Kafka JMX Exporter Integration

Use this integration when your Kafka cluster runs on Kubernetes through Strimzi and already exposes JMX metrics in Prometheus format. It’s a Kubernetes-native alternative to Kafka Integration’s kafkametrics receiver: instead of connecting to the Kafka protocol directly, the OpenTelemetry Collector scrapes the JMX Prometheus Exporter endpoint that Strimzi already exposes on each broker and exporter pod.

Prerequisites

1. A Strimzi Kafka cluster.
2. The JMX Prometheus Exporter enabled on the cluster.
3. Metrics exposed on port 9404.

Step 1: Install the Agent

Install and run the KloudMate Agent in your Kubernetes cluster. See Kubernetes for the Helm install steps.

Step 2: Define the Prometheus Receiver for Kafka JMX Metrics

Add the following configuration to the Agent’s collector configuration.

extensions:
  health_check:
    endpoint: 0.0.0.0:13133

receivers:
  prometheus:
    config:
      global:
        scrape_interval: 30s

      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: kafka-resources
          kubernetes_sd_configs:
            - role: pod

          relabel_configs:
            - source_labels:
                - __meta_kubernetes_namespace
              action: keep
              regex: kafka-prod

            - source_labels:
                - __meta_kubernetes_pod_label_strimzi_io_component_type
              action: keep
              regex: kafka|kafka-exporter

            - source_labels:
                - __meta_kubernetes_pod_container_port_name
              action: keep
              regex: tcp-prometheus

This uses Kubernetes service discovery to find every pod in the cluster, then narrows the scrape targets down through three relabel_configs stages: the first keeps only pods in the kafka-prod namespace, the second keeps only pods whose Strimzi component-type label is kafka or kafka-exporter, and the third keeps only the tcp-prometheus container port those pods expose. Replace the kafka-prod regex with your own Kafka namespace before applying the configuration.

Step 3: Add to Pipeline

Add the prometheus receiver to the metrics pipeline in your Agent configuration.

service:
  extensions:
    - health_check
  telemetry:
    metrics:
      level: none
  pipelines:
    metrics/kafka-jmx:
      receivers:
        - prometheus
      processors:
        - batch
      exporters:
        - otlphttp

Step 4: Apply the Configuration

If you run the OpenTelemetry Collector through the KloudMate Agent in managed mode, add this configuration through Custom config override instead of editing the deployment’s YAML directly — the override merges it into the running configuration without switching the agent to manual mode. If you operate your own OpenTelemetry Collector, merge this block into its existing configuration instead.

Step 5: Restart the Collector

If the Agent runs as a Kubernetes workload, restart whichever one runs your Collector:

kubectl rollout restart deployment <otel-collector> -n <namespace>

or

kubectl rollout restart daemonset <otel-collector> -n <namespace>

Step 6: Validate in KloudMate

After the Agent restarts:

• Open Explore in KloudMate.
• Query one of the scraped metrics, for example:

kafka_server_brokertopicmetrics_messagesin_total

kafka_server_replicamanager_leadercount

kafka_consumergroup_lag

• Build dashboards or alerts once the data is visible.

Metrics Collected

This integration collects:

• Kafka broker metrics
• Kafka topic metrics
• Kafka consumer group metrics
• Kafka Exporter metrics
• JVM metrics
• Broker health metrics
• Replication metrics
• Network metrics
• Request metrics
• Controller metrics

Related

• Kafka Integration — the kafkametrics receiver alternative, for brokers reachable directly over the Kafka protocol instead of through JMX.
• Prometheus Integration — the general-purpose pattern this integration builds on.
• Custom config override — how to add this receiver to a managed KloudMate Agent.
• Explore — where to query the collected metrics.