Supervisor and M3DB Integration

Input and output integration overview

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

This plugin allows Telegraf to stream metrics to M3DB using the Prometheus Remote Write protocol, enabling scalable ingestion through the M3 Coordinator.

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.

M3DB

This configuration uses Telegraf’s HTTP output plugin with prometheusremotewrite format to send metrics directly to M3DB through the M3 Coordinator. M3DB is a distributed time series database designed for scalable, high-throughput metric storage. It supports ingestion of Prometheus remote write data via its Coordinator component, which manages translation and routing into the M3DB cluster. This approach enables organizations to collect metrics from systems that aren’t natively instrumented for Prometheus (e.g., Windows, SNMP, legacy systems) and ingest them efficiently into M3’s long-term, high-performance storage engine. The setup is ideal for high-scale observability stacks with Prometheus compatibility requirements.

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"]

M3DB

# Configuration for sending metrics to M3
[outputs.http]
  ## URL is the address to send metrics to
  url = "https://M3_HOST:M3_PORT/api/v1/prom/remote/write"

  ## HTTP Basic Auth credentials
  username = "admin"
  password = "password"

  ## Data format to output.
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Outgoing HTTP headers
  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"
    X-Prometheus-Remote-Write-Version = "0.1.0"

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.

M3DB

1. Large-Scale Cloud Infrastructure Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across thousands of virtual machines and containers to collect metrics and stream them into M3DB through the M3 Coordinator. This provides reliable, long-term visibility with minimal storage overhead and high availability.

2. Legacy System Metrics Ingestion: Use Telegraf to gather metrics from older systems that lack native Prometheus exporters (e.g., Windows servers, SNMP devices) and forward them to M3DB via remote write. This bridges modern observability workflows with legacy infrastructure.

3. Centralized App Telemetry Aggregation: Collect application-specific telemetry using Telegraf’s plugin ecosystem (e.g., exec, http, jolokia) and push it into M3DB for centralized storage and query via PromQL. This enables unified analytics across diverse data sources.

4. Hybrid Cloud Observability: Install Telegraf agents on-prem and in the cloud to collect and remote-write metrics into a centralized M3DB cluster. This ensures consistent visibility across environments while avoiding the complexity of running Prometheus federation layers.

Feedback

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