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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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Path Info

Level

Intermediate

Duration

45m

Last updated

Jul 15, 2025

Challenge

Install and Configure the Apache Exporter

Create a user for the Apache exporter:

sudo useradd -M -r -s /bin/false apache_exporter

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

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

Start and enable the apache_exporter service:

sudo systemctl enable apache_exporter

sudo systemctl start apache_exporter

Verify the service is running and that it is serving metrics:

sudo systemctl status apache_exporter

curl localhost:9117/metrics

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
```

Author

Pluralsight Skills

Pluralsight Skills gives leaders confidence they have the skills needed to execute technology strategy. Technology teams can benchmark expertise across roles, speed up release cycles and build reliable, secure products. By leveraging our expert content, skill assessments and one-of-a-kind analytics, keep up with the pace of change, put the right people on the right projects and boost productivity. It's the most effective path to developing tech skills at scale.

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