# Set up Monitoring

## Diagnostics

First things first, you're not alone! The WarpStream team is constantly monitoring your cluster and when we find anomalies we create [diagnostics](https://docs.warpstream.com/warpstream/agent-setup/monitor-the-warpstream-agents/diagnostics "mention") that will alert you proactively in our UI or in our [hosted-prometheus-endpoint](https://docs.warpstream.com/warpstream/agent-setup/monitor-the-warpstream-agents/hosted-prometheus-endpoint "mention"). These are the most common problems we have found in operation and we are constantly adding to catalog of available diagnostics. For those that need more granular detail, keep reading...

## Logging

By default, the WarpStream Agent is configured to run with log level `info` . However, this can be changed with the `WARPSTREAM_LOG_LEVEL` environment variable. For example, if the `info` level logs are too noisy for you, you can set `WARPSTREAM_LOG_LEVEL=warn`. 

The WarpStream Agents have an additional special log level called `analytics` that can be enabled by setting `WARPSTREAM_LOG_LEVEL=analytics`. This enables extremely detailed JSON logging that can be loaded into a logging system that supports analytics to slice and dice Agent log events and obtain a deep understanding of the workload. However, this feature emits a lot of logs, so keep that in mind before enabling it.

## Metrics

The WarpStream agents expose a traditional Prometheus metrics endpoint that can be scraped by most popular tools. Prometheus metrics will automatically be exposed on the Agent "internal port" which by default is port `8080`. If you set an explicit port override, then you'll need to update your Prometheus scrape configuration port as well. 

All WarpStream Agent metrics begin with the `warpstream_` prefix. 

### Recommended Metrics & Alerting

The WarpStream system is simple by design so there is less to monitor. If you are coming from open source Kafka, this should be a breath of fresh air. \
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In [important-metrics-and-logs](https://docs.warpstream.com/warpstream/agent-setup/monitor-the-warpstream-agents/important-metrics-and-logs "mention") you will find all you need for monitoring the agent and to make sure your cluster is operational. If you would like to see the complete list of metrics, you can access those from the agent directly with `$IP:8080/metrics`

While there are not many alerts needed, we also provide a [recommended-list-of-alerts](https://docs.warpstream.com/warpstream/agent-setup/monitor-the-warpstream-agents/recommended-list-of-alerts "mention") where you will find a list of key metrics for which you should configure alerts to detect issues in your agent effectively.

{% hint style="warning" %}
Some of the metrics, particularly the consumer group metrics, can become very high cardinality if the cluster contains a lot of topics or partitions. You can learn more in [monitoring-consumer-groups](https://docs.warpstream.com/warpstream/agent-setup/monitor-the-warpstream-agents/monitoring-consumer-groups "mention") if you need to reduce the cardinality or disable them entirely 
{% endhint %}

## Health Check

The Agent exposes an HTTP health check endpoint at `$IP:8080/v1/status`. A successful response is the string `OK` with a `200` status code.