🚀 Real-Time WHM Monitoring with Grafana, Prometheus & a Custom Python Exporter

1. Introduction

📊 Why monitor WHM in real-time?
For system admins and hosting providers, tracking CPU, memory, disk, and bandwidth usage is critical. Whether you’re troubleshooting spikes, identifying resource-hungry accounts, or preventing downtime — live dashboards save time and stress.

Today, I’m sharing how I built a WHM → Python Exporter → Prometheus → Grafana pipeline for complete visibility.

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2. 🛠 Prerequisites

Before starting, make sure you have:

• ✅ WHM/cPanel root access

• ✅ A VPS/Dedicated server

• ✅ Python 3.x installed

• ✅ Prometheus installed

• ✅ Grafana installed

• ✅ WHM API access token

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3. 🔑 Step 1 — Enable WHM API

1️⃣ Login to WHM → Development → Manage API Tokens
2️⃣ Create a token with read permissions for server stats.
3️⃣ Copy and save it securely (will be used in the Python script).

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4. 🐍 Step 2 — Create Python Exporter

This script queries WHM API for:
💻 CPU & Memory usage
💾 Disk usage per cPanel user
📡 Bandwidth usage per cPanel user
🚫 Suspended accounts

from flask import Flask, Response
import requests

app = Flask(__name__)

WHM_API_TOKEN = "YOUR_API_TOKEN"
WHM_HOST = "https://YOUR_SERVER:2087"
HEADERS = {"Authorization": f"whm root:{WHM_API_TOKEN}"}

@app.route("/metrics")
def metrics():
    load = requests.get(f"{WHM_HOST}/json-api/loadavg?api.version=1", headers=HEADERS, verify=False).json()
    cpu = load['data']['one']
    return Response(f"server_cpu_usage {cpu}\n", mimetype="text/plain")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run(host="0.0.0.0", port=9100)

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5. ⚙ Step 3 — Run as a System Service

To make sure it starts on boot:

[Unit]
Description=WHM Prometheus Exporter
After=network.target

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python3 /path/to/whm_exporter.py
Restart=always
User=root

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

systemctl enable whm_exporter
systemctl start whm_exporter

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6. 📡 Step 4 — Configure Prometheus

Edit /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'whm_exporter'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['YOUR_SERVER_IP:9100']

Restart Prometheus:

systemctl restart prometheus

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7. 📈 Step 5 — Create Grafana Dashboard

1️⃣ Add Prometheus as a datasource.
2️⃣ Create panels for:

• CPU & Memory usage gauges

• Disk usage per user (table)

• Bandwidth usage per user (time series)

• Suspended accounts list
  3️⃣ Use thresholds to highlight high usage in red.

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8. 🌍 Step 6 — Share Your Dashboard

• Use Grafana Snapshot to share safely without exposing live data.

• Post screenshots on LinkedIn, GitHub README, or your website.

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9. ✅ Conclusion

This setup gave me real-time WHM monitoring with full visibility into server health and per-user activity.
Next steps: add alerts for overuse, automate resource suspension, and integrate with Slack/Telegram.

For more insights and help support me Join me on my journey at Linkedin