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RabbitMQ Alerting with Prometheus

This tutorial shows you how to configure Prometheus-based alerting for a KubeDB-managed RabbitMQ instance using the rabbitmq-alerts Helm chart.

Before You Begin

• Ensure you have a Kubernetes cluster and that kubectl is configured to communicate with it. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one using kind.

• Install the KubeDB operator by following the steps here.

• Create a dedicated namespace to deploy the database:

  $ kubectl create ns alert-rabbitmq
  namespace/alert-rabbitmq created
  

• This tutorial assumes you already have a kube-prometheus-stack running in your cluster, with Prometheus configured so that both serviceMonitorSelector and ruleSelector match the label release: prometheus. See the Grafana Dashboard guide for how to deploy kube-prometheus-stack if you don’t have it yet.

  To verify the selectors:

  $ kubectl get prometheus -n monitoring -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.ruleSelector}'
  {"matchLabels":{"release":"prometheus"}}
  
  $ kubectl get prometheus -n monitoring -o jsonpath='{.items[0].spec.serviceMonitorSelector}'
  {"matchLabels":{"release":"prometheus"}}
  

• To learn more about how Prometheus monitoring works with KubeDB, see the overview here.

• For dashboards and visualisation, see Grafana Dashboard for RabbitMQ.

Note: YAML files used in this tutorial are stored in docs/examples/rabbitmq folder in GitHub repository kubedb/docs.

Overview

• KubeDB deploys RabbitMQ with the built-in rabbitmq_prometheus plugin enabled, which serves metrics directly from the rabbitmq container on port 15692 — unlike some other databases, RabbitMQ needs no separate exporter sidecar.
• ServiceMonitor (named {rabbitmq-name}-stats) is created automatically by KubeDB and tells Prometheus to scrape the metrics endpoint every 10 seconds.
• KubeDB operator (panopticon) also exposes the CR’s own status as a metric, kubedb_com_rabbitmq_status_phase. The RabbitMQDown and provisioner-group alerts key off this metric instead of the database’s own stats endpoint, so they fire purely based on what KubeDB itself observes about the resource — even if the metrics scrape target is otherwise healthy.
• PrometheusRule is created by the rabbitmq-alerts chart and contains RabbitMQ alert definitions grouped by concern: database health and provisioner.
• Prometheus Operator evaluates every rule expression every 30 seconds and fires matching alerts to AlertManager.
• AlertManager groups, inhibits, and silences alerts, then routes them to configured receivers (Slack, email, PagerDuty, webhook, etc.).

Deploy RabbitMQ with Monitoring Enabled

At first, let’s deploy a RabbitMQ database with monitoring enabled. Below is the RabbitMQ object we are going to create.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1alpha2
kind: RabbitMQ
metadata:
  name: rmq-alert-demo
  namespace: alert-rabbitmq
spec:
  version: "4.0.4"
  replicas: 1
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  monitor:
    agent: prometheus.io/operator
    prometheus:
      serviceMonitor:
        interval: 10s
        labels:
          release: prometheus

Here,

• spec.monitor.agent: prometheus.io/operator tells KubeDB to create a ServiceMonitor resource managed by the Prometheus operator.
• spec.monitor.prometheus.serviceMonitor.labels.release: prometheus adds the release: prometheus label to the created ServiceMonitor, matching the Prometheus serviceMonitorSelector so the target is discovered automatically.

Let’s create the RabbitMQ resource.

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2026.6.19/docs/examples/rabbitmq/monitoring/rmq-alert-demo.yaml
rabbitmq.kubedb.com/rmq-alert-demo created

Now, wait for the database to go into Ready state.

$ kubectl get rabbitmq -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo
NAME             VERSION   STATUS   AGE
rmq-alert-demo   4.0.4     Ready    49s

KubeDB creates a dedicated stats service with the -stats suffix for monitoring.

$ kubectl get svc -n alert-rabbitmq --selector="app.kubernetes.io/instance=rmq-alert-demo"
NAME                         TYPE        CLUSTER-IP      EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)                                           AGE
rmq-alert-demo               ClusterIP   10.43.174.187   <none>        5672/TCP,1883/TCP,61613/TCP,15675/TCP,15674/TCP   59s
rmq-alert-demo-dashboard     ClusterIP   10.43.236.58    <none>        15672/TCP                                         59s
rmq-alert-demo-pods          ClusterIP   None            <none>        4369/TCP,25672/TCP                                59s
rmq-alert-demo-stats         ClusterIP   10.43.128.229   <none>        15692/TCP                                         59s

KubeDB also creates a ServiceMonitor that tells Prometheus where to scrape.

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n alert-rabbitmq
NAME                    AGE
rmq-alert-demo-stats    55s

Verify that the ServiceMonitor carries the release: prometheus label so Prometheus discovers it.

$ kubectl get servicemonitor -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo-stats \
    -o jsonpath='{.metadata.labels.release}'
prometheus

Step 1 — Install rabbitmq-alerts

The rabbitmq-alerts chart creates a PrometheusRule resource containing RabbitMQ alert definitions grouped by concern: database health and provisioner.

Why the Helm release name matters

The chart derives the PromQL job/instance scoping (and the PrometheusRule name) from the Helm release name, not from a values field — so the release name must match the RabbitMQ object’s name (rmq-alert-demo) for the rules to be correctly scoped to this instance.

The chart’s default label is release: kube-prometheus-stack, so we must also override it at install time to match the Prometheus ruleSelector.

Install

$ helm upgrade -i rmq-alert-demo oci://ghcr.io/appscode-charts/rabbitmq-alerts \
    -n alert-rabbitmq \
    --create-namespace \
    --version=v2026.7.14 \
    --set form.alert.labels.release=prometheus

Verify the PrometheusRule is created

$ kubectl get prometheusrule -n alert-rabbitmq
NAME             AGE
rmq-alert-demo   30s

Confirm the release: prometheus label is present.

$ kubectl get prometheusrule -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo \
    -o jsonpath='{.metadata.labels.release}'
prometheus

Confirm Prometheus loaded the rules

Port-forward the Prometheus UI and open the Status → Rule health page.

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring \
    svc/prometheus-kube-prometheus-prometheus 9090:9090

Open http://localhost:9090/rules?search=rabbitmq.

The rabbitmq.database.alert-rabbitmq.rmq-alert-demo.rules group is visible with all rules showing OK, confirming that Prometheus has loaded and is evaluating the RabbitMQ alert definitions every 30 seconds.

Verify End-to-End

1. Check the metrics endpoint is reachable

Because RabbitMQ’s Prometheus plugin runs inside the rabbitmq container itself, there is no separate exporter container to check — query the plugin’s own endpoint directly.

$ kubectl exec -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo-0 -c rabbitmq -- \
    wget -qO- http://127.0.0.1:15692/metrics | grep rabbitmq_identity_info
rabbitmq_identity_info{rabbitmq_node="rabbit@rmq-alert-demo-0.rmq-alert-demo-pods.alert-rabbitmq",rabbitmq_cluster="rmq-alert-demo",rabbitmq_cluster_permanent_id="rabbitmq-cluster-id-HcbvDHSZhF_lBd8K4iWRkQ"} 1

2. Check the Prometheus target is UP

Open http://localhost:9090/targets?search=rmq-alert-demo.

The target serviceMonitor/alert-rabbitmq/rmq-alert-demo-stats/0 shows UP, confirming metrics are being scraped from rmq-alert-demo-0 in the alert-rabbitmq namespace.

3. Confirm the RabbitMQ alerts

Open http://localhost:9090/alerts?search=rabbitmq to see the RabbitMQ alert groups.

9 of the 11 rules in the rabbitmq.database group show INACTIVE, meaning the cluster is healthy and no thresholds are breached. DiskUsageHigh and DiskAlmostFull show PENDING here — this demo cluster uses the local-path storage class, whose PVCs are just directories on the node’s root filesystem, so kubelet_volume_stats_used_bytes reflects the node’s actual disk usage rather than a small, isolated volume. On a node with real dedicated storage for the PVC, these two rules will normally sit INACTIVE just like the rest.

4. Check AlertManager

Port-forward AlertManager to view any currently firing alerts.

$ kubectl port-forward -n monitoring \
    svc/prometheus-kube-prometheus-alertmanager 9093:9093

Open http://localhost:9093. PENDING rules have not yet fired — only alerts that cross into FIRING are forwarded to AlertManager — so with a healthy RabbitMQ instance no alerts for rmq-alert-demo are listed here yet.

Simulating a Firing Alert

The previous section confirmed that the RabbitMQ alerts are healthy. This section walks through deliberately triggering the RabbitMQDown critical alert so you can observe the full alert lifecycle — from firing in Prometheus through to the AlertManager dashboard — and then resolve it.

1. Crash the RabbitMQ process

Kill the RabbitMQ process inside the pod. Unlike Memcached, a RabbitMQ pod has only a single rabbitmq container — the Prometheus plugin runs inside the same process being killed, so a lone kill 1 restarts fast enough that the container becomes Ready again before KubeDB’s health check can even observe the outage. Repeat the kill a few times over ~30–45 seconds to hold the pod in a crash loop long enough for the KubeDB operator to mark the RabbitMQ resource NotReady for the full evaluation window.

$ for i in $(seq 1 8); do
    kubectl exec -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo-0 -c rabbitmq -- kill 1
    sleep 6
  done

Watch the CR phase move from Ready → Critical → NotReady:

$ kubectl get rabbitmq -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo -o jsonpath='{.status.phase}'
NotReady

RabbitMQDown and RabbitMQPhaseCritical key off kubedb_com_rabbitmq_status_phase (a metric emitted by the KubeDB operator itself), so what matters is the CR’s status.phase, not the exporter’s own scrape health. Wait 30–60 seconds for the next rule-evaluation cycle (30 s) to register the failure once the phase settles on NotReady.

2. Watch the alert fire in Prometheus

Open http://localhost:9090/alerts?search=rabbitmq.

RabbitMQDown moves from INACTIVE to FIRING once its for: 30s window elapses with the phase held at NotReady. The provisioner-group KubeDBRabbitMQPhaseNotReady alert (for: 1m) fires for the same reason shortly after.

3. Check the AlertManager dashboard

Open http://localhost:9093/#/alerts?filter=%7Bnamespace%3D%22alert-rabbitmq%22%7D.

AlertManager shows both RabbitMQDown and KubeDBRabbitMQPhaseNotReady. The alert cards display:

• Severity: critical
• rabbitmq: rmq-alert-demo in the alert-rabbitmq namespace
• phase: NotReady
• Started: timestamp when the alert first fired

Note that the instance/pod/job labels on these two alerts point at the KubeDB operator’s panopticon component (e.g. job="panopticon"), not at the RabbitMQ pod itself — because these alerts are derived from the operator’s own status metric rather than from the database’s stats endpoint.

AlertManager routes this alert to every receiver configured in your alertmanagerConfig (Slack, email, PagerDuty, webhook, etc.) based on your routing tree. If no receiver is configured, the alert is visible here but silently dropped.

4. Restore RabbitMQ

Delete the pod so KubeDB recreates it cleanly.

$ kubectl delete pod -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo-0
pod "rmq-alert-demo-0" deleted

Once status.phase returns to Ready, Prometheus marks both alerts INACTIVE again and AlertManager sends a resolved notification to all receivers.

Alert Reference

All alerts are scoped to the rmq-alert-demo instance in the alert-rabbitmq namespace via the PromQL label filters job="rmq-alert-demo-stats" / app="rmq-alert-demo" and namespace="alert-rabbitmq".

Database Group

Fired based on live metrics from RabbitMQ’s rabbitmq_prometheus plugin, plus the two persistent-volume rules and the two KubeDB status-phase rules.

Provisioner Group

Monitors the KubeDB operator’s view of the RabbitMQ resource phase.

OpsManager Group

The chart’s values.yaml also ships an opsManager group (opsRequestOnProgress, opsRequestStatusProgressingToLong, opsRequestFailed), intended to track RabbitMQOpsRequest lifecycle during upgrades, scaling, and reconfiguration — the same pattern used by other *-alerts charts.

Verified note: in chart version v2026.7.14, templates/alert.yaml only renders the database and provisioner groups into the PrometheusRule — kubectl get prometheusrule -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo -o yaml shows no opsManager rules, even though opsManager.enabled is warning by default in values.yaml. If you rely on ops-request alerting, verify with kubectl get prometheusrule -n <namespace> <release> -o yaml after installing, and check for a newer chart version if you need these rules.

Customising Alerts

To override thresholds or disable specific alert groups, create a custom values file and upgrade the chart.

# custom-alerts.yaml
form:
  alert:
    labels:
      release: prometheus
    groups:
      database:
        enabled: warning
        rules:
          rabbitmqHighConnectionChurn:
            enabled: true
            duration: "2m"
            severity: warning
          diskUsageHigh:
            enabled: true
            val: 90        # fire at 90% disk usage instead of the default 80%
            duration: "5m"
            severity: warning
      provisioner:
        enabled: "none"    # disable all provisioner alerts

$ helm upgrade rmq-alert-demo oci://ghcr.io/appscode-charts/rabbitmq-alerts \
    -n alert-rabbitmq \
    --version=v2026.7.14 \
    -f custom-alerts.yaml

Cleaning up

To remove all resources created in this tutorial, run the following commands.

# Remove the rabbitmq-alerts release
$ helm uninstall rmq-alert-demo -n alert-rabbitmq

# Remove the RabbitMQ instance
$ kubectl delete rabbitmq -n alert-rabbitmq rmq-alert-demo

# Delete namespace
$ kubectl delete ns alert-rabbitmq

Next Steps

• Monitor your RabbitMQ database with KubeDB using builtin Prometheus.
• Monitor your RabbitMQ database with KubeDB using Prometheus operator.
• Visualise RabbitMQ metrics with Grafana Dashboard.
• Detail concepts of RabbitMQ object.
• Want to hack on KubeDB? Check our contribution guidelines.