Monitoring & Logging in Dockerized Microservices

Observability is key in microservices. Docker makes it possible to integrate powerful monitoring and logging tools like ELK, Prometheus, and Grafana to gain insights into your services.

Logging with the ELK Stack

ELK stands for Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana. It's widely used to collect, index, and visualize logs from multiple services.

Logstash reads logs, Elasticsearch stores them, and Kibana visualizes them:

docker-compose up -d elasticsearch logstash kibana

Then configure your microservices to output logs in JSON format for parsing.

Monitoring with Prometheus & Grafana

Prometheus scrapes metrics from microservices and Grafana displays them through dashboards.

Sample Prometheus config:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'user-service'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['user-service:9100']

Microservices should expose metrics on endpoints like /metrics.

Debugging Running Containers

Use these commands to inspect or attach to running containers:

docker logs user-service
docker exec -it user-service /bin/sh

Useful for live debugging, inspecting environment, or troubleshooting failures.

Visualizing API Calls Between Services

Use tools like Grafana Tempo, Jaeger, or Zipkin to track distributed traces across microservices. These tools show the full path of a request as it travels through services.

With centralized logging and real-time monitoring, you can proactively detect issues, understand system health, and debug microservices efficiently. Let’s now compare Docker with Kubernetes for advanced orchestration.

← Previous: Securing Dockerized Microservices Next: Docker vs Kubernetes for Microservices →