Creating a monitoring dashboard with a Grafana using Prometheus and Node Exporter

 

Creating a monitoring dashboard with a Grafana using Prometheus and Node Exporter

 

To get an instance that works correctly. Clone this repository grafana-prometheus-node-exporter/docker-compose.yml at main · R3m1xed/grafana-prometheus-node-exporter · GitHub

Run : git clone grafana-prometheus-node-exporter/docker-compose.yml at main · R3m1xed/grafana-prometheus-node-exporter · GitHub

Cd into the correct directory and run:

docker compose up -d

 

Once it is up and running. In a browser navigate to http://<hostip>: 3000

The credentials will be admin:admin, change your password then log into the dashboard.

 

Up on the top left, click on the icon to the left of home and click on Connect data under connections.

 

In the search box, type in Prometheus and click on Prometheus, you will be taken to another page where we can add a data source for Prometheus

Note: if Prometheus is not installed, this page will allow you to install it.

Click on create a Prometheus data source.

 

 

At this point here, the part that is important to get it connected, is providing url with its port to let it find Node Exporter.

http://<machineIP>:9090

You can fill out the other information as you see fit.

After you are done with this page scroll down the bottom and click Save & Test

 

Prometheus container

Now we need to get into the prometheus container and edit /etc/prometheus/prometheus.yml

You can do these multiple ways (docker container exec (container) sh – this gives a shell), but at the bottom of the file, add the following:

  - job_name: "hostmachine"

    static_configs:

      - targets: ['<ipaddress>':9100']

 

Once this is done we will need to restart the container, go back to original docker compose file location and run the following:
docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Creating a dashboard

Go back the Grafana main page on port 3000 and click on dashboard.

 

Now click on new -> new dashboard

Click on add visualization.

Now you should be brought to this screen.

 

For keeping this simple and easy to understand. The query we are going to run checks available ram.

The following is needed to make this work:

Data Source: needs to be the prometheus datasoruce you configured earlier.
Metrics browser: node_memory_MemFree_bytes

Click on run queries to make sure it works.

If it has worked. Click save up the top right.

 

Navigate to where you saved your dashboard, and you should something similar to this (note: I have 2 hosts being read with node exporter, so as long as you have you have some data showing it should be working correctly).