Start Out with System Alerting and Monitoring

System Alerting and Monitoring (SAM) is a containerizedOpens in a new tab application that integrates an InterSystems IRIS instance called the SAM Manager with multiple open-source applications (Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, and Nginx) to provide a resilient and scalable platform for monitoring InterSystems products.

This page and the pages which follow provide a guide for using SAM version 2.0 to monitor your system. They assume that you have already completed the initial setup.

If you are using SAM version 1.0 or 1.1, please refer to the guide for those versions instead.

Note:

You can also interface with SAM using its REST API.

Start and Stop SAM

InterSystems provides two scripts that make it easy start or stop System Alerting and Monitoring.

To Start SAM

Using the cd command in the command line, navigate to the directory containing the SAM docker-compose.yml file, which was acquired during initial setup.
- If you are either using Docker Compose or you are using Podman Compose and you have edited the start.sh script as suggested in the setup instructions:
  1. Run the start.sh script which InterSystems includes with the SAM image:
```
./start.sh
```
    This runs a docker-compose command to start SAM.
- If you are using Podman Compose but you have not edited the script files:
  1. Before starting the SAM containers, issue the following command to allow SAM to writeOpens in a new tab to the host directory which you have specified as the durable storage location:
```
podman unshare chown 51773:51773 [hostDir]
```
    where [hostDir] is the host file system location being mounted for SAM durable storage.
  2. Now, issue the following command to start the SAM containers:
```
podman-compose up &
```

Optionally, you can use the docker ps command to confirm that all the containers are running. The output should look similar to the following:

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE                       COMMAND                  CREATED             STATUS                       PORTS                                                  NAMES
2aaa06f06a9c   nginx:1.17.9-alpine         "nginx -g 'daemon of..." About an hour ago   Up About an hour             80/tcp, 0.0.0.0:8080->8080/tcp                         sam_nginx_1
0e2b30fcb376   grafana/grafana:6.7.1       "/run.sh"                About an hour ago   Up About an hour             3000/tcp                                               sam_grafana_1
d2c825f9d220   prom/alertmanager:v0.20.0   "/bin/alertmanager -..." About an hour ago   Up About an hour             9093/tcp                                               sam_alertmanager_1 
4851893bc369   prom/prometheus:v2.17.1     "/bin/prometheus --w..." About an hour ago   Up About an hour             9090/tcp                                               sam_prometheus_1
61120be391df   intersystems/sam:1.0.0.83   "/iris-main"             About an hour ago   Up About an hour (healthy)   2188/tcp, 1973/tcp, 1974/tcp                           sam_iris_1

Note:

For SAM version 1.1, the SAM image also includes an iris-init container, which runs an initialization service briefly at startup and then stops.

To Stop SAM

Using the cd command in the command line, navigate to the directory containing the SAM docker-compose.yml file.
- If you are using Docker Compose, run the stop.sh script which InterSystems includes with the SAM image:
```
./stop.sh
```
  This runs a docker-compose command to stop SAM.
- If you are using Podman Compose, issue the following command to stop all SAM containers:
```
podman-compose down
```
Optionally, you can use the docker ps or podman ps command to confirm that all the containers have stopped. Use the -a flag to view all containers, even those that are not running:
```
docker ps -a
```

Access the SAM Web Portal

When System Alerting and Monitoring is running, you can access it from a web browser at the following address:

http://<sam-domain-name>:<port>/api/sam/app/index.csp

where <sam-domain-name> is the DNS name or IP address of the system SAM is running on, and <port> is the configured Nginx port (8080 by default). You may want to bookmark this address.

When accessing SAM, you must log in using a valid User Name and Password. Like InterSystems IRIS, SAM includes several predefined accounts with the default password SYS. Choose any of these accounts with login permissions (such as Admin or SuperUser) and log in using the default password SYS.

Note:

The first time you sign in with one of the predefined accounts, SAM prompts you to enter a new password. To secure the SAM application, be sure to set a new password for all the predefined accounts. For a list of all the predefined accounts, see Predefined User AccountsOpens in a new tab in the “Users” chapter of the Security Administration Guide.

First Time: Get Started with the Welcome Page

The first time you sign in to the SAM web application, SAM displays a Welcome page, where you can get started by selecting one of the following actions:

Create Your First Cluster — opens the Add New Cluster dialog
Open Existing Configuration — allows you to import an existing SAM configuration

Upon subsequent logins, SAM displays the Monitor Clusters page, which provides a system-wide performance overview.