NGINX Ingress Controller metrics

The OpenTelemetry Collector, when configured with a Prometheus receiver, provides an integration with the NGINX Ingress Controller to scrape Prometheus metrics. The Collector uses the Prometheus Receiver to fetch metrics from the configured path in the NGINX Ingress Controller configuration file. From there, the metrics are processed and exported to Lightstep Observability. This integration also includes using Kubernetes operators for both the Collector and the NGINX Ingress Controller.

To complete the integration, you will:

• Configure NGINX Ingress Controller to use the Prometheus exporter.
• Configure the Collector to use the NGINX Ingress Controller endpoint as a scrape target for the Prometheus receiver.
• Enable the integration by adding it to a pipeline.

Prerequisites

• A deployed Kubernetes operator for both the Collector and the NGINX Ingress Controller.

  See also Use Prometheus with an OpenTelemetry Collector on Kubernetes.
  (Lightstep documentation)

• You’ve configured the Collector to export metric data to Lightstep Observability.

Configure NGINX Ingress Controller reporting

You need to configure NGINX Ingress Controller to use the Prometheus exporter.

1. In the NginxIngressController manifest (nginx-ingress-controller.yaml), add the following to the spec object:

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   prometheus:
     create: true
     port: 9113
     scheme: http
   

2. Expose this port in the service to be sure that the Collector can scrape it. To do that, add a map for customPorts at spec.controller.service.customPorts:

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  service:
    create: true
    port: 9113
    scheme: http

For more details about using NGINX Ingress Controller with the Prometheus exporter, see the official NGINX Ingress Controller documentation.

Configure the Collector receiver

In the Collector configuration file, configure the Prometheus receiver to use the NGINX Ingress Controller config key in the Controller’s spec as a scrape target.

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receivers:
  prometheus:
      config:
        scrape_configs:
          - job_name: otel-nginx-eg
            static_configs:
              - targets: ["my-nginx-nginx-ingress:9113"]

The OpenTelemetry repo’s README provides additional details about Prometheus receiver configuration.

More details about the Prometheus scrape configuration can be found here.

Enable the Collector receiver

Once the NGINX Ingress Controller receiver is configured, enable it by adding it to one or more pipelines as described in the Collector configuration documentation.

Validate metrics are reporting to Lightstep

You can validate that metrics are reporting to Lightstep on the Metrics details page in Project settings.

1. In Lightstep, click Project settings > Metric details.

2. Search for NGINX Ingress Controller metric names.

   See the NGINX docs for a complete list of emitted metrics.

3. If needed, click on the metric to edit the description and how the units are displayed in Lightstep.

Create a dashboard for the metrics

Use the Lightstep Terraform Provider to create a dashboard for the metrics.

Additional resources

• For a more complete example that’s ready to run, see the NGINX Ingress Controller integration in Lightstep OpenTelemetry Examples

• Replace Prometheus with an OpenTelemetry Collector on Kubernetes
  (Lightstep documentation)

• Integrating OpenTelemetry into the Modern Apps Reference Architecture – A Progress Report
  (NGINX blog post)