Monitoring Java applications with the Prometheus JMX exporter and Grafana

Prometheus JMX Exporter enables monitoring of Java applications by bridging the gap between Java's native metric collection system, Java Management Extensions (JMX), and Prometheus, which is popular for collecting and querying metrics in cloud-native environments. The JMX Exporter converts JMX metrics into a format that Prometheus can understand, facilitating the integration of Java applications like Kafka into a modern monitoring setup. The tutorial demonstrates building the JMX Exporter using Maven, deploying Kafka, and incorporating its metrics into Grafana for visualization and alerting. The process involves setting up a Java environment, configuring the JMX Exporter as a Java agent, and ensuring the metrics are exposed on a specified port, with the option to compare Java's native jconsole output with that of Prometheus and Grafana. Once configured, this setup allows for effective monitoring of Java applications using modern tools.