|Manuals

Monitoring Architecture

Using OpenTelemetry in Thinfinity Workspace

OpenTelemetry is the standard adopted by Thinfinity® Workspace for the collection, processing, and exporting of observability signals. These metrics enable the analysis of the components that are part of the Thinfinity Workspace deployed network by focusing on two main actions:

  • Monitoring: Identifying problems using predefined metrics, such as CPU or memory usage.
  • Observability: Analyzing the system’s status based on metrics and logs collected from multiple sources, providing a deeper insight into how applications are functioning.

Signal Collection and Export

With OpenTelemetry, two types of data points are collected:

  • Metrics: These are temporal data that reflect the system’s status and performance over time. Each Broker runs a local OTLP Gateway that collects and processes these metrics, which are stored in a VictoriaMetrics time-series database (TSDB) by default. In a distributed deployment, one Primary Broker — the Principal — hosts that database and the others forward their metrics to it.
  • Logs: These are timestamped records that document system events. Thinfinity Workspace uses the Enterprise Logger Service to consolidate logs from all components (Brokers, Gateways, Agents).

Transfer Protocol

Thinfinity Workspace utilizes the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) standard to collect, process, and export observability signals. These signals primarily consist of metrics and logs, offering deep insights into system and application behavior.

To transmit this telemetry data, each Broker’s OTLP Gateway accepts two OTLP transport modes — OTLP/HTTP (HTTP port 4320) and OTLP/gRPC (gRPC port 4319). When metrics are forwarded to a remote store, the transport is set by the Protocol field, OTLP/HTTP by default.

These settings are configured on the Telemetry tab in the Thinfinity Workspace Configuration Manager.

Visualizing Metrics with Observability Backends

Observability Backends are third-party platforms used to manage the database where all metrics will be stored and analyzed.

Thinfinity Workspace offers an integrated monitoring interface, accessible from the user profile icon (Monitoring option), where real-time and historical metrics can be consulted. The metrics visualized in this interface come from VictoriaMetrics, the backend that also allows for advanced analysis if its database is accessed directly.

Monitoring allows data collection from the following components:

  • Gateways: Shows the CPU and memory usage for the Gateway process and the host.
  • Brokers: Shows CPU and memory usage for the broker process and the host.
  • Services: Presents similar metrics for other platform services.
  • Agents: Shows CPU and memory usage for the Agent process.
  • Connections: Reports on the duration, type, and quantity of active connections.
  • Sessions: Details active sessions, indicating user, date, and start time.
Reference

For a detailed description of the Monitoring add-on and how to use it, see Monitoring.

Visualizing Logs

The logs gathered by the Enterprise Logger Service are available in the Audit Log and Analytics modules. Each recorded event includes information such as component, origin, user, IP, result, and a contextual message, enabling detailed tracking of system activity — access, sessions, configuration changes, and more.

  • Analytics — User activity tracking, session metrics, and audit data.
  • Session Recording — Video-like capture of user interactions within remote sessions.