Comprehensive Prometheus & Grafana Setup for OpenClaw on UBOS

1. Introduction

OpenClaw is a powerful, open‑source ticketing system that many SaaS teams run on the UBOS homepage. While its core features are solid, production‑grade deployments demand observability. This guide walks you through a complete Prometheus & Grafana setup for OpenClaw on UBOS, covering exporters, scrape jobs, dashboards, alerts, and verification steps.

We build on the earlier observability series that introduced basic metrics collection on UBOS, so you’ll see familiar patterns and new, OpenClaw‑specific details.

2. Prerequisites

• UBOS version ≥ 2.5 with admin access.
• Docker Engine installed (UBOS uses Docker under the hood).
• Basic familiarity with Prometheus and Grafana.
• Network ports 9090 (Prometheus) and 3000 (Grafana) open on your UBOS host.
• Optional: UBOS partner program membership for premium support.

3. Installing OpenClaw Exporters

OpenClaw does not ship native Prometheus exporters, but the community provides two Docker‑based exporters that expose key metrics:

3.1. OpenClaw HTTP Exporter

This exporter scrapes OpenClaw’s internal API and presents /metrics for Prometheus.

docker run -d \
  --name=openclaw-http-exporter \
  -p 9100:9100 \
  -e OPENCLAW_URL=http://YOUR_OPENCLAW_HOST:8000 \
  ghcr.io/ubos/openclaw-http-exporter:latest

3.2. OpenClaw DB Exporter

For deeper insights (queue length, ticket status distribution), the DB exporter reads directly from the PostgreSQL database.

docker run -d \
  --name=openclaw-db-exporter \
  -p 9101:9101 \
  -e DB_HOST=postgres \
  -e DB_USER=openclaw \
  -e DB_PASSWORD=your_password \
  ghcr.io/ubos/openclaw-db-exporter:latest

Both containers automatically register themselves with UBOS’s internal service registry, making them discoverable for the next step.

4. Configuring Prometheus Scrape Jobs

Log into the UBOS admin console, navigate to Workflow automation studio and open the prometheus.yml configuration file. Add the following scrape sections:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'openclaw_http'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9100']
    metrics_path: /metrics
    scheme: http

  - job_name: 'openclaw_db'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9101']
    metrics_path: /metrics
    scheme: http
    relabel_configs:
      - source_labels: [__address__]
        regex: '(.*):.*'
        target_label: instance
        replacement: '${1}'

After saving, restart Prometheus via UBOS’s Workflow automation studio:

ubos service restart prometheus

Verify that Prometheus can reach the exporters by visiting http://YOUR_UBOS_HOST:9090/targets. Both openclaw_http and openclaw_db should show a UP status.

5. Importing Grafana Dashboards

UBOS ships a library of pre‑built Grafana dashboards. For OpenClaw, we recommend the “OpenClaw Operations” dashboard (ID 1023).

1. Log into Grafana at http://YOUR_UBOS_HOST:3000 (default admin / admin).
2. Navigate to + Create → Import.
3. Paste the dashboard JSON URL:
   https://ubos.tech/dashboard/openclaw-operations.json
4. Select the Prometheus data source you configured earlier.
5. Click Import. The dashboard now displays ticket creation rate, queue latency, DB connection pool usage, and more.

To accelerate future projects, explore the UBOS templates for quick start. The “AI SEO Analyzer” template, for example, demonstrates how to embed custom Prometheus queries into a SaaS‑ready UI.

6. Defining Alert Rules

Effective monitoring is incomplete without alerts. Create a new file openclaw_alerts.yml in the Prometheus alerts directory and add the following rules:

groups:
  - name: openclaw_alerts
    rules:
      - alert: OpenClawHighQueueLatency
        expr: avg_over_time(openclaw_queue_latency_seconds[5m]) > 30
        for: 2m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "High ticket queue latency"
          description: "Average queue latency has exceeded 30 seconds for the last 5 minutes."

      - alert: OpenClawDBConnectionExhausted
        expr: openclaw_db_connections_used / openclaw_db_connections_total > 0.9
        for: 1m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Database connections > 90 %"
          description: "PostgreSQL connection pool is nearing exhaustion."

Reload the alert rules without restarting Prometheus:

curl -X POST http://localhost:9090/-/reload

Configure Grafana’s Alerting UI to forward these alerts to Slack, email, or the Telegram integration on UBOS. This ensures your on‑call engineers receive real‑time notifications.

7. Verifying the Monitoring Pipeline

Run through the following checklist to confirm end‑to‑end functionality:

• Exporter health: curl http://localhost:9100/metrics returns metric lines without errors.
• Prometheus scrape: Open http://YOUR_UBOS_HOST:9090/targets and verify openclaw_http and openclaw_db are UP.
• Grafana visualization: The “OpenClaw Operations” dashboard shows live graphs; trigger a test ticket and watch the “Tickets per minute” panel increase.
• Alert firing: Simulate high latency by pausing the OpenClaw worker process, then check Grafana’s Alerting** tab for the OpenClawHighQueueLatency alert.
• Notification delivery: Verify that the alert reaches your configured Slack channel or Telegram bot.

All steps passing confirms a robust observability stack ready for production workloads.

8. Reference to the Observability Series

This guide is the third installment of our observability series. The first article covered hosting OpenClaw on UBOS, while the second introduced basic Prometheus metrics for generic UBOS services. By now you should have a holistic view of how UBOS, Prometheus, and Grafana interoperate.

9. Conclusion

Implementing a full‑featured monitoring pipeline for OpenClaw on UBOS empowers DevOps teams to detect performance regressions, prevent outages, and maintain SLA compliance. The combination of Docker‑based exporters, a centrally managed Prometheus instance, and rich Grafana dashboards delivers a scalable solution that grows with your ticket volume.

Ready to extend your observability? Consider exploring the Enterprise AI platform by UBOS for automated anomaly detection, or the AI marketing agents to turn monitoring insights into proactive customer communications.

For background on OpenClaw’s recent release, see the original announcement here.