Master Starburst Monitoring with Grafana and Trino Plugin

Starburst is a powerful distributed SQL engine that allows teams to query data across multiple sources. However, when it comes to monitoring Starburst clusters, there are some limitations:

• The Starburst web UI gives basic cluster health
• The Starburst API exposes some system metrics
• But full metrics (CPU, JVM, memory, total queries, slow queries, etc.) require additional integration

We manage 50+ Starburst clusters running across multiple environments (OpenShift, Kubernetes, Linux).

Manually going into the Starburst UI or CLI to run queries and check metrics was becoming too complex.

That’s why we Come up a solution using:

• Grafana dashboards
• Grafana Trino Plugin
• Prometheus + JMX Exporter → full Starburst metrics export

Why Native Starburst Metrics Are Limited

Out of the box, Starburst exposes basic system metrics:

• Active queries
• Running nodes
• Query latency
• Query errors

But for deeper monitoring — you need:

• JVM metrics (CPU usage, memory, GC, threads)
• Detailed query metrics (count, latency, slow queries)
• Resource usage per cluster
• Cluster-wide trends over time
• Alerting on custom thresholds

Starburst does not expose all of these metrics directly in the UI or API. This is why we need an additional metrics pipeline.

Solution Architecture

To fully monitor Starburst, we built this architecture:

+---------------------+    JMX Exporter    +---------------+
| Starburst Cluster 1 |  --> Port 8081 -->  | Prometheus    |
+---------------------+                   +---------------+

+---------------------+    JMX Exporter    +---------------+
| Starburst Cluster N |  --> Port 8081 -->  | Prometheus    |
+---------------------+                   +---------------+

                Prometheus --> Grafana --> Dashboards / Alerts

                + Grafana Trino Plugin --> SQL-based dashboards

Components:

• JMX Exporter → exposes Starburst JVM + query metrics to Prometheus
• Prometheus → scrapes all Starburst clusters at regular intervals
• Grafana → visualizes metrics
• Grafana Trino Plugin → allows you to run SQL queries on Starburst directly and show results in Grafana panels

Why Use Grafana Trino Plugin?

The Grafana Trino Plugin is extremely useful for Starburst monitoring because:

• It connects Grafana directly to Starburst as a SQL data source
• You can run Starburst SQL queries in Grafana panels
• You can refresh results dynamically
• You can build dashboards with panels per cluster
• It scales to multiple clusters easily

Without this plugin, you would need to:

• Manually log into each Starburst UI
• Run the same query multiple times
• Manually copy/paste results
• Very slow and not scalable

With Grafana Trino Plugin:

• Configure each cluster as a Trino data source in Grafana
• Write SQL queries once
• Save dashboards
• Refresh all clusters with one click
• Add alerts and trends → no manual work

Grafana Trino Plugin – Overview

The Trino datasource plugin allows you to query and visualize Trino (and Starburst) data inside Grafana.

Installation

Run Grafana with the plugin using Docker:

docker run -d -p 3000:3000 \
  -v "$(pwd):/var/lib/grafana/plugins/trino" \
  -e "GF_PLUGINS_ALLOW_LOADING_UNSIGNED_PLUGINS=trino-datasource" \
  --name=grafana \
  grafana/grafana-oss

Features

• Authentication: HTTP Basic, TLS client, OAuth, JWT
• Raw SQL editor — run any query
• Works with Starburst OSS, Galaxy, and Enterprise
• Macros supported → useful for time series panels

Macros Supported

• $timeFrom($column) — lower boundary of time range
• $timeTo($column) — upper boundary of time range
• $timeGroup($column, $interval) — group by time
• $dateFilter($column) — date range filter
• $timeFilter($column) — timestamp range filter
• $unixEpochFilter($column) — unix timestamp range

Example Query Using Macros

SELECT
  atimestamp AS time,
  metric_value AS value
FROM starburst_metrics_table
WHERE $__timeFilter(atimestamp) AND cluster_name IN($cluster)
ORDER BY atimestamp ASC

How To Set It Up

1. Enable JMX Exporter in Starburst

Configure JMX agent in your Starburst deployment:

start.args=-javaagent:/opt/starburst/jmx_prometheus_javaagent.jar=8081:/opt/starburst/jmx_exporter_config.yaml

2. Configure Prometheus

Add all your Starburst clusters:

- job_name: 'starburst'
  static_configs:
    - targets: ['starburst-cluster-1:8081', 'starburst-cluster-2:8081']

3. Install Grafana Trino Plugin

• Add Trino Plugin in Grafana → Data Sources
• Provide Starburst cluster URL + credentials
• Test connection

4. Build Dashboards

• Create a panel → select Trino Plugin data source
• Write your Starburst SQL query:

SELECT state, count(*) FROM system.runtime.queries GROUP BY state

• Save panel → use macros for time filters
• Build dashboards with multiple panels per cluster

Benefits

• Monitor Multiple Starburst clusters from one Grafana dashboard
• Run Starburst SQL queries as panels → live refresh
• Combine Prometheus metrics + SQL panels
• Full CPU, JVM, memory, query stats
• Add Slack / PagerDuty alerts for Starburst anomalies

Limitations and Tips

• Starburst native metrics are limited → configure JMX Exporter carefully
• Grafana Trino Plugin is best for SQL panels → use Prometheus panels for JVM metrics
• Test scrape intervals carefully → avoid overloading clusters
• Use macros to make dashboards dynamic and reusable across clusters

Conclusion

If you want full Starburst monitoring, this is the best architecture:

1. Enable JMX Exporter → Prometheus → Grafana
2. Use Grafana Trino Plugin → SQL dashboards → live queries
3. Monitor Multiple clusters from one place
4. Add alerts, trends, historical analysis
5. Share dashboards with teams

This is now my preferred way of managing Starburst monitoring in large environments.

Final Architecture Summary

Starburst --> JMX Exporter --> Prometheus --> Grafana Panels + Trino Plugin SQL Queries --> Slack / Alerts / Visual Dashboards