HBase metrics

HBase provides an interface to tap into the various metrics that it provides. The new improved Metrics2 system has a lot of metrics for looking into how the HBase components perform. The main motivation behind any metrics collection is to understand the behavior of the system, debug any issues, or give us a forecast for our requirements.

The HBase master, region server has a Metrics2 system to tap into and look for minute details in terms of its memory, CPU, and I/O parameters.

We can get metrics from many components in the case of HBase, as shown in the following diagram:

The collection method could be as simple as writing to a file or web UI or JMX or Ganglia. To collect metrics in any of the given forms, HBase must generate them first by using hadoop-metrics.properties by enabling the contexts per plugin.

These contexts could be RPC, region server-based, or JVM contexts; accordingly, the metrics will be generated either to a file or to the Ganglia gmetd daemon.

For region servers...