How to monitor nservicebus queue length

Question

We use nservicebus for a few applications and monitor endpoint heartbeats and failed messages through service pulse.

Most of the time messages are processed within minutes, but occasionally there is a spike in traffic and clients will ask if there is a problem. I would like to know the length of an endpoint queue so that I can respond and provide estimates.

We use sql as a transport layer and subscription store. I cannot view the database remotely.

What is the best approach to surface this data?

I could expose an SSRS report on top of the database, add code to service control and service pulse since they are both open source, or add a custom check through service pulse...

Answer 1

How about running a job (at a configured interval on the SQL server) on the queues tables that will write the number of messages to a table you can query?

You can than use this table to run your monitoring tool and generate alerts, or indeed write a customCheck so you will get alerts on ServicePulse...

While this is a temporary solution, we are working on filling that gap, take a look at this anouncement: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/particularsoftware/zRJ18bxeY2Y/zrLu9WOIAQAJ

we've been working on enhancing the Particular Service Platform to close existing gap and provide a means of monitoring your NServiceBus-related system more easily.

• The initial offering will focus on identifies key metrics (one of them is the queue length) for assessing the health of a system and then presenting these metrics to you in a manner that's easy to visualize and consume.

In the weeks ahead we will share more information about our monitoring philosophy and how we are looking to ease the pain of implementing it. So follow our blog to get notified of updates.

• In the meantime you are welcome to join the live webinar,on the monitoring theme, Wednesday, June 28 at 12:00 EDT (17:00BST).

Also: me and my college, William Brander will show the metrics you should consider when monitoring microservices. link- https://particular.net/what-to-consider-when-monitoring-microservices

Hope this helps,

If I can help, please feel free to email support at particular.net