📊 Spring Boot + Grafana Monitoring Stack

A complete, production-ready monitoring solution for Spring Boot applications using Prometheus and Grafana. Get beautiful real-time dashboards in minutes!


🌟 Features

• ✅ Real-time metrics - Monitor your application performance live
• ✅ Pre-configured dashboards - Professional visualizations out of the box
• ✅ Custom metrics - Track business logic and technical metrics
• ✅ Docker Compose - One command to start everything
• ✅ Production-ready - Security and best practices included
• ✅ Easy to extend - Add your own metrics and dashboards

🚀 Quick Start

Prerequisites

• Java 17+
• Docker & Docker Compose
• Gradle (included via wrapper)

Start the Stack

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/spring-boot-grafana.git
cd spring-boot-grafana

# Start all services
docker compose up -d

# Wait ~30 seconds for everything to initialize

Access the Services

• Spring Boot App: http://localhost:8080
• Prometheus: http://localhost:9090
• Grafana: http://localhost:3000 (admin/admin)

That's it! 🎉

📁 Project Structure

spring-boot-grafana/
├── spring-boot-app/              # Spring Boot application
│   ├── src/
│   │   └── main/
│   │       ├── java/
│   │       │   └── com/meehdi/demo/
│   │       │       ├── controller/
│   │       │       │   └── MetricsController.java
│   │       │       └── config/
│   │       │           └── CustomMetricsConfig.java
│   │       └── resources/
│   │           └── application.yml
│   ├── build.gradle
│   └── Dockerfile
├── docker/                       # Docker configurations
│   ├── prometheus/
│   │   └── prometheus.yml       # Prometheus scraping config
│   └── grafana/
│       └── provisioning/
│           └── datasources/
│               └── datasource.yml
├── docker compose.yml           # Orchestration file
├── test-endpoints.sh            # Load testing script
└── README.md

🧪 Testing the Endpoints

Manual Testing

# Health check
curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

# Simple endpoint
curl http://localhost:8080/api/hello

# Random success/error endpoint
curl http://localhost:8080/api/random

# View current statistics
curl http://localhost:8080/api/metrics/stats

# View raw Prometheus metrics
curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/prometheus

Load Testing

Generate realistic traffic to populate your dashboards:

chmod +x test-endpoints.sh
./test-endpoints.sh

This script will continuously send requests to various endpoints, creating data for your Grafana dashboards.

📊 Setting Up Grafana Dashboards

Import Pre-Built Dashboards

1. Open Grafana at http://localhost:3000
2. Login with admin / admin (change password when prompted)
3. Click "+" → "Import"
4. Enter one of these dashboard IDs:
   • 4701 - JVM Micrometer
   • 11378 - Spring Boot Statistics
5. Select Prometheus as the data source
6. Click Import

View Logs

# All services
docker compose logs -f

# Specific service
docker compose logs -f spring-boot-app
docker compose logs -f prometheus
docker compose logs -f grafana

🚨 Troubleshooting

Prometheus Can't Connect to Spring Boot

Check if the app is running:

curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

Check Prometheus targets:

• Go to http://localhost:9090/targets
• Look for spring-boot-app - should show "UP"

Check Docker networking:

docker exec prometheus ping spring-boot-app

Grafana Shows "No Data"

1. Verify Prometheus is collecting metrics:

   • Go to http://localhost:9090
   • Query: api_requests_total
   • Should show results

2. Check Grafana data source:

   • Configuration → Data Sources → Prometheus
   • Click "Save & Test" - should show green checkmark

3. Verify time range in Grafana (top right corner)

Can't Access Services

Check if containers are running:

docker compose ps

Restart everything:

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

🔒 Production Considerations

Before deploying to production:

• Change Grafana admin password
• Limit exposed actuator endpoints
• Add authentication to Prometheus and Grafana
• Set up HTTPS/TLS
• Configure resource limits in docker compose
• Set up backup for Grafana dashboards
• Configure alerting rules
• Use persistent volumes for data

Example Production application.yml

management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: prometheus,health  # Only essentials
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: never  # Don't expose details

📚 Learn More

• Medium Article - Detailed tutorial
• Micrometer Documentation
• Prometheus Documentation
• Grafana Documentation
• Spring Boot Actuator

📝 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

⭐ Show Your Support

If this project helped you, please give it a ⭐️!

👤 Author

• GitHub: @Meehdi
• Medium: @elmehdi.kzadri
• LinkedIn: El Mehdi KZADRI

Made with ❤️ and ☕ by developers, for developers