About the TimesTen Exporter

The TimesTen exporter runs on Linux x8664 systems. The Exporter is supported in TimesTen Classic and in TimesTen Scaleout.

In TimesTen Scaleout, the Exporter is supported on each host that is running either a data instance or a management instance. If there are multiple data instances on a single host, you deploy one Exporter for each data instance.

The Exporter does not run by default. You must specifically start the Exporter. The Exporter runs independently of the TimesTen instance.

The Exporter consists of a single executable program (utility) called ttExporter. When you create a TimesTen instance, the ttExporter utility is included as a part of the TimesTen instance. The ttExporter utility parses command line arguments and presents itself as an HTTP or an HTTPS server.

When the Exporter receives an HTTP (or HTTPS) GET request to /metrics, it retrieves the TimesTen metrics from each TimesTen database that it monitors and prepares a plain text HTTP(S) response with the metrics, including help text and type information.

The TimesTen metrics are collected from a variety of sources, including the TimesTen system tables and views and the TimesTen built-in procedures and utilities. Each TimesTen metric is prefixed with timesten. Each TimesTen metric consists of:

  • Metric name: For example, timesten_perm_allocated_bytes

  • Prometheus metric type: Either counter or gauge

  • Description: For example, Bytes of permanent space allocated

See The Metrics Supported by the TimesTen Exporter for a complete list of all the TimesTen metrics that the Exporter supports.
The Exporter converts each TimesTen metric into a format that Prometheus supports. For example, the Exporter converts the timesten_perm_allocated_bytes TimesTen metric into this Prometheus form:
# HELP timesten_perm_allocated_bytes Bytes of permanent space allocated
# TYPE timesten_perm_allocated_bytes gauge
timesten_perm_allocated_bytes{dsn="mydatabase",instance="myinstance"} 1073741824

A Prometheus exporter can be configured to require client certificate authentication with Transport Layer Security (mutual TLS) or to require no authentication. The TimesTen exporter supports both configurations. While it is typical for a Prometheus exporter to operate with no authentication, the default configuration for the TimesTen exporter is client certificate authentication. In a client certificate authentication configuration, an Oracle wallet is used to store the TLS credentials.

The configuration requirements differ depending on whether you configure the TimesTen exporter with client certificate authentication or with no authentication.