Use ARMS Prometheus Monitoring to monitor JVM applications

Procedure

The following figure shows the workflow.

Step 1: Instrument a JVM application to expose the data to ARMS Prometheus Monitoring

You must use the JVM exporter to expose the data in the JVM application.

To expose the data, perform the following operations:

1. Add the Maven dependencies to the pom.xml file.

   <dependency>
       <groupId>io.prometheus</groupId>
       <artifactId>simpleclient_hotspot</artifactId>
       <version>0.6.0</version>
   </dependency>

2. Add the method to initialize the JVM exporter to the locaiton where initialization can be performed.

   For example, add the dependency to the /src/main/java/com/monitise/prometheus_demo/DemoController.java file of the demo project.

   @PostConstruct
       public void initJvmExporter() {
           io.prometheus.client.hotspot.DefaultExports.initialize();
       }

3. Configure the Port and Path fields that are used by ARMS Prometheus Monitoring in the /src/main/resources/application.properties file.

   management.port: 8081
   endpoints.prometheus.path: prometheus-metrics

4. Enable the HTTP port in the /src/main/java/com/monitise/prometheus_demo/PrometheusDemoApplication.java file.

   @SpringBootApplication
   // sets up the prometheus endpoint /prometheus-metrics
   @EnablePrometheusEndpoint
   // exports the data at /metrics at a prometheus endpoint
   @EnableSpringBootMetricsCollector
   public class PrometheusDemoApplication {
       public static void main(String[] args) {
           SpringApplication.run(PrometheusDemoApplication.class, args);
       }
   }

Step 2: Deploy the application to an ACK cluster

You must deploy the JVM application to an ACK cluster. This is the prerequisite to capture data of the JVM application by using ARMS Prometheus Monitoring.

To deploy the JVM application, perform the following operations:

1. Run the following commands in the buildDockerImage.sh file of the demo project line by line to create a Docker image named promethues-demo and push the image to Alibaba Cloud Container Registry.

   mvn clean install -DskipTests
   docker build -t <Name of the local temporary Docker image>:<Version of the local temporary Docker image> . --no-cache
   sudo docker tag <Name of the local temporary Docker image>:<Version of the local temporary Docker image> <Registry domain name>/<Namespace>/<Image name>:<Image version>
   sudo docker push <Registry domain name>/<Namespace>/<Image name>:<Image version>

   Example:

   mvn clean install -DskipTests
   docker build -t promethues-demo:v0 . --no-cache
   sudo docker tag promethues-demo:v0 registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/testnamespace/promethues-demo:v0
   sudo docker push registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/testnamespace/promethues-demo:v0

2. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes console.
3. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters. On the Clusters page, find the cluster in which you want to deploy the application and click Applications in the Actions column.
   
4. On the Workloads page, click the Deployments tab. On the Deployments tab, click Create from Template.
5. On the Create from Template tab, select Custom from the Sample Template drop-down list. In the Template text editor, enter the following text. Then, click Create to deploy the Docker image that was created in 1 to the ACK cluster.
   Note Values of prometheus.io/port and prometheus.io/path in the following configuration file are the ARMS Prometheus Monitoring port and path exposed in Step 1:

   apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
     name: prometheus-demo
   spec:
     replicas: 2
     template:
       metadata:
         annotations:
           prometheus.io/scrape: 'true'
           prometheus.io/path: '/prometheus-metrics'
           prometheus.io/port: '8081'
         labels:
           app: tomcat
       spec:
         containers:
         - name: tomcat
           imagePullPolicy: Always
           image: registry.cn-hangzhou.aliyuncs.com/fuling/promethues-demo:v0
           ports:
           - containerPort: 8080
             name: tomcat-normal
           - containerPort: 8081
             name: tomcat-monitor

6. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Services and Ingresses > Services. In the upper-right corner of the Services page, click Create Resources in YAML.
7. In the Template text editor on the Workloads tab, enter the following text. In the lower part of the page, click Create.

   apiVersion: v1
   kind: Service
   metadata:
     labels:
       app: tomcat
     name: tomcat
     namespace: default
   spec:
     ports:
     - name: tomcat-normal
       port: 8080
       protocol: TCP
       targetPort: 8080
     - name: tomcat-monitor
       port: 8081
       protocol: TCP
       targetPort: 8081
     type: NodePort
     selector:
       app: tomcat

Step 3: Configure ARMS Prometheus Monitoring to capture data of the JVM application

To capture data of the JVM application, perform the following operations:

1. Log on to the Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes console.
2. Enable ARMS Prometheus Monitoring for the ACK cluster. For more information, see Get started with Prometheus Service.
3. Log on to the ARMS console.
4. In the left-side navigation pane, click Prometheus Monitoring.
5. In the upper-left corner of the Prometheus Monitoring page, select the region where the ACK cluster is deployed. Find the cluster and click Settings in the Actions column.
6. On the page that appears, click the Service Discovery tab. On the Service Discovery tab, click Add ServiceMonitor. In the Add ServiceMonitor dialog box, enter the following content and click OK:

   apiVersion: monitoring.coreos.com/v1
   kind: ServiceMonitor
   metadata:
     # Enter a unique name.
     name: tomcat-demo
     # Enter the desired namespace.
     namespace: default
   spec:
     endpoints:
     - interval: 30s
       # Enter the value of the Name field for Port of Prometheus Exporter in the service.yaml file.
       port: tomcat-monitor
       # Enter the value of the Path field for Prometheus Exporter.
       path: /metrics
     namespaceSelector:
       any: true
       # Demo namespace:
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         # Enter the value of the Label field in the service.yaml file to find the service.yaml file.
         app: tomcat

Step 4: Present data of the JVM application on the Grafana dashboard

Import the Grafana dashboard template and specify the ACK cluster where the Prometheus data source is located.

1. Go to the homepage of ARMS Prometheus Grafana.
2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose + > Import, enter 10877 in the Import via grafana.com field, and then click Load.
   
3. On the Import page, configure the following parameters and click Import:
   
   1. Enter a custom dashboard name in the Name field.
   2. Select your ACK cluster from the Folder drop-down list.
   3. Select your ACK cluster from the Select a Prometheus data source drop-down list.
   After the parameters are configured, the Prometheus Grafana Go dashboard appears, as shown in the following figure.

Step 5: Create a Prometheus Monitoring alert

1. Log on to the ARMS console.
2. In the left-side navigation pane, click Prometheus Monitoring.
3. In the top navigation bar, select a region. Then, click the name of the required Kubernetes cluster.
4. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Alarm configuration beta. Then, click Create Alert in the upper-right corner.
5. In the Create Alert dialog box, configure the following parameters, and then click OK.
   Note The Time parameter is not supported.
   1. Enter a name in the Rule Name field. Example: alerts for inbound traffic.
   2. Enter an expression that uses a PromQL statement. Example: (sum(rate(kube_state_metrics_list_total{job="kube-state-metrics",result="error"}[5m])) / sum(rate(kube_state_metrics_list_total{job="kube-state-metrics"}[5m]))) > 0.01.
      Notice An error may be reported if a PromQL statement contains a dollar sign ($). You must remove the equal sign (=) and the parameters on both sides of the equal sign (=) from the statement that contains the dollar sign ($). For example, change sum (rate (container_network_receive_bytes_total{instance=~"^$HostIp.*"}[1m])) to sum (rate (container_network_receive_bytes_total[1m])).
   3. In the Labels section, click Create Tag to specify alert tags. The specified tags can be used as options for a dispatch rule.
   4. In the Annotations section, specify a template for alert messages. Click Create Annotation. Set Key to message and Value to {{variable name}} alert message. The specified annotation is in the format of message:{{variable name}} alert notification. Example: message:{{$labels.pod_name}} restart.

      You can customize a variable name or select an existing tag as the variable name. Existing tags:

      • The tags that are carried in the metrics of an alert rule expression.
      • The tags that are created when you create an alert rule. For more information, see Create an alert.
      • The default tags provided by ARMS. The following table describes the default tags.

        Tag	Description
        alertname	The name of the alert. The format is <Alert name>_<Cluster name>.
        _aliyun_arms_alert_level	The level of the alert.
        _aliyun_arms_alert_type	The type of the alert.
        _aliyun_arms_alert_rule_id	The ID of the alert rule.
        _aliyun_arms_region_id	The ID of the region.
        _aliyun_arms_userid	The ID of the user.
        _aliyun_arms_involvedObject_type	The subtype of the associated object, for example, ManagedKubernetes or ServerlessKubernetes.
        _aliyun_arms_involvedObject_kind	The type of the associated object, for example, app or cluster.
        _aliyun_arms_involvedObject_id	The ID of the associated object.
        _aliyun_arms_involvedObject_name	The name of the associated object.

   

What to do next

After the ARMS Prometheus Grafana JVM dashboard is configured, you can view Prometheus Monitoring metrics and customize the dashboard. For more information, see the following topics: