Explore your Sauron
A first-day guide to finding your Sauron and understanding what it shows. You can follow it without changing any settings or writing a query.
What Sauron does
Your service produces information about how it is running. Sauron helps your team collect that information, see it, and notice problems.
A metric is a measurement tracked over time, such as request count or response time. A log is a record of an event, such as an error message. A dashboard brings useful charts together. An alert tells someone when a defined condition needs attention.
Which tool do I use?
You do not need to learn every tool on day one. Start with the one that answers your question.
| Tool | What it does | Use it when you want to... |
|---|---|---|
| Sauron Console | A starting place for this Sauron's checks, setup information, saved backup list, and links. | Find your Sauron's pages or see what Console can verify. |
| Grafana | Shows metrics as charts and dashboards. | View an existing dashboard. |
| Prometheus | Collects and stores metrics and checks metric alert rules. | Check whether a metric is being collected. |
| PushProx | Lets Prometheus scrape a metrics endpoint through a client in your network. | Connect a /metrics endpoint that Sauron cannot reach directly. |
| Thanos | Lets you look up metrics collected by more than one Prometheus backend. | Search across those metrics in one place. |
| Alertmanager | Routes firing metric alerts to the configured destination. | Check whether an alert reached its route. |
| OpenSearch | Stores and searches logs. | Find log records from your service. |
| OpenSearch Dashboards | A browser interface for searching and viewing OpenSearch logs. It may also be called Kibana in your Sauron. | Search logs without using the OpenSearch API. |
| Sauron API | Lets programs read or change supported Sauron settings. | Automate a supported task; changes require the right access. |
For Shuttleproxy setup, see Shuttleproxy.
Prometheus or Thanos?
Prometheus collects the metrics; Thanos helps query them across connected sources and available history. They work together.
| Your goal | Use |
|---|---|
| Check whether your service's metrics are being collected | Prometheus — check Targets and a recent metric. |
| Query several connected sources or regions together | Thanos. |
| Look at older metrics available in object storage | Thanos, if storage and retention are configured. |
| Create charts | Grafana — use Sauron's datasource named Prometheus, which may query Thanos behind the scenes. |
Your first three steps
Find your Sauron
Open the Help or Console link in your welcome email. The Console Endpoints page lists enabled component links for this instance.
Success: You can identify the Sauron and environment you intend to view.
Get access
Open your production Sauron with Oracle Single Sign-On (SSO). Ask your Sauron owner which Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) entitlement you need. An entitlement is a permission to open Sauron pages. Viewer is the usual read-only role. See User Access.
Success: You can open the required page without an access error.
Look at existing data
Open Grafana, find the built-in My Dashboards (Read Only) folder (ask your Grafana owner if its name differs), and choose a dashboard. Set a recent time range, such as the last hour. These built-in dashboards show Sauron's own components; your service's dashboards may be in another folder or may not be set up yet.
Success: You can name the dashboard, time range, and what its charts show. See Grafana Dashboards for the next step.
If something is missing
Start with Solve a problem for access errors, empty dashboards, missing data, or an unfamiliar endpoint.
Help from Codex
If your team uses Codex, the existing Sauron Investigator plugin can help you explore a specific Sauron. Codex is an assistant you can ask questions in plain English. With this plugin and a Sauron profile you select, it can make limited, read-only checks of available metrics, logs, alerts, dashboards, and supported Sauron information. For example, ask: “Check my Production Sauron for active alerts and explain the result for a beginner.” It separates what it verified from what it could not check. It does not apply changes.
Start with the Sauron Plugins for Codex setup guide. You can also use Codex to learn Sauron concepts before setting up a profile. Keep passwords and tokens out of Codex chat; the plugin's setup flow stores credentials in Apple Keychain on your Mac.
Ready to connect your service?
Connect your service walks through a metric, two logs, a dashboard, and a delivered test alert.