Monitoring Nginx with Prometheus and Grafana

Enable Nginx Stub Status

server {
    listen 127.0.0.1:8080;
    location /nginx_status {
        stub_status on;
        allow 127.0.0.1;
        deny all;
    }
}

Install Nginx Exporter

wget https://github.com/nginxinc/nginx-prometheus-exporter/releases/download/v1.1.0/nginx-prometheus-exporter_1.1.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
tar xzf nginx-prometheus-exporter_*.tar.gz
sudo mv nginx-prometheus-exporter /usr/local/bin/

Create Systemd Service

[Unit]
Description=Nginx Prometheus Exporter
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/nginx-prometheus-exporter --nginx.scrape-uri=http://127.0.0.1:8080/nginx_status
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Add to Prometheus

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: "nginx"
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:9113"]

Grafana Dashboard

Import dashboard ID 12708 in Grafana for a pre-built Nginx overview. Key metrics to track:

• Active connections — current client connections
• Request rate — requests per second
• Response status codes — 2xx, 4xx, 5xx distribution