You can ship Kafka metrics to logz.io using Metricbeat.

Configuration

Before you begin, you’ll need:

  • A server or cluster with Kafka installed
  • A host installed with Docker and Metricbeat 7.1 or higher

Expose metrics

The first step is to expose Kafka metrics using the Prometheus JMX exporter and Kafka exporter.

JMX exporter

In your Kafka server, go to the directory where Kafka is installed on your machine:

cd {path_to_Kafka_dir}

Download the Prometheus JMX exporter:

curl -L -O https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/prometheus/jmx/jmx_prometheus_javaagent/0.6/jmx_prometheus_javaagent-0.6.jar

Download the exporter configuration file:

curl -L -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/prometheus/jmx_exporter/master/example_configs/Kafka-2_0_0.yml

Restart your Kafka server with this KAFKA_OPTS variable assignment:

KAFKA_OPTS="$KAFKA_OPTS -javaagent:{path_to_Kafka_dir}/jmx_prometheus_javaagent-0.6.jar=7071:{path_to_Kafka_dir}/Kafka-metrics.yaml.yml" \

At this point, the metrics for your Kafka server should be locally exposed in Prometheus format. It’s recommended that you test your JMX exporter metrics endpoint:

curl https://{Kafka_server_address}:7071/metrics
Kafka exporter

On your host, run the danielqsj/Kafka-exporter docker image. Specify the address of your Kafka server. To specify multiple servers, you can add multiple kafka.server arguments.

docker run -ti --rm -p 9308:9308 danielqsj/kafka-exporter --kafka.server=kafka:9092 [--kafka.server=another-server]

At this point, the metrics for your Kafka server should be locally exposed. It’s recommended that you test your Kafka exporter metrics endpoint:

curl https://localhost:9308/metrics

Metricbeat monitoring setup

Download the Logz.io public certificate to your Metricbeat server

For HTTPS shipping, download the Logz.io public certificate to your certificate authority folder.

sudo curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/logzio/public-certificates/master/AAACertificateServices.crt --create-dirs -o /etc/pki/tls/certs/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt

You’ll need to run this command on the server that hosts Metricbeat.

Add Logz.io to your Metricbeat configuration

Open the Metricbeat configuration file (<<PATH_TO_METRICBEAT>>/metricbeat.yml) with your preferred text editor.

Copy and paste the code block below, overwriting the previous contents, to replace the general configuration with the following Logz.io settings:

# ===== General =====
fields:
  logzio_codec: json
  token: <<METRICS-SHIPPING-TOKEN>>
fields_under_root: true

Replace <<METRICS-SHIPPING-TOKEN>> with a token for the Metrics account you want to ship to.
Look up your Metrics token.

Set Logz.io as the output

Still in the same configuration file, check if Logz.io is already an output. If not, add it now.

# ===== Outputs =====
output.logstash:
  hosts: ["<<LISTENER-HOST>>:5015"]
    ssl.certificate_authorities: ['/etc/pki/tls/certs/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt']

Replace <<LISTENER-HOST>> with the host for your region. For example, listener.logz.io if your account is hosted on AWS US East, or listener-nl.logz.io if hosted on Azure West Europe.

One last validation - make sure Logz.io is the only output and appears only once. If the file has other outputs, remove them.

Add the Kafka configuration

Still in the same configuration file, copy and paste the code block below:

metricbeat.modules:

# Prometheus JMX metrics
- module: prometheus
  period: 10s
  metricsets: ["collector"]
  hosts: ["<<Kafka_server_address>>:7071"]
  metrics_path: /metrics

# Kafka exporter metrics
- module: prometheus
  period: 10s
  metricsets: ["collector"]
  hosts: ["localhost:9308"]
  metrics_path: /metrics

processors:
  - add_host_metadata: ~
  - add_fields:
      target: fields
      fields:
        module: Kafka
        Kafka.cluster: <<cluster_tag>>

fields:
  logzio_codec: json
  token: <<METRICS-SHIPPING-TOKEN>>
fields_under_root: true
ignore_older: 3hr
type: metrics
output.logstash:
  hosts: ["<<LISTENER-HOST>>:5015"]
  ssl.certificate_authorities: ['/etc/pki/tls/certs/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt']

For a full list of available Metricbeat configuration options for the Prometheus module, including explanations about TLS connections, see Metricbeat’s documentation.

Replace the placeholders to match your specifics. (They are indicated by the double angle brackets << >>):

  • Replace <<METRICS-SHIPPING-TOKEN>> with a token for the Metrics account you want to ship to.
    Look up your Metrics token.

  • Replace <<LISTENER-HOST>> with the host for your region. For example, listener.logz.io if your account is hosted on AWS US East, or listener-nl.logz.io if hosted on Azure West Europe.

  • Edit the hosts field for prometheus JMX metrics. Specify a comma separated list of addresses for your Kafka servers. (For example: hosts: ["Kafka1:7071","Kafka2:7071"] )

  • Replace <<cluster_tag>> with a custom string value to help you identify your Kafka cluster. This can be helpful if you are running a multi-cluster Kafka environment.

Start Metricbeat

Start or restart Metricbeat for the changes to take effect.

Open your Kafka overview dashboard in Logz.io

Give your metrics a few minutes to get from your system to ours, and then open Logz.io.

Your metrics should appear in the preconfigured dashboard in your Metrics account. To open it, search your Logz.io Metrics dashboards for Kafka overview.