Enabling metrics and graphs for your Matrix server (optional)

It can be useful to have some (visual) insight into the performance of your homeserver.

You can enable this with the following settings in your configuration file (inventory/host_vars/matrix.<your-domain>/vars.yml):

Remember to add stats.<your-domain> to DNS as described in Configuring DNS before running the playbook.

prometheus_enabled: true

# You can remove this, if unnecessary.
prometheus_node_exporter_enabled: true

# You can remove this, if unnecessary.
prometheus_postgres_exporter_enabled: true

# You can remove this, if unnecessary.
matrix_prometheus_nginxlog_exporter_enabled: true

grafana_enabled: true

grafana_anonymous_access: false

# This has no relation to your Matrix user id. It can be any username you'd like.
# Changing the username subsequently won't work.
grafana_default_admin_user: "some_username_chosen_by_you"

# Changing the password subsequently won't work.
grafana_default_admin_password: "some_strong_password_chosen_by_you"

By default, a Grafana web user-interface will be available at https://stats.<your-domain>.

The retention policy of Prometheus metrics is 15 days by default. Older data gets deleted automatically.

What does it do?

Name	Description
`prometheus_enabled`	Prometheus is a time series database. It holds all the data we're going to talk about.
`prometheus_node_exporter_enabled`	Node Exporter is an addon of sorts to Prometheus that collects generic system information such as CPU, memory, filesystem, and even system temperatures
`prometheus_postgres_exporter_enabled`	Postgres Exporter is an addon of sorts to expose Postgres database metrics to Prometheus.
`matrix_prometheus_nginxlog_exporter_enabled`	NGINX Log Exporter is an addon of sorts to expose NGINX logs to Prometheus.
`grafana_enabled`	Grafana is the visual component. It shows (on the `stats.<your-domain>` subdomain) the dashboards with the graphs that we're interested in
`grafana_anonymous_access`	By default you need to log in to see graphs. If you want to publicly share your graphs (e.g. when asking for help in `#synapse:matrix.org`) you'll want to enable this option.
`grafana_default_admin_user` `grafana_default_admin_password`	By default Grafana creates a user with `admin` as the username and password. If you feel this is insecure and you want to change it beforehand, you can do that here

Security and privacy

Metrics and resulting graphs can contain a lot of information. This includes system specs but also usage patterns. This applies especially to small personal/family scale homeservers. Someone might be able to figure out when you wake up and go to sleep by looking at the graphs over time. Think about this before enabling anonymous access. And you should really not forget to change your Grafana password.

Most of our docker containers run with limited system access, but the prometheus-node-exporter has access to the host network stack and (readonly) root filesystem. This is required to report on them. If you don't like that, you can set prometheus_node_exporter_enabled: false (which is actually the default). You will still get Synapse metrics with this container disabled. Both of the dashboards will always be enabled, so you can still look at historical data after disabling either source.

Collecting metrics to an external Prometheus server

If the integrated Prometheus server is enabled (prometheus_enabled: true), metrics are collected by it from each service via communication that happens over the container network. Each service does not need to expose its metrics "publicly".

When you'd like to collect metrics from an external Prometheus server, you need to expose service metrics outside of the container network.

The playbook provides a single endpoint (https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/*), under which various services may expose their metrics (e.g. /metrics/node-exporter, /metrics/postgres-exporter, /metrics/hookshot, etc). To expose all services on this /metrics/* feature, use matrix_metrics_exposure_enabled. To protect access using Basic Authentication, see matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_enabled and matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users below.

When using matrix_metrics_exposure_enabled, you don't need to expose metrics for individual services one by one.

The following variables may be of interest:

Name	Description
`matrix_metrics_exposure_enabled`	Set this to `true` to enable metrics exposure for all services on `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/*`. If you think this is too much, refer to the helpful (but nonexhaustive) list of individual `matrix_SERVICE_metrics_proxying_enabled` variables below for exposing metrics on a per-service basis.
`matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_enabled`	Set this to `true` to protect all `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/*` endpoints with Basic Authentication (see the other variables below for supplying the actual credentials). When enabled, all endpoints beneath `/metrics` will be protected with the same credentials
`matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users`	Set this to the Basic Authentication credentials (raw `htpasswd` file content) used to protect `/metrics/*`. This htpasswd-file needs to be generated with the `htpasswd` tool and can include multiple username/password pairs.
`matrix_synapse_metrics_enabled`	Set this to `true` to make Synapse expose metrics (locally, on the container network)
`matrix_synapse_metrics_proxying_enabled`	Set this to `true` to expose Synapse's metrics on `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/synapse/main-process` and `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/synapse/worker/TYPE-ID`. Read below if you're running a Synapse worker setup (`matrix_synapse_workers_enabled: true`). To password-protect the metrics, see `matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users` above.
`prometheus_node_exporter_enabled`	Set this to `true` to enable the node (general system stats) exporter (locally, on the container network)
`matrix_prometheus_services_proxy_connect_prometheus_node_exporter_metrics_proxying_enabled`	Set this to `true` to expose the node (general system stats) metrics on `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/node-exporter`. To password-protect the metrics, see `matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users` above.
`prometheus_postgres_exporter_enabled`	Set this to `true` to enable the Postgres exporter (locally, on the container network)
`matrix_prometheus_nginxlog_exporter_enabled`	Set this to `true` to enable the NGINX Log exporter (locally, on the container network)
`matrix_prometheus_services_proxy_connect_prometheus_postgres_exporter_metrics_proxying_enabled`	Set this to `true` to expose the Postgres exporter metrics on `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/postgres-exporter`. To password-protect the metrics, see `matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users` above.
`matrix_bridge_hookshot_metrics_enabled`	Set this to `true` to make Hookshot expose metrics (locally, on the container network)
`matrix_bridge_hookshot_metrics_proxying_enabled`	Set this to `true` to expose the Hookshot metrics on `https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/hookshot`. To password-protect the metrics, see `matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users` above.
`matrix_SERVICE_metrics_proxying_enabled`	Various other services/roles may provide similar `_metrics_enabled` and `_metrics_proxying_enabled` variables for exposing their metrics. Refer to each role for details. To password-protect the metrics, see `matrix_metrics_exposure_http_basic_auth_users` above or `matrix_SERVICE_container_labels_metrics_middleware_basic_auth_enabled`/`matrix_SERVICE_container_labels_metrics_middleware_basic_auth_users` variables provided by each role.
`matrix_media_repo_metrics_enabled`	Set this to `true` to make media-repo expose metrics (locally, on the container network)

Collecting Synapse worker metrics to an external Prometheus server

If you are using workers (matrix_synapse_workers_enabled: true) and have enabled matrix_synapse_metrics_proxying_enabled as described above, the playbook will also automatically expose all Synapse worker threads' metrics to https://matrix.DOMAIN/metrics/synapse/worker/ID, where ID corresponds to the worker id as exemplified in matrix_synapse_workers_enabled_list.

The playbook also generates an exemplary config file (/matrix/synapse/external_prometheus.yml.template) with all the correct paths which you can copy to your Prometheus server and adapt to your needs. Make sure to edit the specified password_file path and contents and path to your synapse-v2.rules. It will look a bit like this:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'synapse'
    metrics_path: /metrics/synapse/main-process
    scheme: https
    basic_auth:
      username: prometheus
      password_file: /etc/prometheus/password.pwd
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['matrix.DOMAIN:443']
        labels:
          job: "master"
          index: 1
  - job_name: 'matrix-synapse-synapse-worker-generic-worker-0'
    metrics_path: /metrics/synapse/worker/generic-worker-0
    scheme: https
    basic_auth:
      username: prometheus
      password_file: /etc/prometheus/password.pwd
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['matrix.DOMAIN:443']
        labels:
          job: "generic_worker"
          index: 18111

More information

Understanding Synapse Performance Issues Through Grafana Graphs at the Synapse Github Wiki
The Prometheus scraping rules (we use v2)
The Synapse Grafana dashboard
The Node Exporter dashboard (for generic non-synapse performance graphs)

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