Lightweight Spring Boot Monitoring Without Prometheus and Grafana

Running 1 Spring Boot exertion aliases a fistful of them connected a VPS still calls for basal operational visibility. You request to cognize whether an exertion is reachable, whether errors are rising, and whether it restarted. You whitethorn not request a complete monitoring level to reply those questions.

Spring Boot Actuator already exposes overmuch of that information. StatLite turns it into a focused dashboard for health, requests, errors, latency, memory, uptime, and restarts. It runs arsenic 1 Go binary and stores its history successful SQLite.

Why the accustomed options tin beryllium much than you need

Actuator gives Spring Boot applications useful wellness and Micrometer metrics endpoints. They are fantabulous for integration, but many times opening JSON endpoints is not a convenient mundane dashboard.

Spring Boot Admin adds broader application-administration features. Prometheus and Grafana are beardown choices erstwhile you request a larger monitoring system, elastic queries, aliases shared dashboards crossed an estate.

For a fewer services connected 1 VPS, a narrower dashboard tin beryllium enough. StatLite sounds the Actuator information you already person and shows the operational signals astir useful during regular checks.

The questions a mini deployment needs answered

• Is the exertion reachable and healthy?
• Are errors increasing?
• Are requests slowing down?
• Is representation usage growing?
• Did the exertion restart?
• Are related services, specified arsenic a database, reachable?

Quick comparison

ToolOperational complexityBest fit

Raw Actuator endpoints	Low	Occasional manual checks
Spring Boot Admin	Medium	Application management and monitoring
Prometheus and Grafana	High	Larger deployments and precocious observability
StatLite	Very low	A fewer Spring Boot services connected a mini server

These devices tin besides coexist. Choosing StatLite for a focused dashboard coming does not forestall adopting Prometheus and Grafana later if your requirements grow.

Set up StatLite successful a fewer minutes

The pursuing illustration uses the runnable Spring Actuator demo included pinch StatLite.

1. Expose wellness and metrics from Spring Boot

Add the needed Actuator endpoint vulnerability to your exertion configuration. Keep Actuator reachable only from trusted networks and adhd authentication wherever your deployment requires it.

management: endpoints: web: exposure: include: health,metrics endpoint: health: show-details: always

For the included demo, commencement the exertion from examples/spring-actuator-demo:

mvn spring-boot:run

2. Install StatLite

Use the installation method for your level successful the StatLite installation guide. It covers the merchandise installer, Homebrew, and what each method does and does not group up for you.

Developers who for illustration to build from root tin clone the repository and build the binary:

git clone https://github.com/PVRLabs/statlite.git cd statlite go build -o statlite ./cmd/statlite

3. Add 1 target configuration

server: listen: "127.0.0.1:9090" storage: sqlite_path: "./statlite.sqlite" polling: interval: "10s" timeout: "5s" targets: - name: "spring-demo" actuator_base_url: "http://127.0.0.1:8080/actuator"

listen keeps the dashboard section by default. sqlite_path is the record utilized for dashboard history. actuator_base_url points astatine the application’s Actuator guidelines URL. For Basic Auth, aggregate targets, retention, and accumulation information details, spot the configuration documentation.

4. Open the dashboard

./statlite --config ./statlite.yaml

Open http://127.0.0.1:9090 successful a browser. StatLite polls connected the configured interval, truthful hold for the adjacent canvass aft creating postulation aliases restarting the application.

If you are pursuing the included demo, make postulation successful a 2nd terminal from the StatLite repository root:

./examples/spring-actuator-demo/generate-traffic.sh

The book sends successful, database, and slow requests, positive 400, 404, and 500 responses to the demo exertion truthful the petition and correction charts person activity to show. Wait for the adjacent StatLite canvass aft moving it.

Why StatLite stays small

• A azygous Go binary
• SQLite storage
• No monitoring agent
• No civilization exertion instrumentation beyond Actuator
• Suitable for systemd deployment
• Multiple Spring Boot targets successful 1 configuration

It is intentionally Actuator-first. You alteration aliases expose Actuator arsenic needed; StatLite does not region that setup step.

When not to usage StatLite

Use a broader observability level erstwhile you request galore services aliases hosts, agelong retention, precocious metric queries, alert routing, distributed tracing, centralized logs, aliases organization-wide dashboards.

StatLite is not a replacement for endeavor observability. It is simply a focused action erstwhile the operational occupation is to show a fewer Spring Boot services without operating a afloat Prometheus and Grafana stack.