Monitor GCP Compute Engine Instance Metrics and Logs

One-Click Integration

SigNoz deploys and manages the Collector for you. You turn the service on in SigNoz, and the SigNoz agent sets up metrics and logs collection in the background. Collects metrics and logs.

Prerequisites

• Your GCP project is connected with One-Click Integration.
• Your VM instances run in that same project. The agent monitors only the project it's deployed in.

Step 1: Turn on the service in SigNoz

1. In SigNoz, go to Integrations > Google Cloud Platform.
2. Select GCP Compute Engine from the service list.
3. Turn on Metric Collection, Log Collection, or both.
4. Click Save.

The agent picks up the change within about 30 seconds and updates the Collector and the log sink for you. There's no Collector config to edit.

Step 2: Turn on the optional data in GCP

Most data starts flowing with no extra work. Two kinds of data need a setting on the GCP side first:

• Memory panels. GCP can't see inside a VM on its own, so memory metrics need help from the VM:
  • % Memory Utilization via Ops Agent needs the Ops Agent installed on the VM.
  • % Memory Utilization and Memory Used in Bytes are only reported by GKE nodes and by VMs running Container-Optimized OS. GKE nodes report them by default. Standalone Container-Optimized OS VMs need health monitoring turned on first: set the google-monitoring-enabled metadata key to true on the VM or project. It's off by default.
• Logs from inside the VM, such as syslog and application logs, also need the Ops Agent. Without it, SigNoz still collects the Compute Engine audit logs.

Skip this step if you only need CPU, disk, and network metrics and audit logs.

Validate

1. Wait about 10 minutes for the first metrics to arrive.

2. In SigNoz, go to Dashboards and open GCP Compute Engine Overview. Panels should start filling in.

3. If you turned on Log Collection, open Logs in SigNoz and start with this filter to find your project's logs:

   Copy

   gcp.project = '<deployment-project-id>' AND gcp.resource_type = 'gce_instance'

   Log entries appear within a few minutes of the next VM change or, with the Ops Agent installed, the next log line from the VM. Audit logs for disks, firewall rules, and other Compute Engine resources use other resource types, so drop the gcp.resource_type part to see them too.

   Verify these values:

   • <deployment-project-id>: the GCP project you connected with One-Click Integration.

Manual Setup

You run the OpenTelemetry Collector in your own GCP project and add Compute Engine metrics to its configuration. You control which metrics are pulled and how often. Collects metrics, and logs if you set up the log pipeline.

Complete the GCP integration setup once, then follow the steps below for each project that hosts the VMs you want to monitor.

Prerequisites

Before configuring this service, complete the shared GCP integration setup:

• Your GCP account is connected in SigNoz, and the project running your VMs is in Projects to Monitor.
• The OpenTelemetry Collector is deployed and running.
• The signoz-integration-collector service account has roles/monitoring.viewer on the project that hosts the VMs. See Create a service account.
• The Cloud Monitoring API is enabled in that project.
• For logs only: the Cloud Logging API is enabled in that project, and you have finished steps 1 to 5 of Collect logs.

Step 1: Enable the service in SigNoz

1. In SigNoz, go to Integrations > Google Cloud Platform.
2. Select GCP Compute Engine from the service list.
3. Toggle Metric Collection on to activate the pre-built dashboard. Toggle Log Collection if you also want to send logs.
4. Open the Data Collected tab and note the metrics listed there. These are the metrics the dashboard's panels query.

Step 2: Add the metrics to your Collector config

Open the otel-collector-config.yaml you created in Deploy the Collector and add the Compute Engine metric names to the metrics_list of the googlecloudmonitoring receiver for the project your VMs run in. Only the metrics_list shown below changes; leave the rest of the file as is:

receivers:
  googlecloudmonitoring:
    project_id: "<monitored-project-id>"
    collection_interval: 300s   # 5 minutes; minimum is 60s
    metrics_list:
      # Uptime
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/uptime_total"
      # CPU and memory
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/cpu/utilization"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/guest/memory/bytes_used"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/guest/memory/percent_used"
      - metric_name: "agent.googleapis.com/memory/percent_used"
      # Disk
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/average_io_latency"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_bytes_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/write_bytes_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/read_ops_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/write_ops_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/disk/performance_status"
      # Network
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/network/received_bytes_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/network/sent_bytes_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/network/received_packets_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/instance/network/sent_packets_count"
      - metric_name: "compute.googleapis.com/firewall/dropped_packets_count"

Verify these values:

• <monitored-project-id>: The GCP project that hosts your VMs. It must be one of the entries in your Projects to Monitor list.

The memory metrics need help from the VM: agent.googleapis.com/memory/percent_used needs the Ops Agent, and the two guest/memory/ metrics are only reported by GKE nodes and by Container-Optimized OS VMs with health monitoring turned on (google-monitoring-enabled=true). Drop the ones your VMs don't report.

The receiver polls every metric in the list once per collection_interval, and the Monitoring API bills per read call, so keep the list to the metrics your dashboards and alerts actually use. See Cost and tuning.

Step 3: Apply the configuration

The Collector loads its config from the signoz-integration-collector-config secret, so a config change needs a new secret version and a redeploy:

1. Save your updated otel-collector-config.yaml.
2. Add a new secret version (step 2 of Deploy the Collector).
3. Redeploy the Cloud Run service (step 3).

Step 4: Send logs (optional)

To also send Compute Engine logs to SigNoz, follow Collect logs to set up the Pub/Sub topic, the push subscription, and the logs receiver. In step 6, Create a log sink, use this filter:

resource.type="gce_instance" OR protoPayload.serviceName="compute.googleapis.com"

See Logs under What's collected for what this filter picks up and which logs need a setting in GCP first.

Validate

1. Wait one or two collection intervals (up to about 5 minutes with the default 300s).
2. In SigNoz, go to Dashboards and open the GCP Compute Engine Overview dashboard. Panels should start filling in.
3. To check a single metric, open Metrics Explorer and query compute.googleapis.com/instance/cpu/utilization.
4. For logs, open Logs and filter on gcp.resource_type = 'gce_instance'.