Apache HBase

Monitor Apache HBase — region server load, compaction queues, memstore usage, and RPC latency — using the JMX Exporter. Detect performance bottlenecks in your HBase cluster early using xScaler dashboards and alerts.

Pattern: JMX Exporter agent → Prometheus scrape → xScaler remote_write

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Prerequisites

• Apache HBase 2.x
• Java 8 or later
• jmx_prometheus_javaagent.jar downloaded from the Prometheus JMX Exporter releases
• xScaler tenant credentials (token + tenant ID)

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Option A — Prometheus Exporter

Attach the JMX Exporter Java agent to both the HBase Master and RegionServer JVMs. Add the following to hbase-env.sh:

# For HBase Master
export HBASE_MASTER_OPTS="$HBASE_MASTER_OPTS \
  -javaagent:/opt/jmx_exporter.jar=9515:/etc/hbase/jmx_exporter.yml"

# For HBase RegionServer
export HBASE_REGIONSERVER_OPTS="$HBASE_REGIONSERVER_OPTS \
  -javaagent:/opt/jmx_exporter.jar=9515:/etc/hbase/jmx_exporter.yml"

Create /etc/hbase/jmx_exporter.yml:

lowercaseOutputName: true
rules:
  - pattern: "Hadoop<service=HBase, name=(.+)><>(\\w+)"
    name: hbase_$1_$2
    labels:
      service: "$1"

Restart HBase. The exporter listens on port 9515. Configure Prometheus to scrape and remote_write:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: hbase
    static_configs:
      - targets:
          - "hbase-master:9515"
          - "hbase-regionserver-1:9515"
          - "hbase-regionserver-2:9515"

remote_write:
  - url: https://euw1-01.m.xscalerlabs.com/api/v1/push
    authorization:
      type: Bearer
      credentials: <token>
    headers:
      X-Scope-OrgID: "<tenant-id>"

Option B — Grafana Alloy

prometheus.scrape "hbase" {
  targets = [
    {"__address__" = "hbase-master:9515"},
    {"__address__" = "hbase-regionserver-1:9515"},
    {"__address__" = "hbase-regionserver-2:9515"},
  ]
  forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.xscaler.receiver]
}

prometheus.remote_write "xscaler" {
  endpoint {
    url = "https://euw1-01.m.xscalerlabs.com/api/v1/push"
    authorization {
      type        = "Bearer"
      credentials = "<token>"
    }
    headers = { "X-Scope-OrgID" = "<tenant-id>" }
  }
}

Option C — OpenTelemetry Collector

receivers:
  jmx:
    jar_path: /opt/opentelemetry-jmx-metrics.jar
    endpoint: localhost:10102
    target_system: hbase
    collection_interval: 30s

processors:
  batch: {}

exporters:
  otlphttp/xscaler:
    endpoint: https://euw1-01.m.xscalerlabs.com
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer <token>"
      X-Scope-OrgID: "<tenant-id>"
    compression: gzip

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [jmx]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlphttp/xscaler]

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Logs

Collect HBase Master, RegionServer, and ZooKeeper logs. Add the following to your Alloy config:

local.file_match "hbase_logs" {
  path_targets = [{
    __address__ = "localhost",
    __path__    = "/var/log/hbase/*.log",
    instance    = constants.hostname,
    job         = "integrations/hbase",
  }]
}

loki.source.file "hbase_logs" {
  targets    = local.file_match.hbase_logs.targets
  forward_to = [loki.write.xscaler.receiver]
}

loki.write "xscaler" {
  endpoint {
    url = "https://euw1-01.l.xscalerlabs.com/api/v1/logs/push"

    http_client_config {
      authorization {
        type        = "Bearer"
        credentials = env("XSCALER_TOKEN")
      }
    }

    headers = { "X-Scope-OrgID" = env("XSCALER_TENANT_ID") }
  }
}

Key metrics

Metric	Description
hbase_regionserver_readrequestcount	Total read requests handled by each RegionServer
hbase_regionserver_writerequestcount	Total write requests handled by each RegionServer
hbase_regionserver_memstoresize	Total memstore size in bytes across all regions on the server
hbase_regionserver_compactionqueuelength	Number of compaction tasks waiting to be executed
hbase_master_numdeadregionservers	Number of RegionServers currently considered dead by the Master
hbase_jvm_gc_time_millis	Cumulative garbage collection pause time in milliseconds