Master Spring Boot Admin: Build a Full‑Featured Monitoring Dashboard

Overview

Spring Boot Admin provides management and monitoring for Spring Boot applications, allowing you to check health, online status, JVM metrics, and more.

Architecture

It consists of a server ( spring-boot-admin-server) and a client ( spring-boot-admin-client) that communicate via HTTP. In a monolithic project the client must be added to be monitored. In Spring Cloud projects the server can pull application information directly from the registry without each microservice integrating the client.

Key Features

Display application health status

Monitor application up/down events

View JVM and thread information

Visualize and download log files

Dynamically change log levels

Trace HTTP request information

Server Setup

1. Create a Spring Boot project

Add the following dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>de.codecentric</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-admin-starter-server</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
</dependency>

Enable the admin server in the main class: @EnableAdminServer Configure Spring Security (example):

import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.config.AdminServerProperties;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.builders.HttpSecurity;
import org.springframework.security.config.annotation.web.configuration.WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter;
import org.springframework.security.web.authentication.SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler;
import org.springframework.security.web.csrf.CookieCsrfTokenRepository;

@Configuration
public class SecuritySecureConfig extends WebSecurityConfigurerAdapter {
    private final String adminContextPath;
    public SecuritySecureConfig(AdminServerProperties adminServerProperties) {
        this.adminContextPath = adminServerProperties.getContextPath();
    }
    @Override
    protected void configure(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler successHandler = new SavedRequestAwareAuthenticationSuccessHandler();
        successHandler.setTargetUrlParameter("redirectTo");
        successHandler.setDefaultTargetUrl(adminContextPath + "/");
        http.authorizeRequests()
            .antMatchers(adminContextPath + "/assets/**").permitAll()
            .antMatchers(adminContextPath + "/login", "/css/**", "/js/**", "/image/*").permitAll()
            .anyRequest().authenticated()
            .and()
            .formLogin().loginPage(adminContextPath + "/login").successHandler(successHandler).and()
            .logout().logoutUrl(adminContextPath + "/logout").and()
            .httpBasic().and()
            .csrf()
            .csrfTokenRepository(CookieCsrfTokenRepository.withHttpOnlyFalse())
            .ignoringAntMatchers("/instances", "/actuator/**");
    }
}

Add the following application.yml configuration:

server:
  port: 9111
spring:
  boot:
    admin:
      ui:
        title: HMB Service Monitoring Center
      client:
        instance:
          metadata:
            tags:
              environment: local
      probed-endpoints: health,env,metrics,httptrace:trace,threaddump:dump,jolokia,info,logfile,refresh,flyway,liquibase,heapdump,loggers,auditevents
      monitor:
        default-timeout: 20000
  security:
    user:
      name: admin
      password: admin
management:
  trace:
    http:
      enabled: true
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: "*"
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: always

Run the application and access http://localhost:9111 with the credentials admin / admin.

Client Setup

1. Add dependencies

<dependency>
    <groupId>de.codecentric</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-admin-starter-client</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Configure application.yml for the client:

server:
  port: 9222
spring:
  application:
    name: client
  boot:
    admin:
      client:
        url: http://localhost:9111
        username: admin
        password: admin
        instance:
          prefer-ip: true
management:
  trace:
    http:
      enabled: true
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: "*"
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: always
  logfile:
    external-file: ./logs/client-info.log

Start the client; it will register with the server and appear in the dashboard.

Custom Notification Example

The following notifier sends a warning when a service status changes:

import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.domain.entities.Instance;
import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.domain.entities.InstanceRepository;
import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.domain.events.InstanceEvent;
import de.codecentric.boot.admin.server.notify.AbstractStatusChangeNotifier;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import reactor.core.publisher.Mono;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Map;

@Component
public class WarnNotifier extends AbstractStatusChangeNotifier {
    public WarnNotifier(InstanceRepository repository) {
        super(repository);
    }
    @Override
    protected Mono<Void> doNotify(InstanceEvent event, Instance instance) {
        String serviceName = instance.getRegistration().getName();
        String serviceUrl = instance.getRegistration().getServiceUrl();
        String status = instance.getStatusInfo().getStatus();
        Map<String, Object> details = instance.getStatusInfo().getDetails();
        String format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss").format(new Date());
        StringBuilder str = new StringBuilder();
        str.append("Service: 【" + serviceName + "】
");
        str.append("Status: 【" + status + "】
");
        str.append("URL: 【" + serviceUrl + "】
");
        str.append("Time: " + format + "
");
        return Mono.fromRunnable(() -> {
            // implement your alerting logic here, e.g., send SMS
        });
    }
}

Microservice Integration

When using Nacos as a service registry, add the Nacos discovery dependency and configure the address in application.yml:

spring:
  cloud:
    nacos:
      discovery:
        server-addr: localhost:8848

The client can discover services without adding the admin client dependency, as Spring Boot Admin will locate services in the registry. If a service defines a custom context-path, add the corresponding management path in the configuration:

spring:
  cloud:
    nacos:
      discovery:
        metadata:
          management:
            context-path: ${server.servlet.context-path}/actuator