How to Monitor Redis with Prometheus and Grafana

In this article, we’ll explore how to monitor Redis databases using two powerful tools: Prometheus and Grafana. Together, they give you deep insights into your database’s performance, health, and resource usage. Monitoring Redis is essential for spotting issues early, improving performance, and keeping your Redis setup running smoothly. With Prometheus collecting data and Grafana visualizing it, you can easily create custom dashboards to see important metrics in real-time. This helps you stay on top of your infrastructure and take proactive steps to keep it healthy.

Prerequisites

• AWS Account with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS EC2 Instance.
• Basic knowledge of AWS services, Prometheus and Grafana.

Step #1:Install Redis on Ubuntu

Update the system before starting the installation.

sudo apt update 

After this add the repository to the apt index and then update it.

curl -fsSL https://packages.redis.io/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/redis-archive-keyring.gpg] https://packages.redis.io/deb $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/redis.list

sudo apt update

After updating the repository, install it.

sudo apt-get install redis

Step #2:Install Prometheus on Ubuntu

Download the latest version of Prometheus from the GitHub repository using the following command.

wget https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus/releases/download/v2.30.0/prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

extract the downloaded archives.

tar xvfz prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

The command extracts the contents of the file prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64.tar.gz

now navigate to the extracted directory using following command.

cd prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64

navigate to the /etc/systemd/system, this is where typically systemd unit files are located, which are used for managing services on Linux systems.

cd /etc/systemd/system

now lets create a service for Prometheus named prometheus.service.

sudo vi prometheus.service

add the following content into it.

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/home/ubuntu/prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64/prometheus --config.file=/home/ubuntu/prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64/prometheus.yml
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Now our prometheus.service is created.

After this

Reload the daemon service, enable, and start the Prometheus service:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable prometheus.service
sudo systemctl start prometheus.service

now Verify the status of the Prometheus service using following command:

sudo systemctl status prometheus.service

If your service is running properly then you can run prometheus by running

Public IP:9090 which is default port for prometheus in url.

Step #3:Install Grafana on Ubuntu

First import the GPG key used by the Grafana package.

wget -q -O - https://packages.grafana.com/gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -

then add the Grafana repository to the APT sources.

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://packages.grafana.com/oss/deb stable main"

After adding the repository update the package lists

sudo apt update

then install the grafana.

sudo apt install grafana

Start and enable the Grafana service.

sudo systemctl start grafana-server
sudo systemctl enable grafana-server

and if everything works fine and your service is running properly then run grafana by running your Public IP:3000 which is default port of grafana in searchbar.

you will see the login page of grafana (UI) user interface

Grafana has admin as default username and password.

it will ask for changing the password you can change it or skip it.

then you will see the welcome page of grafana.

Step #4:Create User Group and User for Prometheus

Now after the installation of Prometheus and grafana is done lets create User Group and User for Prometheus.

sudo groupadd --system prometheussudo useradd -s /sbin/nologin --system -g prometheus prometheus

Monitor Redis with Prometheus and Grafana

Step #5:Download and Install Redis Exporter

Install the redis exporter using following command.

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/oliver006/redis_exporter/releases/latest | grep browser_download_url | grep linux-amd64 | cut -d '"' -f 4 | wget -qi -

Extract the downloaded archive file

tar xvf redis_exporter-*.linux-amd64.tar.gz

Move the binary to the appropriate directory.

sudo mv redis_exporter-*.linux-amd64/redis_exporter /usr/local/bin/

Confirm the installation with following command.

redis_exporter --version

Step #6:Configuring Redis Exporter Service

Create a service for the Redis exporter.

sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/redis_exporter.service

add the folllowing content

[Unit]
Description=Prometheus
Documentation=https://github.com/oliver006/redis_exporter
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=prometheus
Group=prometheus
ExecReload=/bin/kill -HUP $MAINPID
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/redis_exporter \
  --log-format=txt \
  --namespace=redis \
  --web.listen-address=:9121 \
  --web.telemetry-path=/metrics

SyslogIdentifier=redis_exporter
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

save the file and to verify our configuration file is correct and reload the daemon service.

Then enable and start the service.

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable redis_exporter
sudo systemctl start redis_exporter

Confirm the service status.

systemctl status redis_exporter

Step #7:Configuring Redis Exporter Endpoint in Prometheus Configuration

Navigate to the directory containing the Prometheus configuration file.

cd prometheus-2.30.0.linux-amd64

Edit the prometheus.yml file.

nano prometheus.yml

add the block into it.

# my global config
global:
  scrape_interval: 15s # Set the scrape interval to every 15 seconds. Default is every 1 minute.
  evaluation_interval: 15s # Evaluate rules every 15 seconds. The default is every 1 minute.
  # scrape_timeout is set to the global default (10s).

# Alertmanager configuration
alerting:
  alertmanagers:
    - static_configs:
        - targets:
          # - alertmanager:9093

# Load rules once and periodically evaluate them according to the global 'evaluation_interval'.
rule_files:
  # - "first_rules.yml"
  # - "second_rules.yml"

# A scrape configuration containing exactly one endpoint to scrape:
# Here it's Prometheus itself.
scrape_configs:
  # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>` to any timeseries scraped from this config.
  - job_name: "prometheus"

    # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
    # scheme defaults to 'http'.

    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9090"]
#Redis Servers
  - job_name: "redis"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9121"]

save the file and close it.

restart the Prometheus service.

sudo systemctl restart prometheus.service

Now go to Prometheus dashboard and click on status, select target, you can see our exporter are up and running.

You can run the Public IP:9121 To see redis web page

click on the metric and you will see the following output.

Step #8:Setting up Grafana Dashboards for Redis Metrics

Now go back to the Grafana welcome page. Go to the Home in the left top corner.

Then go to the Connections and select the Data sources option.

Search for Prometheus in the search bar and select it.

In connection, in Prometheus server URL, give the server url on which our prometheus is running.

after this click on save and test button. You will see the message for prometheus being successfully queried.

now go to the ‘+‘ icon from up-right corner and select the New dashboard option

Here you can start your own new dashboard by adding a visualization.

So click on + Add visualization option button.

Here you can also import dashboards.

Select the Prometheus as Data source.

You will see the edit panel page

Now in the Query section add the A query

• go_gc_duration_seconds_sum
• instance: localhost:9090

then add the B query

• Metric: redis_cpu_user_seconds_total
• job: redis

Click on run queries You will see the following output.

It’s in the Gaugevisualization, but there are many visualization option like time series, stats, bar graph etc.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, implementing a monitoring solution for Redis databases using Prometheus and Grafana is essential for maintaining the health, performance, and reliability of your Redis environment. By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can effectively set up and configure Prometheus to collect metrics from Redis instances, visualize these metrics in Grafana dashboards, and proactively manage your Redis infrastructure.

Related Articles:

How to Monitor MySQL with Prometheus and Grafana

Reference:

Grafana Installation official page