Viewing Metrics with Prometheus

The Liferay Helm chart is prepared to set up the Prometheus JMX Exporter project agent out-of-the-box. Set the JMX_AGENT_YAML environment variable to the following value using the customEnv property:

customEnv:
  x-jmx_metrics:
  - name: JMX_AGENT_YAML
    value: |
      includeObjectNames: ["com.liferay.users.admin:*"]
      openTelemetry:
        endpoint: http://prometheus-server.prometheus-system:9090/api/v1/otlp
        interval: 1
        protocol: http/protobuf
        serviceName: $(POD_APP)
        serviceInstanceId: $(POD_NAME)
        serviceNamespace: $(POD_NAMESPACE)
        timeoutSeconds: 60
      rules:
      - name: server_live_users
        pattern: ^com.liferay.users.admin<classification=live_users, name=LiveUsers><>ServerLiveUsersCount
        type: GAUGE
      - pattern: ".*"

Configuring Prometheus

You can configure Prometheus using a few environment variables:

• JMX_AGENT_PORT enables HTTP mode for the chosen port. This can be useful to quickly configure troubleshooting and metrics scraping (HTTP mode is not enabled until a port is specified)

• JMX_AGENT_VERSION sets the version of the agent (1.3.0 by default)

• JMX_AGENT_YAML contains YAML configurations. The Prometheus JMX agent is only actived once this variable is defined.

  Important

  Always place JMX_AGENT_YAML after any other environment variables it references.

If necessary, enable live user tracking in DXP using portal properties:

portalProperties: |
  live.users.enabled=true
dependencies:
  x-jmx_metrics:
    portalProperties: |
      live.users.enabled=true
    source: external

Using the Prometheus UI

You can deploy Prometheus to use as the APM tool by setting the server property to the following value:

server:
  extraFlags:
  - web.enable-lifecycle
  - web.enable-otlp-receiver
  service:
    additionalPorts:
    - name: otlp
      port: 9090
      targetPort: 9090
  ingress:
    enabled: true
    hosts:
    - prometheus.docker.localhost
    pathType: ImplementationSpecific

Once your Liferay installation is configured to use Prometheus, you can install it by running the following commands:

helm repo add prometheus-community https://prometheus-community.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update
helm upgrade -i prometheus \
    prometheus-community/prometheus \
    --create-namespace \
    --namespace prometheus-system \
    -f prometheus-values-basic.yaml

Now you should be able to access the Prometheus console at http://prometheus.docker.localhost.