1. Introduction

1.1. What this package provides

The IBM Z HMC Prometheus Exporter is a Prometheus exporter written in Python that retrieves metrics from the IBM Z Hardware Management Console (HMC) and exports them to the Prometheus monitoring system.

The exporter attempts to stay up as much as possible, for example it performs automatic session renewals with the HMC if the logon session expires, and it survives HMC reboots and automatically picks up metrics collection again once the HMC come back up.

1.2. Supported environments

  • Operating systems: Linux, macOS, Windows

  • Python versions: 3.5 and higher

  • HMC versions: 2.11.1 and higher

1.3. Quickstart

  • Install the exporter and all of its Python dependencies as follows:

    $ pip install zhmc-prometheus-exporter

  • Provide an HMC credentials file for use by the exporter.

    The HMC credentials file tells the exporter which HMC to talk to for obtaining metrics, and which userid and password to use for logging on to the HMC.

    Download the Sample HMC credentials file as hmccreds.yaml and edit that copy accordingly.

    For details, see HMC credentials file.

  • Provide a metric definition file for use by the exporter.

    The metric definition file maps the metrics returned by the HMC to metrics exported to Prometheus.

    Furthermore, the metric definition file allows optimizing the access time to the HMC by disabling the fetching of metrics that are not needed.

    Download the Sample metric definition file as metrics.yaml. It can be used as it is and will have all metrics enabled and mapped properly. You only need to edit the file if you want to adjust the metric names, labels, or metric descriptions, or if you want to optimize access time by disabling metrics not needed.

    For details, see Metric definition file.

  • Run the exporter as follows:

    $ zhmc_prometheus_exporter -c hmccreds.yaml -m metrics.yaml
Exporter is up and running on port 9291

    Depending on the number of CPCs managed by your HMC, and dependent on how many metrics are enabled, it will take some time until the exporter reports to be up and running. You can see what it does in the mean time by using the -v option. Subsequent requests to the exporter will be sub-second.

  • Direct your web browser at http://localhost:9291 to see the exported Prometheus metrics. Refreshing the browser will update the metrics.

1.4. Reporting issues

If you encounter a problem, please report it as an issue on GitHub.

1.5. License

This package is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.