<aside> 💡 The syntax is very much Terraform-inspired (not copied 😊). In fact, openmetrics-exporter uses the same HCL configuration syntax.

</aside>

<aside> 💡 Openmetrics-exporter emits data in Prometheus format, which is directly compatible with the OpenMetrics format.

Throughout the document, you will observe [Last9 Exclusive] which are additional benefits that can only be leveraged when sending data to Last9.

</aside>

The OpenMetrics project - Creating a standard for exposing metrics data

3-step example to observe an AWS Load Balancer

1️⃣ Step1: Create the following structure

Assuming, you initialized the repository using the Onboard through Last9 Github App guide, Inside the openmetrics-exporter directory, create a structure like this:

https://bit.ly/3uQwhjh

• config.hcl (Optional) You can have as many hcl files in a directory. The naming does not matter. But if you are familiar with Terraform provider is a known construct. We suggest saving the provider-specific configurations in a separate file. We call it config.hcl, but the content could very well have been in the same aws_components.hcl.
• aws_components.hcl is the main file linking all the modules required to observe a Load Balancer. To draw a parallel to Terraform, these are like Hashicorp .hcl files where you link to the Provider-specific modules.

2️⃣ Step 2: Create a my_variables.json file

• my_variables.json Variables input file. Straight out of the book of Terraform, like the terraform.tfvars.json file.

3️⃣ Step3: Test and Plan

<aside> 💡 If the single file gets too large, you can/should always split it into multiple fragments to your comfort.

</aside>

• You can validate your changes by doing a dry run using plan. Plan generates and shows output metrics in a debuggable format.

Demo

openmetrics-exporter-LB-demo.mp4

In the above example aws_components.hcl, we referred to the module_uri as

**module_uri** = "<https://github.com/last9/iox-registry/releases/download/v0.0.88/aws_alb_cloudwatch.hcl>"