AWS Network Load Balancer monitoring
Site24x7 provides native integration with AWS Network Load Balancer to enable you to monitor the performance and availability of your load balancers and the targets behind them. Once integrated, Site24x7 automatically discovers network load balancer (NLB) resources across your AWS account and sets up individual monitors for each LB and its associated target groups.
This integration creates a dedicated child monitor for each Target Group associated with the NLB, but only for newly created monitors. This does not apply to NLB monitors that were already integrated under the current workflow.
Use case
A business running a large-scale application that handles high volumes of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) traffic through AWS Network Load Balancers needs to maintain high service reliability and performance.
By integrating these NLBs with Site24x7, the business can monitor connection metrics across all load balancers from a single dashboard. It can receive alerts when thresholds are breached, such as a sudden drop in healthy targets or a spike in active connections. Site24x7 also provides visibility into individual target group health, making it easier to pinpoint backend issues. This helps operations teams detect problems early and take quick action, reducing downtime and improving the overall user experience.
Benefits of Site24x7's NLB integration
Integrate your AWS Network Load Balancer environment with Site24x7 and leverage the following benefits:
- Centralized visibility: Monitor all your NLBs across regions from a single console.
- Target group-level insights: A dedicated child monitor is automatically created for each target group, giving you detailed data on backend health and performance. This helps isolate and resolve issues at the source without needing to sift through logs manually.
- Proactive alerting: Sends real-time alerts when configured thresholds are breached, helping reduce downtime.
- Historical data and trends: Access historical performance data to understand traffic patterns and plan capacity more effectively.
Setup and configuration
- Log in to your Site24x7 account.
- Go to Cloud > AWS > Integrate AWS Account and create a cross-account IAM role to enable Site24x7 to access your AWS resources.
- On the Integrate AWS Account page, select Elastic Load Balancer from the Services to be discovered list based on your requirements.
Policy and permissions
The following ReadOnly permissions are required to be assigned to the created IAM or cross-account Role to help discover and monitor Network Load Balancer.
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeLoadBalancers",
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTags",
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeListeners",
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeAccountLimits",
The following permissions are required to monitor your Target Group monitor:
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetHealth",
- "elasticloadbalancing:DescribeTargetGroups"
Polling interval
Site24x7 polls the CloudWatch API and other service-level APIs as per the poll frequency set (from once a minute to once a day), to collect performance metrics and metadata.
Other supported performance counters
Supported metrics
Network Load Balancer
The supported metrics for NLB monitor are given below.
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Active flow count |
Measures the total number of TCP flows or connections between clients and targets. |
Sum |
Count |
|
Consumed LCUs |
Measures the number of load balancer capacity units used by the NLB. |
Sum and Average |
Units |
|
Healthy host count |
Measures the number of healthy targets registered to the NLB. |
Maximum |
Count |
|
Processed bytes |
Measures the total number of bytes processed by the NLB. |
Sum |
Bytes |
|
New flow count |
Measures the total number of new TCP flows or connections established between clients and targets. |
Sum |
Count |
|
TCP client reset count |
Measures the total number of reset packets sent from the target to the client. |
Sum |
Count |
|
TCP ELB reset count |
Measures the total number of packets generated by the load balancer. |
Sum |
Count |
|
TCP target reset count |
Measures the total number of reset packets sent from target to client. |
Sum |
Count |
|
Unhealthy host count |
Measures the number of unhealthy targets attached to the network balancer. |
Maximum |
Count |
Target Group
The supported metrics for the Target Group monitor are given below.
| Metric name | Description | Statistics | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Healthy host count |
Measures the number of healthy targets registered to the network load balancer. |
Sum |
Count |
|
Unhealthy host count |
Measures the number of unhealthy targets attached to the network load balancer. |
Sum |
Count |
Network Load Balancer configuration attributes
| Attribute name | Description |
|---|---|
|
ELB name |
The name of the network load balancer. |
|
Scheme |
Shows whether the NLB is internal facing or internet facing. |
|
Region |
Shows the region where the NLB is deployed. |
|
ARN |
Shows the unique Amazon Resource Name assigned to the NLB. |
|
Availability zones |
Shows the Availability zones and specified subnets for the NLB. |
|
ELB type |
Shows the type of load balancer in use, such as network. |
|
DNS name |
Shows the DNS name of the NLB. |
|
Creation time |
Shows the time when the NLB was created. |
|
VPC ID |
Lists the ID of the Virtual Private Cloud where the NLB is deployed. |
|
Listeners |
Lists the listener configuration (port and protocol) for the NLB. |
Threshold configurations
To configure thresholds for a NLB monitor:
- Log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Admin > Configuration Profiles > Threshold and Availability.
- Click Add Threshold Profile.
- Select Network Load Balancer monitor type from the Monitor Type drop-down menu.
- Provide an appropriate name in the Display Name field.
- The supported metrics are displayed in the Threshold Configuration section. You can set threshold values for all the metrics mentioned above.
- Click Save.
Licensing
- Each Network Load Balancer monitor utilizes one basic monitor license.
- Each Target Group monitor is a free monitor.
Forecast
Estimate future values of the following NLB performance metric and make informed decisions about adding capacity or scaling your AWS infrastructure:
- Consumed LCUs
Viewing Network Load Balancer monitor
To monitor your Network Load Balancer environment, log in to your Site24x7 account and navigate to Cloud > AWS > Network Load Balancer.
Monitor data
Network Load Balancer
The monitor data for the Network Load Balancer monitor is given below.
ELB Summary
The ELB Summary tab provides an overview of the event timeline and metrics in the form of charts.
Target Groups
A Target Group is a collection of targets (such as EC2 instances, IP addresses, or Lambda functions) that an Application Load Balancer, Network Load Balancer, or Gateway Load Balancer routes traffic to.
In the Target Groups tab, you can view the Target Groups attached to your Network Load Balancer. Additionally, you can also view the number of Healthy Hosts and Unhealthy Hosts in each Target Group.
Click on an individual listing to view the Target Group monitor data.
View a list of monitored ACM monitors and other resources associated with your NLB. Click on an individual listing to see performance and resource usage stats associated with that resource. You can also set thresholds and be notified when any of these services fail by clicking the pencil icon under Action.
In the current workflow, for an already integrated Network Load Balancer monitor, EC2 instances and other resources are listed under the Monitored Resources tab of the Network Load Balancer monitor. In the new flow, applicable to newly integrated monitors, EC2 instances will be listed only under the Target Group monitor, while ACM monitors will continue to appear in the Monitored Resources tab of the Network Load Balancer monitor.
Zia Forecast
The Zia forecast chart displays future points of a performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical time series data. Fifteen days of historical data are used to predict what your metric usage will be in the next seven days.
Configuration Details
View the configuration details such as Region, Availability Zones, ELB Type, and DNS Name in this tab.
Outages
The Outages tab provides details on an outage's start time, end time, duration, and comments (if any).
Inventory
Obtain details like the ELB Name, Check Frequency, and Monitor Licensing Category on the Inventory tab. The Threshold and Availability Profile and the Notification Profile can be set according to the user and viewed on this tab.
Log Report
This tab provides a consolidated report of each Network Load Balancer monitor's log status, which can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Alert Logs
This tab displays a chronological list of all triggered alerts related to the Network Load Balancer monitor. This tab helps you trace alert history and severity to assess issues and validate threshold settings.
Target Group
Summary
The Summary tab provides a comprehensive overview of the events timeline and metrics, presenting insightful charts that shed light on the performance and behavior of the metrics configured in your Target Group environment.
Targets
The Targets tab provides a detailed view of the health status of each target registered under the NLB. For each target, you can view details such as Instance ID, Availability Zone, and Current Health Status. This helps you quickly identify which targets are failing and why. You also receive a summarized view of how many targets in each availability zone are healthy, unhealthy, unused, initializing, or draining. This breakdown helps you pinpoint zone-specific issues and understand how evenly traffic is being distributed.
Attributes
The Attributes tab displays key configuration settings that control how traffic is handled within the target group.
View a list of monitored EC2 instances associated with your NLB. Click on an individual listing to see performance and resource usage stats associated with that resource. You can also set thresholds and be notified when any of these services fail by clicking the pencil icon under Action.
Zia Forecast
The Zia forecast chart displays future points of a performance metric (measurement of resource usage) based on historical time series data. Fifteen days of historical data are used to predict what your metric usage will be in the next seven days.
Configuration
View the configuration details, such as Target Group Configuration and Health Check Configuration, in this tab.
Outages
The Outages tab provides details on an outage's start time, end time, duration, and comments, if any.
Inventory
Obtain details like the ELB Name, Check Frequency, and Monitor Licensing Category on the Inventory tab. The Threshold and Availability Profile and the Notification Profile can be set according to the user and viewed on this tab.
Log Report
This tab provides a consolidated report of each Target Group monitor's log status, which can be downloaded as a CSV file.
Alert Logs
This tab displays a chronological list of all triggered alerts related to the Target Group monitor. This tab helps you trace alert history and severity to assess issues and validate threshold settings.
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