Rabbitmq Prometheus Exporter vs Prometheus Plugin for RabbitMQ

Question

We are currently trying to use Prometheus/Grafana in order to monitor several RabbitMQ instances deployed on multiple Docker containers.

My question is quite simple, what's the difference between using the Rabbitmq Prometheus Exporter vs Prometheus Plugin for RabbitMQ?

• Does the exporter scrape different/more information compared to the Plugin?
• Is there an overhead when using the Pluging compared to the exporter?
• Is it just a question of RabbiMQ's version?
• What is the added value from using one of the two options?

So basically what approach is better or can they be used in combination.

Answer 1

I have not trued out the plugin, but as far as I read it exports the same metrics as the exporter. The plugin has the advantage that it does not add complexity:

• You need to host the rabbit exporter (which is not much effort, but still you need to make sure it runs, is updated from time to time,...)

• You need an account for the rabbit exporter that can query the metrics which is a security issue. Your credentials might get stolen or the exporter might get compromised and and attacker would have access to your rabbit cluster.

• Since there might be network between your rabbit cluster and the Rabbit exporter there might be the situation the exporter cannot reach the cluster while the plugin could still produce the metrics.

These are not big issues, we use the exporter for years now and never had an issue with it, but still, if we would start from scratch, we would give the plugin a try.