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports the health status of each disk.
appliance/hardware/health 1h TA7/TA40/TA300 Reports if the specific hardware component works properly.
appliance/version 60s TA7/TA40/TA300 Current version of the specific appliance component.

Monitor appliance state

You can monitor the state of the appliance using Cloud Monitoring. See Enable Cloud Monitoring for setup instructions.

  1. Visit the Metrics explorer page in the Google Cloud console.
  2. From the Metrics tab, click Select a metric.
  3. In the filter field, enter the metrics name, for example, Stored bytes.
  4. From the results, select Transfer Appliance > Appliance > Stored bytes.
  5. Click Apply.

To learn about using Cloud Monitoring to view your Transfer Appliance metrics, read Create charts with Metrics Explorer.

Disable Cloud Monitoring on the appliance

To stop reporting metrics from the appliance to Cloud Monitoring, run the following command from the Transfer Appliance command line:

ta metrics stop

Cloud Monitoring is also stopped when you run any of the following commands:

  • ta finalize
  • ta reset

Troubleshooting

An error occurred while enabling monitoring

If the service account key file /tmp/key.json is not found on the appliance, an error is returned:

An error occurred while enabling monitoring: failed to authenticate monitoring: credential file: /tmp/key.json is missing

Refer to Create and configure a user-managed service account for instructions on configuring a service account and copying the key file to your appliance.