[SOLR-12438] Improve status reporting of metrics history API

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 7.4, 8.0
• Component/s: metrics
• Assignee: Andrzej Bialecki
• Reporter: Andrzej Bialecki
• Created: 02/Jun/18 07:43
• Updated: 08/Jun/19 15:13
• Resolved: 08/Jun/18 18:29

Description

In an offline conversation with janhoy we identified the following areas of improvement to the metrics history API in order to increase its user-friendliness and provide more details about its status.
 

• there are three possible states for the API: inactive (when not in cloud mode), in-memory only (when .system collection doesn’t exist), and persisted when it’s both active and persisted in Solr. The /admin/metrics/history endpoint should give some hint about this status, such as "mode":"memory/index", "active": true|false. Or a separate action=status just to poll status? Currently when the API is inactive it simply returns 404 Not Found.
• when in "memory" mode a call to /admin/metrics/history on a non-overseer node should forward the request to the overseer, so that the client does not need to care what mode it is in - kind of like how a query works in distributed mode.
• better documentation for the API behavior in each mode.
• perhaps if mode=memory, there could also be a "message":"Warning, metrics history is not being persisted. Please create the .system collection to start persisting history"

Issue Links

• is depended upon by: SOLR-12426 Add metrics history graphs to the Admin UI