What are the common Prometheus Exporters and how to choose and use them?

Common Prometheus Exporters and their use cases:

System Monitoring Exporters:

1. Node Exporter:

   • Monitors Linux/Unix system metrics
   • Metrics: CPU, memory, disk, network, filesystem
   • Deployment: Run on each node
   • Example metrics: node_cpu_seconds_total, node_memory_MemAvailable_bytes

2. Windows Exporter:

   • Monitors Windows systems
   • Supports WMI performance counters
   • Metrics: CPU, memory, processes, services

Database Exporters:

1. MySQL Exporter:

   • Monitors MySQL/MariaDB
   • Metrics: connections, query performance, replication status
   • Configuration: DSN connection string
   • Example: mysql_global_status_threads_connected

2. PostgreSQL Exporter:

   • Monitors PostgreSQL
   • Metrics: connections, queries, locks, replication
   • Supports extended metrics

3. Redis Exporter:

   • Monitors Redis
   • Metrics: memory usage, connections, command statistics
   • Supports cluster mode

Application Exporters:

1. Blackbox Exporter:

   • HTTP/HTTPS, TCP, ICMP probing
   • Used for availability monitoring
   • Configure modules to define probe parameters

2. JMX Exporter:

   • Monitors Java applications
   • Gets metrics via JMX
   • Supports Kafka, Tomcat, etc.

3. StatsD Exporter:

   • Compatible with StatsD protocol
   • Suitable for application instrumentation

Container and Cloud Platform Exporters:

1. cAdvisor:

   • Container resource usage
   • Integrated in Kubelet

2. Kube-State-Metrics:

   • Kubernetes object status
   • Pod, Deployment, Service, etc.

Deployment Example:

yaml
scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'node'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['node1:9100', 'node2:9100']
  
  - job_name: 'mysql'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['mysql-exporter:9104']

Best Practices:

• Choose appropriate Exporter versions
• Configure authentication and security
• Monitor Exporter health
• Use labels to distinguish different instances