Start your 14-day free trial today & Get 20% Off All Annual Managed ELK Plans
No Credit Card Required
Try Logit.io FreeAlready have an account? Sign In
NGINX Metrics
Collect and ship NGINX server metrics to Logstash and Elasticsearch.
Metricbeat is a lightweight shipper that helps you monitor your NGINX web servers by collecting metrics running on the NGINX server. Configure Metricbeat using the pre-defined examples below to collect and ship NGINX web service metrics and statistics to Logstash or Elasticsearch.
Step 1 - Install Metricbeat
deb (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint)
curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/metricbeat/metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-amd64.deb
rpm (CentOS/RHEL/Fedora)
curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/metricbeat/metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-x86_64.rpm
sudo rpm -vi metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-x86_64.rpm
macOS
curl -L -O https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/metricbeat/metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
tar xzvf metricbeat-oss-7.8.1-darwin-x86_64.tar.gz
Windows
- Download the metricbeat Windows zip file from the official downloads page.
- Extract the contents of the zip file into C:\Program Files.
- Rename the
metricbeat-<version>-windows
directory tometricbeat
. - Open a PowerShell prompt as an Administrator (right-click the PowerShell icon and select Run As Administrator). If you are running Windows XP, you may need to download and install PowerShell.
- Run the following commands to install metricbeat as a Windows service:
cd 'C:\Program Files\metricbeat'
.\install-service-metricbeat.ps1
PowerShell.exe -ExecutionPolicy UnRestricted -File .\install-service-metricbeat.ps1
.
Step 2 - Locate configuration file
deb/rpm /etc/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml
mac/win <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>/metricbeat.yml
Step 3 - Configure output
We'll be shipping to Logstash so that we have the option to run filters before the data is indexed.
Comment out the elasticsearch output block.
## Comment out elasticsearch output
#output.elasticsearch:
# hosts: ["localhost:9200"]
Uncomment and change the logstash output to match below.
output.logstash:
hosts: ["your-logstash-host:your-ssl-port"]
loadbalance: true
ssl.enabled: true
Step 4 - Validate configuration
Let's check the configuration file is syntactically correct by running metricbeat directly inside the terminal.
If the file is invalid, metricbeat will print an error loading config file
error message with details on how to correct the problem.
deb/rpm
sudo metricbeat -e -c /etc/metricbeat/metricbeat.yml
macOS
cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
./metricbeat -e -c metricbeat.yml
Windows
cd <EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>
.\metricbeat.exe -e -c metricbeat.yml
Step 5 - Enable module
There are several built in metricbeat modules you can use. To enable the NGINX module, run the following:
deb/rpm
metricbeat modules list
metricbeat modules enable nginx
macOS
./metricbeat modules list
./metricbeat modules enable nginx
Windows
PS > .\metricbeat.exe modules enable nginx
Step 6 - Configure module
Each module has its own configuration file where different metricsets can be enabled / disabled. Locate the configuration file for the NGINX module.
deb/rpm
/etc/metricbeat/modules.d/nginx.yml
mac/win
~/<EXTRACTED_ARCHIVE>/modules.d/nginx.yml
By default the stubstatus metricset is disabled. To enable or disable a metric simply comment or uncomment the line out.
- module: nginx
metricsets:
- stubstatus
period: 10s
# NGINX hosts
hosts: ["http://127.0.0.1"]
# Path to server status. Default server-status
server_status_path: "nginx_status"
#username: "user"
#password: "secret"
In order for the status metricset to work and correctly display the dashboard on Kibana, you will need to enable ngx_http_stub_status on your NGINX web server.
Step 7 - Start Metricbeat
Ok, time to start gathering metrics!
deb/rpm
sudo systemctl enable metricbeat
sudo systemctl start metricbeat
macOS
./metricbeat
Windows
PS C:\Program Files\Metricbeat> Start-Service metricbeat