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NGINX Prometheus Exporter

NGINX Prometheus exporter makes it possible to monitor NGINX or NGINX Plus using Prometheus.

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Getting Started
  • A Note about NGINX Ingress Controller
  • Prerequisites
  • Running the Exporter in a Docker Container
  • Running the Exporter Binary
• Usage
  • Command-line Arguments
• Exported Metrics
  • Common metrics
  • Metrics for NGINX OSS
    • Stub status metrics
  • Metrics for NGINX Plus
    • Connections
    • HTTP
    • SSL
    • HTTP Server Zones
    • Stream Server Zones
    • HTTP Upstreams
    • Stream Upstreams
    • Stream Zone Sync
    • Location Zones
    • Resolver
    • HTTP Requests Rate Limiting
    • HTTP Connections Limiting
    • Stream Connections Limiting
    • Cache
    • Worker
• Troubleshooting
• Releases
  • Docker images
  • Binaries
  • Homebrew
  • Snap
  • Scoop
  • Nix
• Building the Exporter
  • Building the Docker Image
  • Building the Binary
• Grafana Dashboard
• SBOM (Software Bill of Materials)
  • Binaries
  • Docker Image
• Provenance
• Contacts
• Contributing
• Support
• License

Overview

NGINX exposes a handful of metrics via the stub_status page. NGINX Plus provides a richer set of metrics via the API and the monitoring dashboard. NGINX Prometheus exporter fetches the metrics from a single NGINX or NGINX Plus, converts the metrics into appropriate Prometheus metrics types and finally exposes them via an HTTP server to be collected by Prometheus.

Getting Started

In this section, we show how to quickly run NGINX Prometheus Exporter for NGINX or NGINX Plus.

A Note about NGINX Ingress Controller

If you’d like to use the NGINX Prometheus Exporter with NGINX Ingress Controller for Kubernetes, see this doc for the installation instructions.

Prerequisites

We assume that you have already installed Prometheus and NGINX or NGINX Plus. Additionally, you need to:

• Expose the built-in metrics in NGINX/NGINX Plus:
  • For NGINX, expose the stub_status page at /stub_status on port 8080.
  • For NGINX Plus, expose the API at /api on port 8080.
• Configure Prometheus to scrape metrics from the server with the exporter. Note that the default scrape port of the exporter is 9113 and the default metrics path -- /metrics.

Running the Exporter in a Docker Container

To start the exporter we use the docker run command.

• To export NGINX metrics, run:

  docker run -p 9113:9113 nginx/nginx-prometheus-exporter:1.3.0 --nginx.scrape-uri=http://<nginx>:8080/stub_status
  

  where <nginx> is the IP address/DNS name, through which NGINX is available.

• To export NGINX Plus metrics, run:

  docker run -p 9113:9113 nginx/nginx-prometheus-exporter:1.3.0 --nginx.plus --nginx.scrape-uri=http://<nginx-plus>:8080/api
  

  where <nginx-plus> is the IP address/DNS name, through which NGINX Plus is available.

Running the Exporter Binary

• To export NGINX metrics, run:

  nginx-prometheus-exporter --nginx.scrape-uri=http://<nginx>:8080/stub_status
  

  where <nginx> is the IP address/DNS name, through which NGINX is available.

• To export NGINX Plus metrics:

  nginx-prometheus-exporter --nginx.plus --nginx.scrape-uri=http://<nginx-plus>:8080/api
  

  where <nginx-plus> is the IP address/DNS name, through which NGINX Plus is available.

• To scrape NGINX metrics with unix domain sockets, run:

  nginx-prometheus-exporter --nginx.scrape-uri=unix:<nginx>:/stub_status
  

  where <nginx> is the path to unix domain socket, through which NGINX stub status is available.

Note. The nginx-prometheus-exporter is not a daemon. To run the exporter as a system service (daemon), you can follow the example in examples/systemd. Alternatively, you can run the exporter in a Docker container.

Usage

Command-line Arguments

usage: nginx-prometheus-exporter [<flags>]


Flags:
  -h, --[no-]help                Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and --help-man).
      --[no-]web.systemd-socket  Use systemd socket activation listeners instead
                                 of port listeners (Linux only). ($SYSTEMD_SOCKET)
      --web.listen-address=:9113 ...
                                 Addresses on which to expose metrics and web interface. Repeatable for multiple addresses. ($LISTEN_ADDRESS)
      --web.config.file=""       Path to configuration file that can enable TLS or authentication. See: https://github.com/prometheus/exporter-toolkit/blob/master/docs/web-configuration.md ($CONFIG_FILE)
      --web.telemetry-path="/metrics"
                                 Path under which to expose metrics. ($TELEMETRY_PATH)
      --[no-]nginx.plus          Start the exporter for NGINX Plus. By default, the exporter is started for NGINX. ($NGINX_PLUS)
      --nginx.scrape-uri=http://127.0.0.1:8080/stub_status ...
                                 A URI or unix domain socket path for scraping NGINX or NGINX Plus metrics. For NGINX, the stub_status page must be available through the URI. For NGINX Plus -- the API. Repeatable for multiple URIs. ($SCRAPE_URI)
      --[no-]nginx.ssl-verify    Perform SSL certificate verification. ($SSL_VERIFY)
      --nginx.ssl-ca-cert=""     Path to the PEM encoded CA certificate file used to validate the servers SSL certificate. ($SSL_CA_CERT)
      --nginx.ssl-client-cert=""
                                 Path to the PEM encoded client certificate file to use when connecting to the server. ($SSL_CLIENT_CERT)
      --nginx.ssl-client-key=""  Path to the PEM encoded client certificate key file to use when connecting to the server. ($SSL_CLIENT_KEY)
      --nginx.timeout=5s         A timeout for scraping metrics from NGINX or NGINX Plus. ($TIMEOUT)
      --prometheus.const-label=PROMETHEUS.CONST-LABEL ...
                                 Label that will be used in every metric. Format is label=value. It can be repeated multiple times. ($CONST_LABELS)
      --log.level=info           Only log messages with the given severity or above. One of: [debug, info, warn, error]
      --log.format=logfmt        Output format of log messages. One of: [logfmt, json]
      --[no-]version             Show application version.

Exported Metrics

Common metrics

Metrics for NGINX OSS

Stub status metrics

Metrics for NGINX Plus

Connections

HTTP

SSL

HTTP Server Zones

Stream Server Zones

HTTP Upstreams

Note: for the state metric, the string values are converted to float64 using the following rule: "up" -> 1.0, "draining" -> 2.0, "down" -> 3.0, "unavail" –> 4.0, "checking" –> 5.0, "unhealthy" -> 6.0.

Stream Upstreams

Note: for the state metric, the string values are converted to float64 using the following rule: "up" -> 1.0, "down" -> 3.0, "unavail" –> 4.0, "checking" –> 5.0, "unhealthy" -> 6.0.

Stream Zone Sync

Location Zones

Resolver

HTTP Requests Rate Limiting

HTTP Connections Limiting

Stream Connections Limiting

Cache

Worker

Connect to the /metrics page of the running exporter to see the complete list of metrics along with their descriptions. Note: to see server zones related metrics you must configure status zones and to see upstream related metrics you must configure upstreams with a shared memory zone.

Troubleshooting

The exporter logs errors to the standard output. When using Docker, if the exporter doesn’t work as expected, check its logs using docker logs command.

Releases

Docker images

We publish the Docker image on DockerHub, GitHub Container, Amazon ECR Public Gallery and Quay.io.

As an alternative, you can choose the edge version built from the latest commit from the main branch. The edge version is useful for experimenting with new features that are not yet published in a stable release.

Binaries

We publish the binaries for multiple Operating Systems and architectures on the GitHub releases page.

Homebrew

You can add the NGINX homebrew tap with

brew tap nginxinc/tap

and then install the formula with

brew install nginx-prometheus-exporter

Snap

You can install the NGINX Prometheus Exporter from the Snap Store.

snap install nginx-prometheus-exporter

Scoop

You can add the NGINX Scoop bucket with

scoop bucket add nginx https://github.com/nginxinc/scoop-bucket.git

and then install the package with

scoop install nginx-prometheus-exporter

Nix

First include NUR in your packageOverrides as explained in the NUR documentation.

Then you can use the exporter with the following command:

nix-shell --packages nur.repos.nginx.nginx-prometheus-exporter

or install it with:

nix-env -f '<nixpkgs>' -iA nur.repos.nginx.nginx-prometheus-exporter

Building the Exporter

You can build the exporter using the provided Makefile. Before building the exporter, make sure the following software is installed on your machine:

• make
• git
• Docker for building the container image
• Go for building the binary

Building the Docker Image

To build the Docker image with the exporter, run:

make container

Note: go is not required, as the exporter binary is built in a Docker container. See the Dockerfile.

Building the Binary

To build the binary, run:

make

Note: the binary is built for the OS/arch of your machine. To build binaries for other platforms, see the Makefile.

The binary is built with the name nginx-prometheus-exporter.

Grafana Dashboard

The official Grafana dashboard is provided with the exporter for NGINX. Check the Grafana Dashboard documentation for more information.

SBOM (Software Bill of Materials)

We generate SBOMs for the binaries and the Docker image.

Binaries

The SBOMs for the binaries are available in the releases page. The SBOMs are generated using syft and are available in SPDX format.

Docker Image

The SBOM for the Docker image is available in the DockerHub, GitHub Container registry, Amazon ECR Public Gallery and Quay.io repositories. The SBOMs are generated using syft and stored as an attestation in the image manifest.

For example to retrieve the SBOM for linux/amd64 from Docker Hub and analyze it using grype you can run the following command:

docker buildx imagetools inspect nginx/nginx-prometheus-exporter:edge --format '{{ json (index .SBOM "linux/amd64").SPDX }}' | grype

Provenance

We generate provenance for the Docker image and it's available in the DockerHub, GitHub Container registry, Amazon ECR Public Gallery and Quay.io repositories, stored as an attestation in the image manifest.

For example to retrieve the provenance for linux/amd64 from Docker Hub you can run the following command:

docker buildx imagetools inspect nginx/nginx-prometheus-exporter:edge --format '{{ json (index .Provenance "linux/amd64").SLSA }}'

Contacts

We’d like to hear your feedback! If you have any suggestions or experience issues with the NGINX Prometheus Exporter, please create an issue or send a pull request on GitHub. You can contact us directly via integrations@nginx.com or on the NGINX Community Slack in the #nginx-prometheus-exporter channel.

Contributing

If you'd like to contribute to the project, please read our Contributing guide.

Support

The commercial support is available for NGINX Plus customers when the NGINX Prometheus Exporter is used with NGINX Ingress Controller.

License

Apache License, Version 2.0.