End‑to‑End Prometheus & Grafana Monitoring for OpenClaw on UBOS

2. Prerequisites

• UBOS instance (≥ v2.5) with admin access.
• OpenClaw already deployed – see the OpenClaw hosting guide for details.
• Prometheus server (Docker or native) reachable from the UBOS host.
• Grafana instance (Docker, native, or UBOS‑hosted).
• Basic knowledge of YAML and Docker commands.

If you need a quick start for a Grafana instance, the UBOS templates for quick start include a pre‑configured Grafana container.

4. Configuring Prometheus Scrape Jobs

Prometheus discovers targets via its scrape_configs section. Add a job for the OpenClaw exporter:

global:
  scrape_interval: 15s
  evaluation_interval: 15s

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'openclaw'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['host.docker.internal:9100']   # Adjust to your host IP
        labels:
          service: 'openclaw'

Save the file as prometheus.yml and restart Prometheus:

docker restart prometheus

Verify the target appears in the Prometheus UI (Prometheus docs) under Status → Targets. The status should be UP.

4.1 Adding Service‑Level Metrics

To monitor the underlying PostgreSQL database used by OpenClaw, you can also enable the ElevenLabs AI voice integration as a reference for adding a second exporter. The postgres_exporter is a popular choice:

docker run -d \
  --name postgres-exporter \
  -e DATA_SOURCE_NAME="postgres://user:password@db:5432/openclaw?sslmode=disable" \
  -p 9187:9187 \
  quay.io/prometheuscommunity/postgres-exporter

Then extend prometheus.yml:

  - job_name: 'postgres'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['host.docker.internal:9187']

6. Defining Alert Rules

Alerts keep you ahead of incidents. Prometheus uses alerting_rules.yml files, while Grafana can forward alerts to Slack, PagerDuty, or email.

6.1 Sample alert rules for OpenClaw

# OpenClaw critical alerts
groups:
  - name: openclaw.rules
    rules:
      - alert: OpenClawTicketQueueHigh
        expr: sum(openclaw_ticket_queue) > 500
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "Ticket queue exceeds 500 tickets"
          description: "The OpenClaw ticket queue has grown to {{ $value }} tickets for more than 5 minutes."

      - alert: OpenClawAPILatencyHigh
        expr: histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(openclaw_api_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le)) > 2
        for: 2m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "95th percentile API latency > 2s"
          description: "API latency is high ({{ $value }} seconds)."

      - alert: OpenClawDBConnectionExhausted
        expr: pg_stat_activity_count{datname="openclaw"} > 100
        for: 3m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "PostgreSQL connections exhausted"
          description: "More than 100 DB connections are in use for OpenClaw."

Save this as alerting_rules.yml and reference it in prometheus.yml:

rule_files:
  - "alerting_rules.yml"

6.2 Routing alerts to Grafana

In Grafana, go to Alerting → Notification channels** and add a new channel (e.g., Slack webhook). Then, enable Prometheus Alertmanager integration under Configuration → Data Sources → Prometheus → Alerting.

6.3 Testing alerts

Force a high queue condition to see the alert fire:

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/tickets -d '{"subject":"test"}'

After the threshold is crossed, you should receive a notification in your chosen channel. Adjust for durations and severity labels to match your operational SLAs.

8. Conclusion

Monitoring OpenClaw on UBOS with Prometheus and Grafana is straightforward once you follow a structured approach: deploy the exporter, configure scrape jobs, import a tailored dashboard, and set up actionable alerts. This end‑to‑end solution gives developers, DevOps engineers, and system administrators real‑time insight into ticketing health, reduces mean‑time‑to‑detect (MTTD), and aligns with UBOS’s Enterprise AI platform philosophy of modular, observable services.

Start today, and let your OpenClaw deployment run with the confidence that comes from proactive monitoring. For more templates, explore the UBOS portfolio examples or dive into the UBOS pricing plans to scale your monitoring stack as your organization grows.