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Collecting Application Metrics with Prometheus

Prometheus exporters allow you to collect metric data from a variety of sources. You can monitor not only your servers but also the applications running on your servers. In this lab, you will have the opportunity to explore application monitoring in Prometheus by setting up monitoring for an application process and pulling application metric data into a Prometheus server.

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Lab platform
Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Jul 15, 2025
Duration
45m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Install and Configure the Apache Exporter
    1. Log in to the Apache server.

    2. Create a user for the Apache exporter:

      sudo useradd -M -r -s /bin/false apache_exporter
      
    3. Download and install the Apache exporter binary:

      wget https://github.com/Lusitaniae/apache_exporter/releases/download/v0.7.0/apache_exporter-0.7.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
      
      tar xvfz apache_exporter-0.7.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz
      
      sudo cp apache_exporter-0.7.0.linux-amd64/apache_exporter /usr/local/bin/
      
      sudo chown apache_exporter:apache_exporter /usr/local/bin/apache_exporter
      
    4. Create a systemd unit file for Apache exporter:

      sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/apache_exporter.service
      
      [Unit]
      Description=Prometheus Apache Exporter
      Wants=network-online.target
      After=network-online.target
      
      [Service]
      User=apache_exporter
      Group=apache_exporter
      Type=simple
      ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/apache_exporter
      
      [Install]
      WantedBy=multi-user.target
      
    5. Start and enable the apache_exporter service:

      sudo systemctl enable apache_exporter
      
      sudo systemctl start apache_exporter
      
    6. Verify the service is running and that it is serving metrics:

      sudo systemctl status apache_exporter
      
      curl localhost:9117/metrics
      
  2. Challenge

    Configure Prometheus to Scrape Metrics from the Apache Exporter
    1. Log in to the Prometheus server.

    2. Edit the Prometheus config:

      sudo vi /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml
      
    3. Under the scrape_configs section, add a scrape configuration for the Apache exporter:

      - job_name: 'Apache Server'
        static_configs:
        - targets: ['limedrop-apache:9117']
      
    4. Restart Prometheus to load the new configuration:

      sudo systemctl restart prometheus
      
    5. Use the expression browser to verify you can see Apache metrics in Prometheus. You can access expression browser in a web browser at http://<PROMETHEUS_SERVER_PUBLIC_IP>:9090.

    6. Run a query to view some Apache metric data:

      apache_workers
      
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