Supervisor and Thanos Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin gathers information about processes running under Supervisor using the XML-RPC API.

This plugin sends metrics from Telegraf to Thanos using the Prometheus remote write protocol over HTTP, allowing efficient and scalable ingestion into Thanos Receive components.

Integration details

Supervisor

The Supervisor plugin for Telegraf is designed to collect metrics about processes managed by the Supervisor process control system using its XML-RPC API. The plugin is able to track various metrics, including process states and uptime, and provides options for configuring which metrics to collect through include or exclude lists. This integration is particularly useful for monitoring applications running under Supervisor, providing insights into their operational status and performance metrics. A minimum tested Supervisor version is 3.3.2, and it is recommended to secure the HTTP server with basic authentication for better security.

Thanos

Telegraf’s HTTP plugin can send metrics directly to Thanos via its Remote Write-compatible Receive component. By setting the data format to prometheusremotewrite, Telegraf can serialize metrics into the same protobuf-based format used by native Prometheus clients. This setup enables high-throughput, low-latency metric ingestion into Thanos, facilitating centralized observability at scale. It is particularly useful in hybrid environments where Telegraf is collecting metrics from systems outside Prometheus’ native reach, such as SNMP devices, Windows hosts, or custom apps, and streams them directly to Thanos for long-term storage and global querying.

Configuration

Supervisor

[[inputs.supervisor]]
  ## Url of supervisor's XML-RPC endpoint if basic auth enabled in supervisor http server,
  ## than you have to add credentials to url (ex. http://login:pass@localhost:9001/RPC2)
  # url="http://localhost:9001/RPC2"
  ## With settings below you can manage gathering additional information about processes
  ## If both of them empty, then all additional information will be collected.
  ## Currently supported supported additional metrics are: pid, rc
  # metrics_include = []
  # metrics_exclude = ["pid", "rc"]

Thanos

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Thanos Receive endpoint for remote write
  url = "http://thanos-receive.example.com/api/v1/receive"

  ## HTTP method
  method = "POST"

  ## Data format set to Prometheus remote write
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Optional headers (authorization, etc.)
  # [outputs.http.headers]
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

  ## Optional TLS configuration
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Request timeout
  timeout = "10s"

Input and output integration examples

Supervisor

1. Centralized Monitoring Dashboard: Implement this plugin to feed Supervisor metrics directly into a centralized monitoring dashboard, allowing teams to visualize the health and performance of their applications in real-time. This integration enables quick identification of issues, helps track service performance over time, and aids in capacity planning based on observed trends.

2. Alerting for Process Failures: Utilize the metrics gathered by the Supervisor plugin to create an alerting mechanism that notifies engineers when critical processes go down or enter a fatal state. By setting thresholds in your monitoring system, teams can respond proactively to potential problems, minimizing downtime and ensuring system reliability.

3. Historical Analysis of Process States: Store the metrics collected over time to analyze process state changes and patterns. By examining historical data, teams can identify recurring issues, track the impact of deployment changes, and optimize resource allocation based on process trends, leading to improved overall system performance.

4. Integration with Incident Management Systems: Configure the Supervisor plugin to automatically send alerts to incident management systems like PagerDuty or OpsGenie when a process reaches a critical state. This integration streamlines the incident response process, ensuring that the right team members are notified promptly and can take action without delay.

Thanos

1. Agentless Cloud Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across cloud VMs to collect system and application metrics, then stream them directly into Thanos using Remote Write. This provides centralized observability without requiring Prometheus nodes at each location.

2. Scalable Windows Host Monitoring: Use Telegraf on Windows machines to collect OS-level metrics and send them via Remote Write to Thanos Receive. This enables observability across heterogeneous environments with native Prometheus support only on Linux.

3. Cross-Region Metrics Federation: Telegraf agents in multiple geographic regions can push data to region-local Thanos Receivers using this plugin. From there, Thanos can deduplicate and query metrics globally, reducing latency and network egress costs.

4. Integrating Third-Party Data into Thanos: Collect metrics from custom telemetry sources such as REST APIs or proprietary logs using Telegraf inputs and forward them to Thanos via Remote Write. This brings non-native data into a Prometheus-compatible, long-term analytics pipeline.

Feedback

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