Application Real-Time Monitoring Service:Push metric data with Pushgateway

How it works

Your data source pushes metrics to Pushgateway, and the Prometheus server periodically pulls the data from Pushgateway.

To set this up:

1. Get the Pushgateway endpoint from the Managed Service for Prometheus console.

2. Push metric data using curl or a Pushgateway SDK (Go, Java).

3. (Optional) Enable token-based authentication to restrict who can push data.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• A Prometheus instance for your monitoring target. To create one, see:

  • Monitor an ACK cluster

  • Monitor ECS instances

  • Monitor an Alibaba Cloud service

Supported data formats

Step 1: Get the Pushgateway endpoint

1. Log on to the ARMS console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Managed Service for Prometheus > Instances.

2. Click the name of the Prometheus instance to open its details page.

   

3. In the left-side navigation pane, click Settings. On the Settings tab, copy the public URL from the Push Gateway URL section.

   

Step 2: Push metric data

Push metric data using a Pushgateway SDK or curl.

completionTime := prometheus.NewGauge(prometheus.GaugeOpts{
    Name: "db_backup_last_completion_timestamp_seconds",
    Help: "The timestamp of the last successful completion of a DB backup.",
})
completionTime.SetToCurrentTime()

url := "https://cn-hangzhou.arms.aliyuncs.com/prometheus/52b12ea9cf4bb9e35****/16727530178****/1df8lj***/cn-hangzhou/api/v2"
pusher := push.New(url, "test").
    Collector(completionTime).Client(http.DefaultClient).
    Grouping("key1", "test1").Grouping("key2", "dfdf/sdsd/").
    Format(expfmt.FmtProtoDelim)

if err := pusher.Push(); err != nil {
    fmt.Println("Could not push completion time to PushGateway: ", err)
}

CollectorRegistry registry = new CollectorRegistry();
Gauge duration = Gauge.build()
        .name("my_batch_job_duration_seconds")
        .help("Duration of my batch job in seconds.")
        .register(registry);
Gauge.Timer durationTimer = duration.startTimer();

try {
    // Your code here.

    // This is only added to the registry after success,
    // so that a previous success in the Pushgateway isn't overwritten on failure.
    Gauge lastSuccess = Gauge.build()
            .name("my_batch_job_last_success")
            .help("Last time my batch job succeeded, in unixtime.")
            .register(registry);
    lastSuccess.setToCurrentTime();
} finally {
    durationTimer.setDuration();
    PushGateway pg = new PushGateway(new URL(
        "https://cn-hangzhou.arms.aliyuncs.com/prometheus/52b12ea9cf4bb9e35****/16727530178****/1df8lj***/cn-hangzhou/api/v2"
    ));
    pg.pushAdd(registry, "my_batch_job");
}

echo "some_metric 3.14" | curl -H "Content-Type: text/plain; version=0.0.4; charset=utf-8" \
  --data-binary @- \
  https://cn-hangzhou.arms.aliyuncs.com/prometheus/51bbea9ck41b9e35****/16727530178****/1df8lj***/cn-hangzhou/api/v2/metrics/label_key_1/label_value_1/label_key_2/label_value_2

Step 3 (optional): Secure Pushgateway with token authentication

By default, any client with the Pushgateway endpoint can push data. To restrict access, generate a JSON Web Token (JWT) and include it in every request.

Pass the token in requests

Use one of the following methods to include the token:

Method 1: Add the token to the request header

Add the JWT to the Authorization header of every push request. Requests without a valid token are rejected.

Method 2: Use BasicAuth (SDK-compatible)

Method 1 may increase your development cost. Alternatively, the Pushgateway SDK supports basic authentication but not JWT directly. To work around this, pass the token through the BasicAuth interface by setting the password field to your token value. The server accepts this method.

pusher := push.New(url, "test").
    Collector(completionTime).Client(http.DefaultClient).
    Grouping("key1", "test1").Grouping("key2", "dfdf/sdsd/").
    BasicAuth("admin", "<your-token-value>").
    Format(expfmt.FmtProtoDelim)

Replace <your-token-value> with the token generated in the console.

Verify the result

Confirm that metric data is arriving by querying it in Grafana.

1. In the left-side navigation pane, click Dashboards, then click ApiServer.

2. Hover over the icon in the left-side navigation pane and click Explore.

3. Select your resource from the drop-down list and query the metrics you pushed.