Setup Prometheus and Grafana for MySQL and JVM

When I first started to set up Prometheus and Grafana to monitor MySQL and JVM, I found out a lot of tutorials but they were not good enough for a beginner like me. Some of them were outdated and the authors didn’t care to update the content. Other posts were too general and didn’t show me a clear path to proceed. Therefore, I tried to write a detailed tutorial on how to deploy Prometheus and Grafana using Docker to monitor MySQL and JVM. I created a Github repo which contains all the necessary files.

Architecture Overview

Dotted-line rectangle: A Docker container

JVM

Create a dummy Java server (in case you don’t have a Java running server yet) and use JMX exporter to generate metrics for Prometheus (Replace SimpleServer to your main server).

Note that SimpleServer runs on port 8080.

• Go to jvm folder.

• Run

  wget https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/prometheus/jmx/jmx_prometheus_javaagent/0.11.0/jmx_prometheus_javaagent-0.11.0.jar -O jmx_exporter.jar
  

• Edit jmx-config.yaml.

• docker build -t jmx-exporter .

• Run

  docker run -d \
    -p 8080  \
    -p 5258  \
    --network test-network  \
    --name jmx-exporter \
    jmx-exporter
  

MySQL

1. Create a dummy MySQL database (in case you don’t have a MySQL database) and use MySQL exporter to generate metrics for Prometheus.

  docker run -d \
    --name mysql \
    -p 3306 \
    --network test-network \
    --env MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=mypassword \
    --volume mysql-datadir:/var/lib/mysql \
    mysql:8 \
    --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password

2. Create a specific user for the exporter.

• docker exec -it mysql mysql -uroot -p and enter the password above

• Run the below commands in the MySQL Shell:

    CREATE USER 'exporter'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'password' WITH MAX_USER_CONNECTIONS 3;
    GRANT PROCESS, REPLICATION CLIENT, SELECT ON *.* TO 'exporter'@'%';
  

3. Exit the running MySQL container and run MySQL exporter (Replace the password of exporter below).

   docker run -d \
     --name mysql-exporter \
     -p 9104 \
     --network test-network \
     --env DATA_SOURCE_NAME="exporter:password@(mysql:3306)/" \
     prom/mysqld-exporter
   

Prometheus

1. Go to the root folder of the project to create a Prometheus container.

   docker run -d \
     --name prometheus \
     -p 9090:9090  \
     --network test-network  \
     --restart unless-stopped  \
     --mount type=volume,src=prometheus-data,target=/prometheus \
     --mount type=bind,src="$(pwd)"/prometheus/prometheus.yml,target=/etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml  \
     prom/prometheus
   

Grafana

1. Edit grafana/grafana.ini file:

• Edit smtp config. Add user and password.
• Follow this tutorial if you are using Gmail to send notifications.

2. Edit Dashboard, Data Source and Notifier settings in grafana/provision. Edit grafana/provision/notifiers/notifier.yaml to add emails.

3. Create a Grafana container.

   docker run -d \
     -p 3000:3000 \
     --name grafana \
     --network test-network \
     --mount type=bind,src="$(pwd)"/grafana/grafana.ini,target=/etc/grafana/grafana.ini \
     --mount type=bind,src="$(pwd)"/grafana/provisioning,target=/etc/grafana/provisioning \
     grafana/grafana
   

Credit

• How to Monitor MySQL Containers with Prometheus