How to enable Apache NiFi metrics for JMX

[#1]

Hi Guys,
I know NiFi provides ReportTask component to export metrics to external monitoring systems.

I was wondering whether we can use a generic approach to collect NiFi metrics via JMX.

For example, there is a JMX exporter to Prometheus by collecting metrics from java application. May I use it to collect NiFi metrics to Prometheus?

Thanks.

[#2]

Hi @Benoit Rousseau,

Thank you for your response.

For the jmx_exporter option, my main trouble is where can I find or create the "nifi.yml".

I found a couple of template for Kafka and Cassandra. But How do I know the existing jmx metrics in NiFi.

I didn't find any documents on it.

Would you please share a template?

Thanks.

[#3]

@Alvin Jin

A basic "export all" config is as follow:

lowercaseOutputLabelNames: true
lowercaseOutputName: true
rules:
- pattern: ".*"

If you want to refine your config and set wich beans you want to fetch, these blog post might be useful

http://www.whiteboardcoder.com/2017/04/prometheus-and-jmx.html

https://blog.godatadriven.com/hbase-prometheus-monitoring

To browse beans I'd recommend using jmxterm https://github.com/jiaqi/jmxterm

su <ownerJVM> -c "$JAVA_HOME/bin/java -jar jmxterm-1.0.0-uber.jar "
$>jvms
jvms
<pidJVM> (m) - <JVM command line>
<pidJMXterm> ( ) - jmxterm-1.0.0-uber.jar
$> open <pidJVM>
$> beans
$> info -d <domain> -b <Mbean>
$> get -d <domain> -b <Mbean> <parameters>
$> close

[#4]

Hi,

Most handy option for JMX is https://github.com/prometheus/jmx_exporter

In bootstrap.conf set

java.arg.N=-javaagent:/path/to/prometheus/jmx_exporter/jmx_prometheus_javaagent.jar=portChoosen:/path/to/prometheus/jmx_exporter/nifi.yml"

There is a dedicated exporter: https://github.com/msiedlarek/nifi_exporter

Also useful to push events to Push Gateway (business view) https://github.com/mkjoerg/nifi-prometheus-reporter

Rgds,

[#5]

@Alvin Jin @Benoit Rousseau

I am trying to monitor NIFI using JMX. Can you please provide steps to enable JMX for HDF Ambari based Nifi cluster?

Thanks

[#6]

hi @Srini K,

Here is the most simple process using JMX prometheus exporter in oder to store collected JMX data:

1/ download and copy jmx_exporter_jar (highly recommend version 3+) on all NiFi nodes and grant access to NiFi user

2/ create a config file, let's name it nifi.yml and copy inside at least an "export everything" like this one:

lowercaseOutputLabelNames: true
lowercaseOutputName: true
rules:- pattern: ".*"

3/ update NiFi bootstrap.conf in Ambari by adding (replace N by an available number and choose any available port) and then restart NiFi node

java.arg.N=-javaagent:/<path_to_jmx_exporter>/jmx_prometheus_javaagent.jar=<port>:/<path_to_jmx_exporter>/nifi.yml"

4/ configure prometheus server to poll nodes on above port

5/ for visualisation i'd recommend Grafana and customise an existing Dashboard like https://grafana.com/dashboards/3066

[#7]

Thanks @Benoit Rousseau

I followed your steps and restarted NiFi service. NiFi Service is getting failed with below error:

ERROR [NiFi logging handler] org.apache.nifi.StdErr Error: Could not find or load main class "-javaagent:.root.software.jmx_prometheus_javaagent-0.3.1.jar=7071:.root.software.nifi.yml"