Monitoring Nginx with Prometheus: Configuration and Visualization Guide

Nginx is a high‑performance web server that often requires monitoring to ensure reliable operation.

This guide explains how to use Prometheus to collect Nginx performance metrics.

1. Enable the stub_status module

Add a location block to the Nginx configuration:

location /stub_status {
    stub_status;
    access_log off;
}

Reload Nginx to apply the changes:

$ sudo nginx -t
$ sudo nginx -s reload

2. Install Nginx Exporter

Download and extract the exporter binary, then start it pointing to the stub_status endpoint:

$ wget https://github.com/nginxinc/nginx-prometheus-exporter/releases/download/v0.11.0/nginx-prometheus-exporter_0.11.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
$ mkdir nginx-prometheus-exporter
$ tar -zxvf nginx-prometheus-exporter_0.11.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz -C nginx-prometheus-exporter
$ cd nginx-prometheus-exporter
$ ./nginx-prometheus-exporter -nginx.scrape-uri=http://192.168.214.100:80/stub_status

3. Configure Prometheus

Add a job for the exporter in prometheus.yml:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'nginx'
    scrape_interval: 10s
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9113']

Restart Prometheus:

$ prometheus --config.file /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml &

After a short wait, the Nginx metrics appear in the Prometheus web UI. Example queries include nginx_connections_active, nginx_http_requests_total, and nginx_up.

Optionally, import these metrics into Grafana to build dashboards for visual monitoring.