Using Bluemix Kibana dashboards to view IBM Integration Bus Logs

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Learn how to use a Kibana Dashboard on Bluemix to get a centralized view of IBM Integration Bus Logs.

Configure IBM Integration Bus to send Logs to Kibana in Bluemix

  1. Configure your integration server to send its log events to Bluemix:
    1. Open the IBM Integration Console window and type the following commands:
    2. mqsistop TESTNODE_userid where TESTNODE_userid is the IIB node name
    3. mqsichangebluemixreporting TESTNODE_userid -g -l active -r us-south -o a.user@comp.com -a dev -u joe.bloggs@company.com -p password123 -d
      where
      us-south is your Bluemix region (either us-south or eu-gb)
      dev is your Bluemix organization
      joe.bloggs@company.com is your Bluemix userid
      password123 is your Bluemix password
    4. mqsistart TESTNODE_userid where TESTNODE_userid is the IIB node name

Import the provided test application into your workspace

  1. When you click Import, the LogMessages Application will be created in your workspace.
  2. The LogMessages application also contains a message flow named LogMessages which has a Compute node which logs different types of messages into the system log and also a Trace node for recording the logical tree structure in the log at the end of the flow. The execution of this message flow will be used as a way to create data for us to view in the Kibana dashboard.

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Import

Explore the IBM Integration Bus Kibana dashboard

  1. When following the Prepare instructions, the mqsichangebluemixreporting command was executed using the -d option was used which automatically publishes the IBM Integration Bus Kibana dashboard so that it is ready for use.
  2. Open a web browser window to the dashboard at: https://logmet.ng.bluemix.net/app/#/kibana4/dashboard
  3. Click the Load Saved Dashboard icon (which looks like an open folder) on the right of the screen.
  4. Under the Dashboard Filter entry field, select IBM Integration Bus Dashboard, and this will open the imported dashboard containing some predefined visuals.
  5. At this stage the visuals will probably be displaying the message No results found, which suggests that IIB has not yet sent any log entries in to the dashboard.
  6. try changing the time filter (clock icon on top right) to a larger value.

Generate some log entries to populate the dashboard

  1. Open the LogMessages message flow and click the Flow Exerciser icon to start testing the flow. If your Toolkit is connected to multiple servers, you may be asked which one you would like to use. Select an Integration Server under the node which you prepared with the mqsichangebluemixreporting command earlier.
  2. Click the Send Message icon , and choose the provided ExampleInput and click Send.
  3. Return to your web browser, refresh the page, and you should see log events have now started to populate the charts. If you still don't see any data then review your settings or look for any errors in your local event log, noting that there is a time filter set on the dashboard which by default will only show you events from the last 15 minutes (just in case you have let time slip by since sending in the data!)

Extend the basic IBM Integration Bus dashboard with your own customization

The instructions below demonstrate how you can customize a Kibana dashboard by adding your own vizualization to track a specific type of IBM Integration Bus log message:

  1. In Kibana 4 click on Visualize and then Vertical bar chart.
  2. Select From a saved search, and then IBM Log Events.
  3. Click on X-Axis as the bucket type.
  4. Under Aggregation, select Date Histogram.
  5. Click on Add sub-bucketsSplit Bars.
  6. In the Sub Aggregation field select Filters.
  7. Enter ibm_messageId:3051 into Filter 1 and press the Apply changes (white triangle in a green background) button to update the chart to show data for message id 3051.
  8. Click on the Save Visualize (small disk icon on top right) to save the chart.
  9. Once the chart is saved, it can be added to the dashboard by clicking on the Add Visualization button which you will find back on the dashboard tab in the top right corner (circular icon with a plus sign).
  10. Select the new chart from the list and it will be added to the bottom of the dashboard. You can move and resize it, or replace an existing one in the dashboard.

This tutorial has shown how to send log events from IBM Integration Bus to a Kibana dashboard in Bluemix, and create new charts in Kibana to track a particular log message type.

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