# How to monitor MinIO server with Prometheus [](https://slack.min.io)
[Prometheus](https://prometheus.io) is a cloud-native monitoring platform, built originally at SoundCloud. Prometheus offers a multi-dimensional data model with time series data identified by metric name and key/value pairs. The data collection happens via a pull model over HTTP/HTTPS. Targets to pull data from are discovered via service discovery or static configuration.
MinIO exports Prometheus compatible data by default as an authorized endpoint at `/minio/prometheus/metrics`. Users looking to monitor their MinIO instances can point Prometheus configuration to scrape data from this endpoint.
This document explains how to setup Prometheus and configure it to scrape data from MinIO servers.
- [3.2 Public Prometheus config](#32-public-prometheus-config)
- [4. Update `scrape_configs` section in prometheus.yml](#4-update-scrapeconfigs-section-in-prometheusyml)
- [5. Start Prometheus](#5-start-prometheus)
- [List of metrics exposed by MinIO](#list-of-metrics-exposed-by-minio)
## Prerequisites
To get started with MinIO, refer [MinIO QuickStart Document](https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-quickstart-guide). Follow below steps to get started with MinIO monitoring using Prometheus.
### 1. Download Prometheus
[Download the latest release](https://prometheus.io/download) of Prometheus for your platform, then extract it
```sh
tar xvfz prometheus-*.tar.gz
cd prometheus-*
```
Prometheus server is a single binary called `prometheus` (or `prometheus.exe` on Microsoft Windows). Run the binary and pass `--help` flag to see available options
```sh
./prometheus --help
usage: prometheus [<flags>]
The Prometheus monitoring server
. . .
```
Refer [Prometheus documentation](https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/first_steps/) for more details.
### 2. Configure authentication type for Prometheus metrics
MinIO supports two authentication modes for Prometheus either `jwt` or `public`, by default MinIO runs in `jwt` mode. To allow public access without authentication for prometheus metrics set environment as follows.
```
export MINIO_PROMETHEUS_AUTH_TYPE="public"
minio server ~/test
```
### 3. Configuring Prometheus
#### 3.1 Authenticated Prometheus config
> If MinIO is configured to expose metrics without authentication, you don't need to use `mc` to generate prometheus config. You can skip reading further and move to 3.2 section.
The Prometheus endpoint in MinIO requires authentication by default. Prometheus supports a bearer token approach to authenticate prometheus scrape requests, override the default Prometheus config with the one generated using mc. To generate a Prometheus config for an alias, use [mc](https://docs.min.io/docs/minio-client-quickstart-guide) as follows `mc admin prometheus generate <alias>`.
The command will generate the `scrape_configs` section of the prometheus.yml as follows:
```yaml
scrape_configs:
- job_name: minio-job
bearer_token: <secret>
metrics_path: /minio/prometheus/metrics
scheme: http
static_configs:
- targets: ['localhost:9000']
```
#### 3.2 Public Prometheus config
If Prometheus endpoint authentication type is set to `public`. Following prometheus config is sufficient to start scraping metrics data from MinIO.
```yaml
scrape_configs:
- job_name: minio-job
metrics_path: /minio/prometheus/metrics
scheme: http
static_configs:
- targets: ['localhost:9000']
```
### 4. Update `scrape_configs` section in prometheus.yml
To authorize every scrape request, copy and paste the generated `scrape_configs` section in the prometheus.yml and restart the Prometheus service.
### 5. Start Prometheus
Start (or) Restart Prometheus service by running
```sh
./prometheus --config.file=prometheus.yml
```
Here `prometheus.yml` is the name of configuration file. You can now see MinIO metrics in Prometheus dashboard. By default Prometheus dashboard is accessible at `http://localhost:9090`.
## List of metrics exposed by MinIO
MinIO server exposes the following metrics on `/minio/prometheus/metrics` endpoint. All of these can be accessed via Prometheus dashboard. The full list of exposed metrics along with their definition is available in the demo server at https://play.min.io:9000/minio/prometheus/metrics
