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Yandex Monitoring
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  1. Step-by-step guides
  2. Working with metrics
  3. Delivering Linux system metrics

Delivering Linux system metrics

Written by
Yandex Cloud
Updated at April 28, 2025

Yandex Monitoring gets general virtual machine metrics from Yandex Compute Cloud. For example, this can be the size of RAM allocated to a VM at its start. However, you can measure how a VM utilizes its memory only by collecting data within that VM. Yandex Unified Agent is a utility that collects and transmits Linux system metrics.

Warning

Delivery of system metrics for Windows and macOS VMs is planned for upcoming Yandex Unified Agent releases.

To configure Yandex Unified Agent to collect system metrics from a Yandex Cloud VM, follow these steps:

  1. Set up a service account to use for writing metrics to Yandex Monitoring.

    1. Create a service account in the folder for metric storage and assign it the monitoring.editor role.

    2. Link your service account to a virtual machine with Unified Agent installed.

  2. Install and configure Yandex Unified Agent:

    1. Create a file named config.yml in your home directory.

      config.yml:

       status:
         port: "16241"
      
       storages:
         - name: main
           plugin: fs
           config:
             directory: /var/lib/yandex/unified_agent/main
             max_partition_size: 100mb
             max_segment_size: 10mb
      
       channels:
         - name: cloud_monitoring
           channel:
             pipe:
               - storage_ref:
                   name: main
             output:
               plugin: yc_metrics
               config:
                 folder_id: "$FOLDER_ID"
                 iam:
                   cloud_meta: {}
      
       routes:
         - input:
             plugin: linux_metrics
             config:
               namespace: sys
           channel:
             channel_ref:
               name: cloud_monitoring
      
         - input:
             plugin: agent_metrics
             config:
               namespace: ua
           channel:
             pipe:
               - filter:
                   plugin: filter_metrics
                   config:
                     match: "{scope=health}"
             channel_ref:
               name: cloud_monitoring
      
       import:
         - /etc/yandex/unified_agent/conf.d/*.yml
      

      Where $FOLDER_ID is the ID of the folder to which you want to write metrics.

    2. Install Unified Agent on your VM by running the following command in your home directory:

      docker run \
      -p 16241:16241 -it --detach --uts=host \
      --name=ua \
      -v `pwd`/config.yml:/etc/yandex/unified_agent/config.yml \
      -v /proc:/ua_proc \
      -e PROC_DIRECTORY=/ua_proc \
      -e FOLDER_ID=a1bs81qpemb4******** \
      cr.yandex/yc/unified-agent
      

      You can find more ways to install the agent in Installing and updating Yandex Unified Agent.

  3. Make sure Yandex Monitoring receives the metrics:

    1. On the Yandex Monitoring home page, go to Metrics.

    2. In the query string, specify the following:

    • Folder for storing collected metrics.
    • service=custom label value.
    • Metric name prefixed with sys.

What's nextWhat's next

  • Read about Unified Agent concepts
  • Learn more about configuring Unified Agent
  • Read best practices for using Unified Agent

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Delivering custom application metrics
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