Apache HertzBeat Agentless Monitoring System

This is a repackaged open source software product wherein additional charges apply for cloudimg support services.

## Overview

Apache HertzBeat is an open source, real-time monitoring and alerting system from the Apache Software Foundation. It provides agentless monitoring of servers, databases, middleware, web sites, APIs, cloud-native workloads, and custom endpoints - all from a single console with no agents to deploy, no external time-series database to manage, and no multi-component stack to wire together. This AMI delivers HertzBeat fully installed and running so your monitoring console is operational within minutes of launch.

## Why HertzBeat Over Alternative Stacks

Traditional monitoring stacks require you to deploy and maintain multiple components: a metrics collector, a separate time-series database (PostgreSQL, InfluxDB, or Thanos), an alerting engine, and a visualization layer. Each component adds operational burden, failure domains, and cost. HertzBeat eliminates this complexity:

• No external database - embedded H2 for metadata and DuckDB for metric history means zero database provisioning, patching, or backup orchestration compared to running a separate PostgreSQL or InfluxDB instance
• No agents to deploy - monitor endpoints over the network without installing and maintaining per-host agents, unlike Zabbix or Telegraf-based approaches
• Single binary, single node - one EC2 instance replaces a multi-service stack, reducing infrastructure cost and failure domains
• 30+ notification channels built in - route alerts to Slack, Discord, Telegram, email, or webhooks without writing integration code, so your on-call team receives alerts in the channel they already use

## Evaluation Path

HertzBeat is billed hourly with no long-term commitment. Launch on a t3.small instance to evaluate the full product at minimal cost - the console is live within minutes and you can add monitors immediately. Cancel anytime by terminating the instance.

## Application Stack

HertzBeat runs as a single node using embedded storage: H2 for metadata and DuckDB for metric history, with no external database to provision. It runs under a dedicated unprivileged service account, systemd starts it on boot and restarts it on failure, and the embedded data tier lives on a dedicated data disk that is independently resizable and separate from the operating system disk.

## Secure By Default

There are NO shared default credentials. On first boot the image generates a unique administrator password AND a unique JWT signing secret for your instance, replacing the well-known upstream defaults, and writes the admin password to a file only the root user can read. The operating system is fully security-patched at build time. This eliminates the most common attack vector against self-hosted monitoring tools: unchanged default credentials.

## Monitoring Capabilities

• Host and operating-system metrics (CPU, memory, disk, network)
• Databases: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, PrestoDB and more
• Message and application middleware
• HTTP/HTTPS endpoints and TLS-certificate expiry checks
• Ping, port, and DNS probes
• Prometheus-compatible scrape targets
• Spring Boot Actuator endpoints for JVM and microservice health
• Fully custom monitors defined in YAML
• Threshold rule engine with 30+ notification channels

## Concrete Use Case: Spring Boot Microservices on AWS

A DevOps team running 20 Spring Boot microservices on ECS can point HertzBeat at each service's Actuator endpoint to collect JVM heap, garbage collection, and request-latency metrics. Configure a threshold rule to fire when p99 latency exceeds 500ms, route the alert to a Slack channel, and your on-call engineer receives actionable context without deploying a single agent or provisioning Prometheus and Grafana.

## Ready To Use

Open the web console in your browser, read the generated admin password from the instance, sign in, and add your first monitor straight away. A paired step-by-step deployment guide covers first sign-in, adding a monitor, and configuring alerts.

## Get Started

Launch the AMI, sign in to the console, and add your first monitor in minutes. For a guided deployment walkthrough or help designing your monitoring and alerting strategy, contact cloudimg support at any time - we are available 24/7 by email and chat.

## cloudimg Support

24/7 technical support by email and chat. Help with deployment, monitor and alert design, notification-channel integration, storage and retention planning, backup and upgrade planning, and instance sizing.

This is a repackaged open source software product with additional charges for cloudimg support services. Apache HertzBeat, HertzBeat, and Apache are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation.