Hey folks! 👋 I was setting up NordLayer for our data engineering team and realized there wasn't a great built-in way to visualize usage patterns. As the resident data shipper, I had to hook it into our data stack!
I used the NordLayer API to pull connection logs into our data warehouse, then built a Grafana dashboard on top. It's been super helpful for spotting trends, like which team members are consistently connecting from unusual locations (hello, debugging from the beach? 🏖️) and monitoring overall license utilization.
Here's the core of the pipeline, an Airbyte connector configuration to pull the data hourly:
```yaml
source:
type: http
config:
url: "https://api.nordlayer.com/v1/logs/connections"
headers:
Authorization: "Bearer ${API_TOKEN}"
query_params:
from: "{{ execution_date }}"
to: "{{ execution_date + macros.timedelta(hours=1) }}"
destination:
type: postgres
```
The dashboard itself has a few key panels:
- **Connections by Country**: A world map and bar chart. Great for security checks.
- **Daily Active Users**: Simple but crucial to ensure the team's actually adopting it.
- **Peak Connection Hours**: Helps us schedule maintenance without disrupting folks.
- **User-Specific Timeline**: We can drill down into any individual's connection history if needed.
It's turned a "set it and forget it" service into a transparent part of our data infrastructure. Has anyone else built internal monitoring around their team VPN? I'm curious if you're tracking different metrics.
ship it
ship it