Server

The Scouter server is a rust-based server that is designed to be run independent of the python client. The server is responsible for handling the event system (via Kafka, RabbitMQ or the default queue system), database CRUD operations, and alerting.

Features:

• Event System - Scouter supports various third-party event systems such as Kafka and RabbitMQ. The event system is used to send events to the Scouter server for processing
• Database Storage - The Scouter server leverages Postgres (sqlx) for short-term data storage and DataFusion for long-term data storage
• Alerting - Integrates with OpsGenie and Slack for alerting
• Data Retention and Partitioning - Built-in data retention and partitioning strategies to keep your database clean and performant
• Authentication - Built-in authentication system for users

Getting Started

There are a few different ways to get up an running with the Scouter server.

Prerequisites

• Scouter relies on a Postgres database for storing and retrieving data. You will need to have a Postgres database up and running before you can use Scouter. Scouter currently supports Postgres 16.3 and above.

Once you have a Postgres database up and running, set the following environment variable before starting the Scouter server:

export DATABASE_URI={your_postgres_uri}

The default database URI is postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/postgres. You can change this to point to your own Postgres database.

Docker

It is recommended to use one of our pre-built Docker images to get up and running quickly. New docker images are built and tagged on every version release and currently build for the following platforms:

Amd64 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)

Image	Tag Suffix	Features
ubuntu	ubuntu	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
alpine	alpine	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
scratch	scratch	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
debian	debian	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
distroless	distroless	(kafka, RabbitMQ)

Arm64 (aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu)

Image	Tag Suffix	Features
ubuntu	ubuntu	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
alpine	alpine	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
scratch	scratch	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
debian	debian	(kafka, RabbitMQ)
distroless	distroless	(kafka, RabbitMQ)

Pull your image

docker pull demml/scouter:ubuntu-amd64-kafka-latest

Run your image

docker run -d --name scouter -p 8080:8080 demml/scouter:ubuntu-amd64-kafka-latest

Execute prebuilt binary

Binaries for various architectures are published on every release. You can find them on the github release page, download and execute the binary.

Binaries can be found here

Build from source

To build the Scouter server from source, you will need to have the following dependencies installed:

• Rust (with Cargo) link

Then you can build the server using the following command:

cargo build scouter-server --release

Feature Flags

Scouter server is built with a few feature flags that can be enabled or disabled at build time. The following feature flags are available:

• kafka - Installs the necessary dependencies to use Kafka as the event system (rdkafka crate)

cargo build scouter-server --release --features "kafka"

• rabbitmq - Installs the necessary dependencies to use RabbitMQ as the event system (lapin crate)

cargo build scouter-server --release --features "rabbitmq"

Environment Variables

You can set a variety of environment variables to configure the Scouter server to your needs.

Database Variables

Variable	Description
DATABASE_URI	The URI of the Postgres database to use for storing and retrieving data. The default is postgresql://postgres:postgres@localhost:5432/postgres
MAX_POOL_SIZE	The maximum pool size for sqlx to set for the database. Default is 30
DATA_RETENTION_PERIOD	The number of days to keep data in the database. The default is 30 days. After this time, data will be pushed to long-term storage via DataFusion

Polling Variables (For background drift detection)

Variable	Description
POLLING_WORKER_COUNT	The number of workers to use to run the background drift and alerting jobs. Default is 4

Kafka Variables (if enabled, for record consumption)

Variable	Description
KAFKA_BROKERS	A comma-separated list of Kafka brokers to use for the event system. The default is localhost:9092
KAFKA_WORKER_COUNT	The number of workers to use for consuming events from Kafka. The default is 3
KAFKA_TOPIC	The topic to use for sending events to Kafka. The default is scouter_monitoring
KAFKA_GROUP	The group ID to use for consuming events from Kafka. The default is scouter
KAFKA_OFFSET_RESET	The offset reset policy to use for consuming events from Kafka. The default is earliest
KAFKA_USERNAME	The username to use for authenticating with Kafka
KAFKA_PASSWORD	The password to use for authenticating with Kafka
KAFKA_SECURITY_PROTOCOL	The security protocol to use for connecting to Kafka. The default is SASL_SSL
KAFKA_SASL_MECHANISM	The SASL mechanism to use for authenticating with Kafka. The default is PLAIN
KAFKA_CERT_LOCATION	The location of the CA certificate to use for authenticating with Kafka. The default is None

RabbitMQ Variables (if enabled, for record consumptio)

Variable	Description
RABBITMQ_ADDR	The address of the RabbitMQ server to use for the event system. The default is amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/%2f
RABBITMQ_PREFETCH_COUNT	The number of messages to prefetch from RabbitMQ. The default is 10
RABBITMQ_CONSUMER_COUNT	The number of consumers to use for consuming events from RabbitMQ. The default is 3
RABBITMQ_QUEUE	The queue to use for sending events to RabbitMQ. The default is scouter_monitoring
RABBITMQ_CONSUMER_TAG	The consumer tag to use for consuming events from RabbitMQ. The default is scouter

ObjectStore Variables (For long-term storage)

Variable	Description
SCOUTER_STORAGE_URI	The URI of the object store to use for long-term storage. The default is ./scouter_storage. Currently, gcs, s3, azure and local storage are supported. If using cloud storage, provide the appropriate prefix and bucket (e.g. gs://scouter, s3://scouter, az://scouter)
AWS_REGION	The AWS region to use for S3 storage. The default is us-east-1
GOOGLE_ACCOUNT_JSON_BASE64	The base64 encoded JSON key file to use for GCS storage. This is an optional environment variable that can be used in addition to how the object-store GoogleCloudStorageBuilder retrieves credentials

Scouter leverage the object-store crate for writing to object stores. The following object stores are supported. Please refer to the object-store crate for more information on how to configure each object store.

Providers:

• google_cloud_storage - link
• aws_s3 - link
• azure - link

Authentication

Variable	Description
SCOUTER_ENCRYPT_SECRET	The master secret key to use for secure access to the Scouter server. If not set, scouter will use a default deterministic key. This is not recommended for production use cases. Souter requires a pbdkdf2::HmacSha256 key with a length of 32 bytes
SCOUTER_REFRESH_SECRET	The refresh key to use for secure access to the Scouter server. If not set, scouter will use a default deterministic key. This is not recommended for production use cases. Souter requires a pbdkdf2::HmacSha256 key with a length of 32 bytes